Abstract
Histories of American domesticity regard privacy as a building’s relationship to the exterior. Discourses of model suburban living have elevated Levittown as the postwar model of American living, effectively marking privacy through the typology of the suburban house and its appurtenances. The fence, lawn, curtains, and acoustics have established themselves as markers of privacy in modernity, equating privacy with the ability to separate the individual from the adjacent exterior. This paper seeks to challenge the canonical presumption by interrogating the urban planning of Los Alamos—the infamous atomic energy town—after the detonation. It contends that, under the mantle of “disposal plans” (the Atomic Energy Commission’s federal plan to privatize Manhattan Project towns and transform them into self-governed entities), the Atomic Energy Commission reinvented American privacy. Through an extensive archival investigation of reports produced between 1955 and 1965 in the attempt to safeguard and promote domestic nuclear production through the creation of the town’s “self-governance,” I mobilize the notion of the private from the realms of domestic design to urban planning, management, and assertion of control. In this presentation, I will show how previous privacy-generating entities, rooted in domestic architectural settings, morphed into a legal and economic mechanism that prioritized administrative and interiorized separation from the one exhibited to the outside. With an emphasis on property deeds and transfers, the ability to separate shared utilities and mortgage payments, and the simple legal definition of transfer of a typology, I seek to mobilize architectural privacy into the realms of law, governance, and politics.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Domesticity, Privacy, Nuclear Energy, Atomic Energy Towns, National Policy
