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A single family house may often have been considered as a very small pixel within any urban context, but the fact is, on average more than fifty percent of the urban fabric is being shaped by these tiny small pixels. It is well said by Tadao Ando: “The house is the building type that can change society.” Thus, this is how a client, a developer, a builder, an architect, or a designer could or should be responsible and willingly participate in a collective effort to shape a better urban context.
In the North American context of housing, the repetition of an economic formula has become the norm for many reasons: the most important of which is that the public is really not given an opportunity to explore and experience. Architecturally, the multicultural domain of the Greater Toronto Area is not as diverse as it deserves to be and its residential areas are characterized by a homogenous flatness. The vision of our population toward architecture is drawn to either mass production of subdivision built houses by developers, cosmetic variations of a copy-paste cookie-cutter blueprints, or monstrous residences with no root belief of a unique lifestyle.
Not only the general public, but also the architects who comply with this monotony, are accountable for this. There is an ethical responsibility; however, many architects have become service providers rather than contributors to a public discourse. Market oriented developers who make decisions solely centred around the financial gain, have put architects in an invidious position. When it comes to single family houses, their contributions are almost invisible. Rarely do houses contribute much to the urban fabric, nor do they raise much curiosity in their viewers’ mind about the state of housing, dwelling, urbanism, accommodation or culture. Regardless of personal taste, every project should be capable of pulling a trigger in the mind that deserves a response.
