Thesis Highlights

“Levitt’s Delusion"

james Rennert, 2021

“Levitt’s Delusion: On Waking Up From the American Dream”

The American Dream is in crisis. Premised on ideals of individual achievement and manifested through consumption, nowhere is this problem more evident than in America’s wilting suburbs, the endless expanse where this notion of prosperity becomes tangible. We have reached a critical moment in that the colliding social, economic, and environmental narratives that have fueled this relentless expansion have become indefensible, and in this light we must ask: what now?

While the dream has since faded, reality lingers. “Levitt’s Delusion” speculates upon the latent potential of suburban land as a laboratory for building a new dream, embracing our desire to sprawl and develop ad infinitum. Through the extraction and reappropriation of elements of suburbia, this project manifests a New American Dream: one of collectivism, of community, of interaction and exchange.

Faculty Thesis Directors: Cordula Roser Gray and Ammar Eloueini

WORK