How Would You Redesign the White House?

If ideas popped into your head when you saw the post title, then today is your lucky day!

Storefront for Art and Architecture, in association with Control Group is holding a little competition called the White House Redux.

The basics:

You ponder, you design, you send your idea for a spankin’ new White House in.

“The best ideas, designs, descriptions, images, and videos will be selected by some of the world’s most distinguished designers and critics and featured in a month-long exhibition at Storefront for Art and Architecture in July 2008. All three winners will be flown to New York to collect their prizes at the opening part.”

The prizes for three winners will include:

• First Prize: $5,000
• Second Prize: $3,000
• Third Prize: $1,500
• Plus, the winners will be, “Flown to New York and given three day’s free accommodation in The White House Hotel on the Bowery.”

See all the prize perks here. Yup there is more.

The White House is semi the result of a design competition back in 1972, of which James Hoban won, and semi the result of presidents since 1972, adding on (ah, our tax dollars hard at work.)

According to White House Redux, “The White House includes: Six stories and 55,000 square feet of floor space, 132 rooms and 35 bathrooms, 412 doors, 147 windows, twenty-eight fireplaces, eight staircases, three elevators, five full-time chefs, a tennis court, a bowling alley, a movie theater, a jogging track, a swimming pool, and a putting green.”

Um, I’m sorry, but the White House is a baddie McMansion at it’s best. Too big, not that attractive, with features you don’t need to live properly. It’s excess. Care to see my shocked face?

What I think:

Honestly, if it were up to me, the president would have to live in whatever the majority of Americans currently live in. You know, to get a feel for real American life.

The median price for American homes is $224,000. Lately, as you’ve likely noticed, that isn’t going to buy much. Maybe the president could get a condo in Washington for that – maybe not.

Politics being wobbly like they are, a Jello house would be fitting.

On a mad day (most days I think about politics) I might have to go with something like the Poop House or the Toilet House – that’s fitting. Maybe we should have the president live in the toilet house until all children have health care?

I’m guessing I’d be way too sarcastic to be an effective entry in the White House Redux. Still, you can enter. Let me know if you win.