Project Description
This research builds on prior research supported by SURF and aims to continue to examine a uniquely North American architectural typology: model homes built on college campuses in the early-mid 20th century that were utilized as labs by Home Economics departments. After the passage of the Smith Hughes Act, Home Economics departments popped up around the United States. To facilitate hands-on learning, universities built single-family homes on campus, where home ec students and faculty would live for multiple weeks at a time, learning and testing their home-making skills. This research aims to re-read this typology through a progressive, feminist lens, understanding these homes as, at times, women-only safe spaces, where they were free to live and learn in community with other like minded folks working towards higher education. While engaging in this research over the Summer, our team discovered documentation by the federal government via the (now defunct) Bureau of Vocational Education, which kept record of all collegiate home ec departments and their model homes. The research in the fall would analyze these documents to understand a complex, federally-supported architectural typology now lost to history. The research would also assist in the beginnings of a book project detailing this history.
Tasks and Responsibilites
Students would read and analyze the Annual Reports of the Bureau of Vocational Education from 1913 through 1940 and create a full survey of this architectural typology. To my knowledge, this survey does not exist and no one else has completed a close reading of these documents with an architectural lens. Students would then find photographic imagery and architectural drawings (blueprints) of these buildings through archival research and communication with various university libraries. Students would selectively, then, three dimensionally digitally model some of the most notable homes to create a virtual version of these buildings that no longer exist. Finally, students would assist in compiling this historical research and architectural drawing as the beginnings of a book project on this history that I am now embarking on.
Desired Qualifications
None Listed.