Tomorrow's house : a complete guide for the home-builder

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HOUS

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San Francisco, California
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GEORGE NELSON • CONSULTANT EDITOR ARCHITECTURAL FORUM
HENRY WRIGHT • MANAGING EDITOR ARCHITECTURAL FORUM

OMORROW'S

HOUS

A COMPLETE GUIDE
FOR THE HOME-BUILDER

SIMON AND SCHUSTER • NEW YORK 1945

SECOND PR

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT OF REPRODUCTION

IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN ANY FORM. COPYRIGHT, 1945, BY GEORGE NELSON AND HENRY WRIGHT. PUBLISHED BY
SIMON AND SCHUSTER, INC., ROCKEFELLER CENTER, 1230 SIXTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 20, N. Y. MANUFACTURED IN THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE HADDON CRAFTSMEN, SCRANTON, PA. AND WESTCOTT AND THOMSON, PHILA., PA.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One. THE GREAT TRADITION 1
Chapter Two. HOME Is WHERE You HANG YOUR

ARCHITECT 10

Chapter Three. How TO PLAN A LIVING-ROOM 16

PICTURE SECTION: LIVING-ROOMS 23-38

Chapter Four. WHERE SHALL WE EAT? 39

Chapter Five. LIGHTING 44

PICTURE SECTION: DINING AND ENTER-
TAINMENT 55-70

Chapter Six. THE WORK CENTER 71

Chapter Seven. THE ROOM WITHOUT A NAME 76

Chapter Eight. HEATING 81

PICTURE SECTION: KITCHENS AND BATHS 87-102

Chapter Nine. BATHROOMS ARE OUT OF DATE 103

Chapter Ten. MANUFACTURING CLIMATE 1 10

Chapter Eleven. SLEEPING 1 14

PICTURE SECTION: BEDROOMS AND

CLOSETS 119-134

Chapter Twelve. ORGANIZED STORAGE 135

Chapter Thirteen. SOUND CONDITIONING 143

PICTURE SECTION: WINDOWS 151-166

Chapter Fourteen. WINDOWS 167

Chapter Fifteen. SOLAR HEATING 176

Chapter Sixteen. PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER 180

PICTURE SECTION: EXTERIORS 183-198

Chapter Seventeen. How TO GET YOUR HOUSE

(or Remodel the One You Have) 199

Chapter Eighteen. PROJECTIONS 205

Architects and Designers Whose Work Appears in

This Book 211

Photographers Whose Pictures Appear in This Book 214

FORE W O R D BY HOWARD MYERS • PUBLISHER OF

ARCHITECTURAL FORUM

THIS is NOT the first book about tomorrow's house. Nor will
it be the last. But it is likely to be the most influential.

This book challenges not most, but all of the sweet-scented
nostalgia on the domestic scene. Despite its persuasive man-
ner, it is going to disturb many readers who keep their milk
in the latest refrigerator, drive to business in the newest car,
but persist in thinking that a Cape Cod cottage remains the
snappiest idea in a home.

The thesis here advanced is that our way of life is under-
going great changes and that many of the changes are already
here. If we accept that statement, and it would seem difficult
not to, it follows that we should not let sentimental ties with
the past stand in the way of getting the best house present-
day technology and design can produce. The notion that the
contemporary approach to design involves flat roofs and
corner windows and the exclusion of rambler roses is one
kind of nonsense this book aims to expose. Perhaps the
greatest virtue of tomorrow's house is that it frees the plan—
and therefore the family — from the arbitrary concepts which
have gotten in the way of gracious living these many years.

Whether the talk is about windows or solar heat (of which
you are hearing a lot now) or the living room, the authors
have simplified their problems and yours by starting clean.
They toss out completely the little partitioned cubicles called
rooms and examine what goes on in a typical household —
in short, how we live and how we want to live. Having es-
tablished the ground rules, the book then proceeds to explain
exactly how to get the kind of house which will permit us
to live the kind of life we wish to live. And this seems the
right place to quote Mr. Winston Churchill who not long
ago said: "We shape our buildings, then our buildings shape
our lives!"

I hope this book will be read by all those who plan to
build or buy a postwar house. Obviously, they will be its
greatest beneficiaries. But also, I have a special interest in
seeing it read by those who make building their business.
Every mortgage banker should read it to make certain the
houses he finances will retain high resale value ten, fifteen,
twenty years from now. Every house builder should read it
if he aspires to greater success than his smug competitor.
Every real estate man should read it because it can add a
new note of conviction to his plea for home ownership — of
the right house. And every architect should read it if only to
stiffen his backbone when he tells the client, "You cannot
walk backwards into the future!"

