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About The Porch Project

I originally thought I would produce a filmed documentary about the porch. But as my research progressed and issues, ideas, places, time, and people got more intertwined, I wanted to find other ways to visualize a complicated history of a material object and space. Even more so, I wanted to find a way to let people explore the story of the porch as they would an actual porch: by using it. Because the user experience is essential to web-based interactive media, building a playground of tools and experiments started to feel right for this project. In the end, what we have here are a few different ways to explore a story using a plethora of tools. Play. Have fun.

This project is an MFA thesis by Donna Lichaw, a NYC-based interactive designer. It was generously funded in part by the Garry Marshall Media Arts Grant.

Web Team
• Donna Lichaw (Concept, IA/UI/UX, Front End Development)
• Scott Trudeau (Web Development)
• Thiago Demello Bueno (Logo & Visual Design)
• Daniel McClaren (Flash Development)
• Alex DeFazio (Editorial)
• Dan Steingart (Web Development)

Background

Several years ago, while studying post-war American suburban residential architecture, I noticed one key element missing from almost all housing designs: a front porch. Also studying television history, at the time, I assumed that the television had something to do with the absence of porches: if porches were a space for leisure and connecting with the outside community, perhaps a television in a living room functioned the same way? This would fit with what is called the "containment" theory of post-war American culture - that at a time of societal fear of outside threats, there was a retreat into the nuclear family situated in a single-family private home in the suburbs. But I never much subscribed to the containment theory as an absolute. After all, after World War II, people began to spend a lot of time outdoors as activities such as camping and organized sports grew in popularity. Even women continued to join the workforce in unprecedented numbers and were not necessarily playing good Donna Reed as popular memory would suggest. But Donna Reed had a front porch. Why didn't post-war suburbanites?

As I started to research my question, I learned that the porch did not, in fact, disappear after World War II - it started to decline in popularity in the early part of the twentieth century for many reasons and was pretty much absent from new homes by the 1930s. At this point, I decided to rework my question(s). What is the front porch? What is its story? Where did it come from? When did it come from? And, of course, where did it go?