The “House and Home” exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. tells the history of housing in the United States through photographs, film, drawings, texts, and models, beginning with Native Americans, through tenements, suburbia, urban living, even to the modular Tumbleweed Tiny House that has just 100 square feet of space. The timeline shows various construction methods including adobe brick, the rough-hewn carpentry of the colonial era, and the platform frame used most widely today. The Washington Post article notes there is no mention of the brick architecture of Washington, nor does the show mention that many of the current homes being built will last beyond 30-50 years. There is, however, mention of a beautiful prefabricated house that links to a series of other modular homes. The article concludes, “ ‘House & Home’ does a good job of demonstrating how our living space is the first and most fundamental theater for our relentless self-invention.” The exhibit runs through May 2017.