Finally, I must confess to a prejudice in favor of the au-
thors. As one of their co-workers for nearly a decade. I have
had abundant opportunity to observe how they think. Not
only do they think regularly, but as a rule they think straight.
Also, they have a persistent curiosity supported by profes-
sional training and skill which gives a basis to their opinions.
Add to these personal qualities the job of conducting a build-
ing journal — they have bored into more house plans than
any termites on earth — and Messrs. Nelson and Wright ap-
pear well equipped to handle the pages which follow.

In the first paragraph the opinion was ventured that this
would be the most influential book on postwar houses. In
essence what this book attempts to do is convince you that
instead of "keeping up with the Joneses," it is more satis-
fying and profitable to be the "Joneses" under your own
roof. If that prospect tempts you, here is the key.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FEW BOOKS, and certainly no books of this type, appear
without the silent but indispensable collaboration of many
people. To these we gratefully acknowledge our consider-
able debt.

The fact that most of the words are spelled correctly is
due to Eleanor Bittermann, Joanna Hadala and Rosamond
Temple, who typed and retyped what seems in retrospect to
have been an endlessly revised series of manuscripts.

The task of assembling photographs was carried through
by Miss Henry Martin, who may also be held responsible
for any errors in the lists of architects and photographers.
That the pictures have been organized into a coherent group
of illustrations is due to Paul Grotz, who designed the pic-
ture sections. It probably would have been impossible to
have included even a fraction of the photographs if not for
the pioneering work of The Architectural Forum in seeking
out and publishing the best modern houses in America. The
authors are grateful to both The Forum and Life for permis-
sion to show houses and projects previously published in
these magazines.

To the rapidly expanding group of modern U.S. architects
should go the bulk of the credit, since without their work
there might have been theories to expound but no houses to
demonstrate their validity.

The institution of matrimony exerted a very potent influ-
ence on the thinking of both authors in addition to the spe-
cific contributions made by Frances Nelson and Dorothy
Wright, who carried through most of the research, deflated
exaggerated ideas, corrected certain masculine misconcep-
tions about the business of running a house, and edited the
manuscript.

We gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of the photog-
raphers whose work appears in this volume. Their names
are listed on page 214, together with the numbers of their
photographs.

TOMORROW'S HOUSE

CHAPTER ONE

THE GREAT TRADITION

THIS BOOK HAS a point of view which may seem
strange to you. What it is will be made pretty clear
in the first few pages of this introduction. If, after
reading that far, the viewpoint seems not only
strange, but unpalatable as well, put this book
aside and forget it, for what we have to say will not
be for you.

We once knew a young couple who built a house.

They were an attractive, well educated, and pros-
perous pair. When their house — which they and
their neighbors called "Colonial" — was completed,
it was very impressive for its fine finish and gen-
erally beautiful workmanship. The delicate mold-
ings characteristic of the style had been very care-
fully cut, and there were no rough edges anywhere.
The builder who had put up this house had done a
splendid job. But do you know what the owner and
his wife did before the painters moved in? They
went through all of the main rooms, each swinging
a big bunch of heavy keys, banging away at the
moldings which had been cut so carefully at the
mill from the details prepared so carefully by the
architect.

The moldings were nicked and scarred in this
manner because it was felt that the house looked
too new and therefore lacked the authenticity one
finds in Salem or Litchfield or the other early New
England towns.

If this little performance does not strike you as

being pretty close to the lunatic fringe of human
behavior, again we say : don't read this book.

Why do ostensibly normal young people, living
in the twentieth century, do what this couple did
to their new house?

Why do people buy new, straight beams for a
study or living-room, and then hire a man with an
adz to chip away at the surfaces until the beam
looks as if it had been cut by a beaver instead of a
modern sawmill?

Why do people spend money for shutters they
never intend to use?

Why do most windows have eight to a dozen
small panes, when single large sheets of glass are
both cheaper and better? (Big, simple glass areas
are much easier to clean, far easier to look out of.)

Why do people build houses that were designed
originally to conform to the techniques and living
requirements of people who were dead two hun-
dred years ago? (The popular "Colonial" house is
such a design.)

