Porch Life: Reflections on an American Residential Space

By Danielle DiLeo Kim, AIA
President, AIA Philadelphia

I always wanted to live in a house with a wrap-around porch. This past year, I finally got my wish when we added one to a modest cabin we own in a cabin community near Lake Nockamixon. I spent a day up there last week to focus and get some work done without the usual distractions of being in the city. I saw more deer than people. The breeze was perfect and refreshing. I worked, read and tromped in the woods when I needed a break. It was exactly what I needed: a place to slow down.

*Screened-in porch extends living and dining outside

The porch is an iconic American typology. It’s that inside-outside space—a place for lounging with friends, passing time on a porch swing, collecting your thoughts before heading inside or pausing in the last moment of shelter before stepping out into the world. A threshold space. Semi-public and semi-private.

I’ve always been fascinated by this in-between architectural condition. My interest goes back to my undergraduate architecture thesis, which explored the overlapping realms of community—public to semi-public to semi-private to private—through the design of a multifamily courtyard housing project. I’ve been interested in that layering ever since.

*Thesis board showing scales of community from city to courtyard to porch to living area that looks back to the communal space.

There are many great examples of porches in American residential architecture—from the crisp, compact front porches of New England coastal towns (think clapboard homes in Maine with a pair of Adirondack chairs and a flag fluttering in the breeze), to Jersey Shore bungalows with their welcoming overhangs, to the deep, shaded porches of the South designed to catch a breeze and extend the living space. One of my favorite cities is Charleston, SC, with its narrow lots and iconic side porches that run the depth of the house to invite harbor air throughout the house. 

This year, the U.S. Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale is honoring the porch as a uniquely American space. An impressive team of designers created a powerful, undulating mass timber porch to the US Pavilion that welcomes international visitors into this deeply American architectural typology. Inside the Pavilion, curators have selected 54 architects, landscape architects, and artists to interpret “the porch” through exhibits, models, and photographs.

Porches are more than charming add-ons. Because of their in-betweenness, they promote community building—and, when applied at the scale of a block, civic engagement. I am grateful that most of Philadelphia’s residential social activity takes place in the public realm and not in the backyard, like it does in the suburbs. (The rowhouse roof deck creates its own unique social relationships three stories above the sidewalk, but that’s for another column.) Some of Philadelphia’s most beloved neighborhoods, especially in Northwest and in West Philly, are lined with generous front porches that become places of daily interaction, celebration, and care by neighbors. Even the Philadelphia stoop—or the “step,” if you’re from South Philly—is porch-like in its threshold nature. My favorite time of year is just beginning: stooping season. As days stretch into evening, it’s easy to catch up with friends on those five marble steps, and the crowd grows and passersby get caught up in the easy conversation and setting. The stoop, and along with the porch, is one of the city’s most democratic pieces of architecture. We all have one, and it’s the threshold of engagement with the broader city.

In our fast-paced, digital world, porches of all kinds—whether in the woods or on a city street—offer us something increasingly rare: the chance to slow down, be present, and connect with others. The 2025 Venice Biennale calls it Porch, an American Generosity, and that feels just right. The porch is more than a design feature—it’s a gesture of welcome, of openness, of community. In a time when generosity and civility can feel in short supply, perhaps what we need most is what I’ve longed for all along: a simple place to pause, to breathe, and to invite the world in—one neighbor, one conversation, one moment at a time.

Reference: https://archinect.com/news/article/150479522/welcome-inside-the-porch-first-photos-of-the-completed-u-s-pavilion-at-the-2025-venice-biennale