Select one or more images by clicking on the respective image(s)* General Electric advertisement: It’s a promise, 1945. With the return of soldiers from World War II who could not find housing in the overcrowded cities, the construction of suburbs really took off. With the help of generous government-supported loans, the suburbs were built according to the Fordist model of assembly line production.© General Electric Aerial view of Levittown, 1949 William Levitt (1907–1994) was considered the largest developer in America and declared his company to be the “General Motors of the housing industry.” The first of half a dozen suburbs he developed – Levittown on Long Island – had 60,000 residents. At the height of production, a house was built every fifteen minutes.© Photograph: Levittown Public Library Collage of advertisements for household appliances© various North American magazines from 1947–1962 Bill Owens: Cleo and James Pruden, 1972 In 1973, Bill Owens’s photo book Suburbia was published. The unusual and captivating photographs show the complexity of the American middle-class landscape.© Photograph: Bill Owens Archive, Milano Gabriele Galimberti: Avery Skipalis (33) – Tampa, Florida, 2021 (from The Ameriguns series). Gabriele Galimberti’s The Ameriguns project traces the widespread gun fetishism in the USA and primarily portrays the average citizens of the suburbs.© Photograph: Gabriele Galimberti Ed Templeton: Contemporary Suburbium, 2017 The Contemporary Suburbium series is a photographic meditation on life in the suburbs around Huntington Beach, California, in their mix of hip beach culture and urban sprawl.© Photograph: Ed Templeton Kate Wagner: Observations from McMansion Hell, 2023 Kate Wagner is the author of the viral blog McMansionHell, in which she explores the ugliest houses in the world from top to bottom while also informing people about architecture and design.© Photograph: Kate Wagner Weronika Gęsicka: Untitled #52 (from the Traces series, 2015–2017). For her Traces series, the Polish artist Weronika Gęsicka searched various online image databases for photos from the 1940s to the 1960s that reflect the American way of life of that time and manipulated the depicted idyll in an intuitive and playful manner.© Photograph: Weronika Gęsicka and Galerie Jednostka, Warsaw Jessica Chou: The Mark Keppel High School Dance Team at the 2019 Miss Dance Drill Team USA National Dance Competition. Monterey Park, a suburb of Los Angeles, was the first city with a majority Asian population in the entire country. With the Suburban Chinatown (2013) series, Jessica Chou aims to make this mix of Chinese culture and suburban atmosphere visible, because “there are many interpretations of the American dream, and I hope this work updates both the immigrant and suburban story.”© Photograph: Jessica Chou Benjamin Grant: Berwyn, Illinois, 2023. As the founder of Overview, Benjamin Grant uses satellite and aerial photography to show how human activities and natural forces shape our earth. Berwyn, a suburb in the Chicago metropolitan area, is known as the "City of Homes" and has the highest population density of any municipality in Illinois, with 57,250 residents in just ten square kilometers.© Photograph: Nearmap, Photo created by Overview Veitingergasse model housing estate by Carl Auböck and Roland Rainer (1952–1954) The model housing estate was built by the Austrian Productivity Center, among others, with the support of the US Special Mission for Economic Cooperation to initiate the production of inexpensive serial houses in Austria.© Architekturzentrum Wien, Collection, Photograph: USIS Poster, Austrian Productivity Center, 1952 In 1950, the Austrian Productivity Center was established using funds from the Marshall Plan with the aim of putting material, intellectual, and moral forces at the service of increasing the productivity of the Austrian economy.© ÖNB Image Archive, poster collection From the field to a single-family housing estate. Aerial view of Traiskirchen, Lower Austria. For decades, Austrian land use practice promoted the expansion of single-family housing estates and, as a result, the urban sprawl of the country.© Photograph: Stefanie Grüssl / With thanks to the Federal Ministry of the Interior Aerial Police From the Eternity series© Architekturzentrum Wien, collection, Photograph: Margherita Spiluttini Conversion of a residential building into the Children’s Adventure Laboratory KALO, Traiskirchen, Lower Austria by ASAP Hoog Pitro Sammer, 2022© ASAP ZT GmbH, Photograph: Tschinkersten Fotografie Conversion of House Fink, Lustenau by Julia Kick Architekten, 2013© Photograph: Michael Nußbaumer Conversion of House B, Linz by Schneider Lengauer Pühringer Architekten, 2021© Photograph: Kurt Hörbst Salutation* Mrs Mr First name*Last name*Institution*Email address * Privacy Policy* I have read and accept the Privacy Policy. Sicherheitsüberprüfung