If we could discover the answers to these ques-
tions and others like them, we should be well on
the way to discovering what a house today really is.
You might say at this juncture, "But I do know
what a house really is. It is a shelter for a family, so
planned, constructed, and equipped that it gives the
best possible accommodations for the money."

This is a very pretty definition. It might apply to

I

THE GREAT TRADITION

tomorrow's house. Unfortunately, it has practi-
cally nothing to do with today's.

There are three ways of looking at a house. A
house is a technical fact — this is what the definition
above is concerned with. But a house is also a social
fact. And-something rarely thought of-it is a psych-
ological fact of considerable importance. Only if
we look at our homes in all three ways can we
arrive at an answer to the question we started with.

HOME AS A TECHNICAL FACT

What is meant by the house as a technical fact?
We use this phrase because a house, like any other
product, is the result of design and production
processes. Looked at in this way, home is no differ-
ent from a pencil sharpener or a tractor. It shares
with them the characteristic of being an item of
consumer use. But there is one big difference, one,
perhaps, which never occurred to you: our houses
now represent the only important consumer pro-
duct left that is still put together slowly, clumsily,
and expensively, by hand. True, many of its parts
are mass-produced in factories — thermostats, light-
ing and plumbing fixtures, refrigerators and hard-
ware are not made on the job. By far the greater
part, however, including the entire structural shell
and foundations, is a pretty old-fashioned hand as-
sembly. This is why homes cost so much. It isn't
the only reason. But it is a big one.

Many people in the building business have been
aware of this situation for years, and innumerable
attempts have been made to design dwellings suit-
able for factory production. Most of these attempts
come under the heading of "prefabrication," a
word that has been very much in the limelight. To
date, nobody has made a factory-built house that
is more satisfactory than the conventional article
and sells for less money. The time is not too far off,
however, when such houses will be available. Ulti-
mately they will represent the majority of new
American dwellings.

Does this prospect botheryou? If it does, let's not
worry about it now. Prefabricated houses are not
available, anyway. Our concern is with the house
as it is built now and how to improve it.

When considering the house as a technical fact,
it is well to remember that, while production meth-
ods are important, design methods at the present
stage of building are even more important. Wheth-
er a home is hand- or machine-built, it is no good
unless it is properly designed. "Design," by the way,
means the basic scheme of the house, not just
the trimmings around the front door and fireplace.

Today's house is a peculiarly lifeless affair. The
picture one sees in residential neighborhoods the
country over is one of drab uniformity: pathetic lit-
tle white boxes with dressed-up street fronts, each
striving for individuality through meaningless
changes in detail or color. The reason today's
house is so uninteresting is simply that it fails to
echo life as we live it.

Expressed in another way, it is hideously ineffi-
cient. Less honest thought goes into the design of
the average middle-class house than into the fender
of a cheap automobile. Windows are placed with
no regard for light or view. Rooms are arranged
with little or no concern for their use and furnish-
ings. Lighting, in a scientific sense, doesn't exist.
Plans are so bad that nobody in the family can en-
joy privacy outside of the bedroom or bath. Clos-
ets are usually the wrong size or shape, their doors
make it hard to get full use out of them, and there
are never enough. Except in the most up-to-date
kitchens, few ideas have been developed for mak-
ing housekeeping easier. Home may be the family's
castle, but people got tired of living in castles sev-
eral centuries ago.

HOME AS A SOCIAL FACT

If the house were just a collection of sticks and
stones, working out an efficient design wouldn't be
much of a job. Compared to a four-motored bomb-

THE GREAT TRADITION

er or an aircraft carrier, a dwelling is a pretty sim-
ple affair. As it happens, however, home is a great
deal more than a technical pattern: it is a member
of society as well. And social patterns have been
changing at a very rapid rate.

When families lived in small villages, when there
were many children in each family, when people
created their own entertainment in their own
homes, lots of rooms were the rule. Efficiency, in
our present-day sense, wasn't too important, be-
cause the tempo of life was slower and the children
helped with the chores as they grew older. Also,
there wasn't much the average housewife could do
besides raising children and taking care of the
home. Today this situation exists only in the most
backward and isolated rural areas. Much entertain-
ment has moved out of the home to the movies, to
hotels, churches, night clubs, community houses,
and other institutions which could hardly be said to
have existed, in this sense, a generation ago. When
the children grow up, they try to get jobs, they don't
stick around to help with the dusting. Chances are
that mother works too. It is difficult indeed to see
how the conventional, old-style house can meet
these new situations. In some places it has been de-
cided that no kind of dwelling can meet all of them.
This last statement probably needs amplification.

