Nineteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

Law affects architecture in many ways, casting an invisible yet influential web of restriction upon the built environment. One such area is copyright law, resulting in some unforeseen consequences to design creativity. Interestingly, the biggest impact is at the modest end of the design scale: the humble house. While not technically ‘architecture’ in some jurisdictions - In Wisconsin, any construction under 50,000 cubic feet does not require an architect’ stamp – residential projects are still covered by copyright law. Housing represents a substantial proportion of construction, and is the focus of numerous cases where ‘design trolls’ have received protection for simple, traditional homes and have sued countless other designers who were using a similar conventional vocabulary of materials and forms. However, can modest, single- family housing be sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection? While there are examples of architect-designed houses that clearly display creativity, market rate homes are small in size, comprised of a limited number of spaces and elements and, as market demand indicates, conform to traditional expectations of layout and appearance - hardly a recipe for originality. Coupled with this, copyright legislation, while not defining originality, specifically excludes certain elements from protection. These are functional requirements, traditional relationships of internal spaces and standard architectural elements – arguably the primary, if not sole, constituents of the single-family house. This paper explores the concept of residential originality and questions the role of copyright law in protecting and restricting the use of traditional design in the humble house.