Site-Specificity in the Everyday

An interesting topic was raised in class today. Most of the discussion revolved around how your everyday changes based on your location in time and space. Obviously, this draws an important and very prevalent connection between the topic of the everyday and site-specificity. Specifically, my culture changed very quickly when I came to Wake Forest--making the switch between the suburbs of Ohio to a college campus in North Carolina. Besides the expected changes in everyday from living at home and going to high school to living in a dorm and going to college, the most obvious differences became apparent because of changes in my everyday. Suddenly, my friends laughed when I said "pop" instead of "soda" and "you guys" instead of "y'all." I also noticed an almost surreal difference between the architecture of Sylvania, Ohio and Wake Forest. When it came to its construction in 1970, my old high school was designed to be as cheap as possible. We lovingly referred to it as "The Prison" because of its lack of windows. Looking at pictures of downtown Toledo as well as the University of Toledo, I noticed that this simplicity in architecture was common in my town, especially when compared to Wake Forest. Neither of these pictures were taken from the websites of the respective schools so as to make them as realistic as possible.

University of Toledo








Wake Forest University


This just shows that one of the best places to find examples of site-specificity is in the everyday world around us.