In Stockholm there are thousands of apart-
ment dwellings constructed by co-operative build-
ing societies for their members. Many of the build-
ings, which run to about eight stories high, have
penthouses and large roof gardens. These pent-
houses and gardens are not for wealthy tenants:
they are set aside for the children of all the ten-
ants. They contain nurseries which are beauti-
fully equipped and capably staffed. There are kit-
chens, examining rooms, sunny playrooms, dormi-
tories, and small isolation wards. The nurseries are
used in a great variety of ways. If both parents
work, the child is taken up in the morning to spend
the day in the nursery, and collected again in the

evening. Should the mother stay at home, the child
may only spend enough time in the nursery to al-
low the mother to get her cleaning and marketing
done. If the parents feel they need a week-end
alone together, there are dormitories where the
children can sleep and kitchens for feeding them.
If someone in the family is ill, the children can be
moved to the nursery for protection. The net result
of this system, which has been extraordinarily suc-
cessful in Sweden, is that families in the $1,500 to
$3,000 income group have more freedom in their
daily lives than many people here whose incomes
may be five times as great.

There are two conclusions which may be drawn
from this example. One is that there are certain
functions which no home, however modern and ef-
ficient, can provide. Such problems can only be
solved by social action, by groups that pool their
requirements and their resources. The second con-
clusion, which follows inevitably, is that whenever
certain home functions are taken over by agencies
outside the home, the plan of the dwelling itself can
be modified.

It is not within the province of this book to argue
for or against nurseries. The example is cited only
to illustrate the contention that many traditional
home activities are moving out into the neighbor-
hood or the community. Under the circumstances,
therefore, the influence of this trend, as well as
others — say factory work for women — must be con-
sidered in its relation to the individual dwelling.

Not all social trends are on this grand scale. The
phenomenal growth of hobbies is another one.
Hobbies are a peculiarly modern activity. They are
partly the result of increased leisure, partly an at-
tempt to compensate for the spiritual poverty of life
in an overspecialized world. Wherever a hobby re-
quires space — say photography or woodworking —
the plan of the house must be modified. There are
many similar examples of social pressures which
tend to change the form of the house.

THE GREAT TRADITION

HOME IS A PSYCHOLOGICAL FACT
Hardest to evaluate of all three aspects of today's
house is what we have termed the psychological.
When a man buys a car it would scarcely be accu-
rate to say that his emotions are deeply involved in
the transaction. For one thing, he has no intention
of keeping the car for more than three to five years.
For another, it is primarily a means of transporta-
tion. True, people do become fond of their cars and
their idiosyncrasies, and they get a great deal of
pleasure from the freedom of movement a car of-
fers, but there is rarely much anguish when the ja-
lopy is traded in for a shiny new model. Home is
quite a different matter.

Did you ever hear of a "Dream Car"? We
haven't. But there is an American "Dream
House," and all of us have been conditioned to
want it. This dream house has become so stand-
ardized that we can even describe it.

Home, in the American dream, is a quaint little
white cottage, shyly nestled in a grove of old elms
or maples, bathed in the perfume of lilacs, and
equipped with at least one vine-covered wall. Its
steep gabled roof, covered with rough, charmingly
weathered shingles, shows a slight sag in the ridge.
The eaves come down so low that one can almost
touch them. Tiny dormers on one side poke them-
selves through the old roof and let in light through
tiny-paned windows to the upstairs bedrooms. In
front of the house there is invariably a picket fence,
with day Mies poking their heads between the
white palings. Let into the fence, at the end of a
flagstone walk bordered with alyssum and verbena,
is a swinging gate, where husband and wife em-
brace tenderly as he dashes for the 8:11 and the
workaday world. Finishing touches include shut-
ters in soft blue or green, with half moons or flow-
er pots cut out of them with a jig saw. In the hall
there is a replica of an oil lamp, wired for electricity.
Somewhere there is a paneled wall, a beamed ceil-
ing, a hooked rug, a four-poster bed, and a huge

fireplace of worn old brick with an antique settle or
shoemaker's bench in front of it.

"Well," you may say, "what's wrong with that
picture? It looks pretty good to me."

