House Arrest
International House of Architecture
Marcos Sánchez and Mark Wasiuta with Adam Bandler
A familiar narrative of the San Fernando Valley holds that the formal repetitiveness of this vast suburbia delivers an image of bland homogeneity, while simultaneously providing cover for a multitude of aberrant activities. From the alcoholic, adulterous families of the 1967 film The Graduate to a range of more recent examples, the Valley and Angeleno suburbs are frequently employed to confirm a repression model of architecture. Thus, in the Valley, the relentlessly repeated single-family house is understood both to indicate social conformity...
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