Evolution of the Modern Home: Reprioritizing Community, Sustainability and Plasticity

North America has been plagued by the curse of seemingly unlimited space. Developers have the luxury of buying cheaper land further from the city core, creating copy and paste neighborhoods, ignoring the existing landscape, and any potential for passive design benefits. This format of mass-produced housing has led to a lack of imagination in design or efficiency. Residential areas are separated from amenities and commercial spaces, the homes themselves separated by side yards and fences. The feeling of community is no longer evident, neighbours can go days without crossing paths. In order to better reconsider the idea of neighborhood and community it must be acknowledged that the owner demographic of single family homes has also changed over the years, the "Nuclear family" no longer exists. Gender roles within families have been overturned and the incredible cultural diversity of Canada's population cannot be ignored.