There is nothing wrong with the picture — except
that it remains what it always was, a dream. No
house embodying all of these features ever existed
at any one time or place. When people attempt to
realize it today, what they actually get is either a
cheap imitation or an outrageously expensive fake.
And in the end the whole thing is given away by the
late model Buick at the front door (which requires
a very untraditional driveway and garage), or by
the kitchen ventilating fan, or a television aerial,
not to mention the tiled bath and streamlined kit-
chen. People refuse to live in the seventeenth cen-
tury even though they sometimes like to pretend
that is what they are doing.

To approach the biggest investment in a family's
life in such peculiarly sentimental terms seems irra-
tional, to say the least. At such a time we should be
thinking very hard about getting the very best liv-
ing features for the money; instead, we dream of a
kind of house that was developed before we fin-
ished fighting the Indians.

There is something else about this dream house
which is odd. The picture is not "traditional"-
that is, it does not go back without interruption to
pioneer days. After the Civil War, during the Vic-
torian period, people didn't think in these terms at
all. The Victorian house, for example, was a sur-
prisingly uninhibited design and very functional in
a good many ways. It was quite sensibly related to
the techniques and living habits of the period.
Queer as their tastes may have been, the people of
this time felt no compulsion, apparently, to squeeze
themselves into counterfeit Cape Cod cottages. The
Colonial dream with which we have all been ob-
sessed goes back only to the time of World War I.
Why?

The end of World War I opened one of the most

chaotic periods in human history. One year and
four days before the armistice was signed, the Rus-
sians under Lenin inaugurated a social and eco-
nomic system, the implications of which have never
ceased to frighten people whose well-being de-
pends on the ownership of productive property.
After the German people had swapped the Kaiser
for the Weimar Republic, they headed into a period
of disastrous inflation. Trying to establish a gov-
ernment on the Bolshevik model, the North Italian
workers precipitated the crisis that brought in Mus-
solini and Fascism. The wildest boom ever known
came to a sudden end in 1929, and tens of millions
of people the world over suddenly found them-
selves helpless and jobless. Full-scale wars have
been raging in Asia, Africa, and Europe since 193 1 .
These events, tossed into the lap of a generation
born in the smug, quiet years which began the cen-
tury, were profoundly distressing, because the
forces generating the events were hard to under-
stand and seemingly impossible to control.

World War I had another consequence. It opened
the eyes of industrialists to the meaning of full-
scale mass production. Factories sprang up by the
thousands, and markets were flooded with count-
less items that were lower in price and higher in
quality than any consumer goods ever produced
before. Thus, before the eyes of a new generation,
another contradiction presented itself: production
potential without limit on the one hand: unem-
ployment without limit on the other. Alone in a
world that made little sense and offered less secur-
ity, the average citizen searched desperately for
ways out of the dilemmas into which he was con-
tinually being placed. Never in his whole history
had he been so free. He was "free" to work — if he
could find work. He was "free" to buy anything—
if he had money. He was "free" to move anywhere
he wanted — if there was a job at the other end. He
had other kinds of freedom, too. Good kinds. But
for the most part he was like a chip tossed around

THE GREAT TRADITION

in a strong current, and of this kind of freedom he
was terrified.

When people become afraid of freedom, they try
to give it up. They regiment themselves, because
regimentation provides a comforting sense of se-
curity, of belonging to something. The comfort
doesn't last, but people try it anyway.

We know how regimentation worked in Ger-
many and Italy. In our own country it is less blat-
ant, because what we are destroying is cultural, not
political, freedom. Every week tens of millions of
people rush to the movies, where the usual film
preaches that there is no need to worry — there is
always a happy ending. Let the czars of fashion an-
nounce that skirts are going to be an inch higher or
lower, and female America trots off docilely to
obey. Fear is the keynote of smart advertising: we
buy because we are afraid of B.O. or halitosis or
losing a girl — never because we like the stuff. Over
a million people belong to "clubs" which tell them
what books to buy. Then they buy digests so that
they won't have to read the books. Expose some-
one to a strange new painting or unfamiliar music,
and ask for a reaction. Usually what you get is an
evasion. Modern man, put into a spot where he
can't function on canned opinion, tends to get lost.
He has no confidence in his taste or judgment. He
is regimented.

And so with our houses. For a while the rage was
"Mediterranean." Later it was "English" and
"French Provincial." Most recently it has been
"Colonial." The names of the styles don't matter,
because most of the houses have been very poor
imitations, anyway. But what did that matter? All
that really mattered was not getting out of step with
the crowd.

The "Dream House" exists because to the person
who has lost his capacity for independent thinking
and feeling it represents authority, expert opinion,
tradition, and cultural solidarity with his fellows.
Also, it subtly identifies its owner with people who

THE GREAT TRADITION

weren't afraid to think and feel for themselves, with
a time when families moved boldly into the un-
charted wilderness because they knew what they
were after. Armed with a dream house, the bewil-
dered citizen thinks he has one thing at least which
will stay put in a changing world, a link to the past
which suggests, but does not really provide, secur-
ity. This house has the magic property of making
one just like everyone else. It is not "extreme" or
"freakish." Its features have been made known to
every man and woman in the land through the wo-
men's magazines, the home magazines, movies, and
advertisements. It is, therefore, respectable. For
this respectability the buyer pays a high price, be-
cause he sacrifices all kinds of living amenities in
the process.

WHAT IS A HOUSE?

Now it is clear why our young friends banged up
then- moldings. The old-fashioned design was not
enough — the house had to show the very scars of
long usage. \Ye all want safety, permanence, con-
tinuity. But what a strange way to try to get them!
Now it is also clear why the shutters, the fake
beams, and all the other stage scenery are put in.
We can see, too, why modern houses were greeted
at the outset with such violent outbursts of disap-
proval. "Modern" was more than a way of design-
ing houses — it was one more symbol of incompre-
hensible change. And every change, these days,
seems to be a threat to personal and social stability.
What is a house? We now have an answer. It is a
perfect mirror of a society most of whose members
are desperately afraid of acting like independent in-
dividuals. Its weaknesses are social, not technical.
The technical means for producing good houses
have long been at hand. Today's house is the cru-
dest kind of solution to the problem of gracious,
civilized living; it is decades behind the industrial
possibilities of our time. Tomorrow's house — the

antithesis of everything we have said about today's
— could be built right now by anyone who has the
good sense and courage to tackle it.

A LOOK AT MODERN

If you have already glanced at the pictures in this
book, you will have noticed that there are no ex-
amples of the Colonial Dream House. Interiors, ex-
teriors, furnishings, and equipment are all modern.
In other words, they were built by people who
haven't been afraid to change. To date, such peo-
ple have put up enough modern houses to fill sev-
eral books this size. In the next five years or so,
dozens of times as many are going to be built. The
Colonial dream is approaching its end. How do we
know? In two ways. We have been watching the
advertisements, the movies, and the magazines, and
the swing to modern has definitely begun. All of
our tremendous apparatus for influencing public
opinion is tuning up for a new propaganda barrage
in favor of these new houses. A new fashion in
homes will be created, and the public will follow.
There is another reason for this prediction, a far
more important one. People have been learning
that the houses they have been sold are not good
enough. Where they have seen good modern
houses, they have been impressed. They know liv-
ing in a house can be better than it has been, and
they are beginning to make their demands felt.

At this point one thing has to be made very clear,
for it is the basis on which the entire book has been
written. We are in favor of modern houses, not be-
cause they are modern, but because they are tradi-
tional. This undoubtedly sounds strange enough to
require an explanation. Here it is :

Whenever people run across buildings which his-
tory books say are great architecture, we find that
these buildings have certain characteristics in com-
mon. Invariably they were unself-conscious and
honest solutions to some particular set of building
problems. Their architects were men who worked

THE GREAT TRADITION

in a tradition which was full of meaning for the
people of the time. They didn't play games and pre-
tend they were living in some entirely different
period. Suppose the men who built the cathedral
at Chartres had tried to pretend it was a Greek
temple? Would people come from all over the
world to see it? We suspect they wouldn't. Why is
an old Colonial village so charming and the current
"Colonial" subdivision so boring? Could it be be-
cause one is honest and the other a fake? Boulder
Dam aroused more genuine esthetic emotion than
all the churches in America put together. And yet
church buildings are designed specifically to arouse
emotion and Boulder Dam was built only to hold
back a lot of water.

Wherever we look — whether at the present or
the remote past — the answer is the same. The great
tradition in architecture is honest building. It is as
true right now as it was in the days of the Pyramids.

We have included only modern houses in this
book because in our time they are the only way to
carry on the great tradition. There is no possible
chance to turn the clock back. In designing houses
today we have to be ourselves — twentieth century
people with our own problems and our own tech-
nical facilities. There is no other way to get a good
house. No other way at all.

If in the next few years people start building this
new kind of house because they know what they
need and want and why, they will probably do well.
But if they turn to "modern" because they have
been persuaded it is the thing to do — the way to be
like everybody else — then inevitably the results will
be as bad as what went before. The unsightly rash
of earlier "styles" which has deformed our cities
will be succeeded by another, no better, of "mod-
ernistic" houses. If we continue to function as we
have in the last twenty or thirty years, it is a safe
guess that the "modernistic" will greatly outnum-
ber the honestly designed houses. Our tastes have
been so degraded by builders and incompetent

architects and manufacturers, and by our own in-
ability to think for ourselves, that any other out-
come would be a minor miracle.

This book is an argument for the traditional ap-
proach to house design, for an expression in homes
of modern life as we live it. It is also a plea for indi-
viduality against regimentation. Individuality in
houses, as in people, is a fundamental expression of
something real. It has nothing to do with fashion.
Surface differences (clapboards on your house —
shingles on mine) are of no importance. A man can
dress like all other men and still be very much of an
individual. So with houses. Where families are
alike, their houses will be alike — and they should
be. Where they differ, the houses will show it — and
this, too, is as it should be. Individuality is possible
only in a modern house because no other approach
to building expresses life as it is today. And without
expression there can be no individuality. The proc-
ess of achieving individuality is not easy. Having
designed many houses, we have learned that. But
it is worth working for.

THE TRADITIONAL APPROACH

Out in the Southwest there is an airplane factory
which is almost a mile long and a city block wide.
Its exterior covering is sheet steel; inside, its walls
and ceilings are padded with acres of fluffy, white,
glass wool. This plant manufactures its own cli-
mate, which is excellent; it provides wonderful
artificial light to work by, for there are no win-
dows; the padded walls keep noises down to a
level which is not unduly disturbing. Viewed from
inside or out, this plant looks like nothing ever
seen on this earth before. Its design has no "style."
Anyone who looks at it, whether layman or
expert, is lost in admiration of its great size and
beautifully efficient appearance. The designers,
however, didn't worry about the factory's looks;
they just built it with an honest concern for what

THE GREAT TRADITION

it was supposed to do. This was the traditional
approach applied to factory building. This is how
we have to design our houses.

"What!" someone says. "Do you mean steel
houses without windows, padded inside with glass
wool?" That is exactly what we do not mean. The
bomber plant is exciting architecture because it
looks like a factory. How exciting do you suppose
a house would be if it were faked to look like a fac-
tory? And why should houses be windowless? As
long as people want to enjoy views and have the
sun pour in, houses are going to have windows.
And that, we are inclined to believe, is going to be
for a long, long time.

A house designed on the basis of the traditional
approach will look exactly like a house, in fact it
will look so much like a house that many people
will be surprised when they see it. True, it will lack
many of the earmarks of the conventional dwell-
ing, but what of it? Automobiles don't have whip
holders any more either.

TOMORROW'S HOUSE

Today's house is an unattractive, inefficient build-
ing. Anyone can understand this by looking around
and asking why people designed their houses the
way they did. We believe that people want better
homes than they have today, and we believe, too,
that many of them are learning how to get them.
That is why we named this book Tomorrow's
House. But a title like this can be misleading.

For years the crystal-gazers have been telling us
what tomorrow's house will be like. We have no
crystal ball. We are not interested in houses of non-
existent materials, houses that can be flown from
here to there, houses that substitute fancy electronic
gadgetry for sensible planning. We are interested in
houses that people can build and live in now — not
in the year 2000.

A while back we said that most people would
8

some day be living in factory-produced houses.
That is true. It has to be true, because every other
consumer product in this country has always
moved from handicraft production to industrial
production, and there is no technical reason why
houses should be the exception. There are social
and psychological reasons against it, as we have
seen, chiefly the fear of losing the illusion of se-
curity and respectability attached to the older
models. But this attitude is already changing.
Many people fear that machine production will re-
move from the house some quality we should try to
keep. Maybe. Maybe there were values in the cus-
tom-made suit which do not exist in the ready-
made article, but it would be hard to persuade the
average man to go back to the custom tailor. There
is no moral or esthetic reason why the factory-built
house should be inferior to the hand-made house.
A tool is a tool, and whether it is worked out of
doors by hand or in a large plant by electric power
does not change its function. It is as unreasonable
to fear the prospect of the factory-built house as
it is to resent the replacement of the stone knife
by the cross-cut saw.

We are not seriously concerned in this book with
such factory-made houses because at this time their
manufacture is still in an extremely primitive state,
and we all want our better homes right now.

Having spent a number of years watching the
development of modern houses in this country and
abroad, and having had the opportunity to ex-
change ideas with most of America's outstanding
modern architects, we have built up the thesis that
provides the underlying framework of this book.
It is a simple idea, but it has interesting possibili-
ties : if one were to take the best planning ideas, the
best structural schemes, and the best equipment
that have gone into the best modern houses, and
combine them appropriately in a single house, the
result would look like something out of the day
after tomorrow. In other words, we have at hand

THE GREAT TRADITION

right now the means to create homes of designs so
advanced that they would be able to meet every re-
quirement of contemporary living.

Mind you, we don't expect anyone to go through
this process of tossing all the best things into a hat
and pulling out the perfect house. Things don't
happen that way. Tomorrow's house as we see
it is not a potpourri but an integrated, highly indi-
vidual expression of how a twentieth-century fam-
ily lives. And to get that you need a family that
knows what it needs and has the courage of its con-
victions. You also need an architect worth his salt.
Both are to be found, but there is no oversupply of
either.

THIS BOOK

The statement of our thesis should help to explain
the organization of the material in the book. You
will find no stock plans here, no catalogues of
"styles," no orations on good taste. You will run
across many detailed solutions for general prob-
lems, but much more about how to solve your own.
The photographs and drawings were not put in to
be copied, although if you find a good idea suitable
for your own requirements, by all means take it.
They will be far more useful, however, if they are
studied for what they achieve, and analyzed to find
how they got that way.

Anyone who has followed articles on houses in
the popular magazines and has watched recent ad-
vertisements is conscious of the tremendous in-
terest in new materials and gadgets, things which
promise to make tomorrow's house a revolutionary
affair in many ways. If this is what you expect of
this book — detailed specifications of things to
come — you will be sadly disappointed. There is
very little here about miraculous things to come,
but a great deal about miraculous things that have
been with us for some time. The relative absence of
glamorous descriptions of new wonder plastics,
light metals yet to be named, and electronic equip-

ment that will change the baby's diapers, is not due
to a lack of interest on our part. But in combing
through the technical papers, in tracking down
promising announcements, and by utilizing every
possible contact with specialists in the building in-
dustry, we were forced to the conclusion that the
immediate future holds little in the way of epoch-
making developments that will have any significant
influence on home design. This does not mean that
important changes are not in the offing — in the
chapter called "Projections" there are indications
of many. These, however, will not vitally affect to-
morrow's house; they are for the day after to-
morrow at the earliest. And interesting as they are
as trends today, it will be years before they have
any practical meaning for the home builder.

Wherever possible, the "functional" approach
has been used, not because this is the be-all and
end-all of house design, but because it is a good
way to begin. You will not find a chapter on bed-
rooms, for example, but a great deal about sleep-
ing. If people are going to sleep, it doesn't much
matter whether they do it on the couch in the living
room or on a bed in the bedroom; in both places
the requirements are exactly the same. It may come
as a surprise that certain rooms have been so dealt
with that they have turned into completely different
kinds of rooms. In place of the conventional
kitchen, for instance, we give you the "work cen-
ter," which is not merely a new label but a new kind
of interior. Perhaps you won't like it. If so, that is
all right with us. It is definitely not the purpose of
this book to dictate a new gospel of house planning.
It has been enough of a job to explore some of the
myriad possibilities offered by contemporary living
habits and industrial techniques and to show some
of the ways they can be used to make houses better,
more attractive places to live. If you are interested
in this objective (and who is not?), we think you
will find the book provocative and, we hope, useful
and convincing.

CHAPTER TWO

HOME IS WHERE YOU
HANG YOUR ARCHITECT

THIS is NOT a true story, but it might just as well be.

Once upon a time there was a Man who decided
that he would build a house for his family and him-
self. Before calling in the architect he had selected,
he himself started to work out a plan for the house,
because, he reasoned, he knew more about his fam-
ily and how it functioned and what it liked and
what it didn't like and what it could afford and
what their friends didn't like, than anybody else.

He began with the living-room, because, after all,
he only slept in the bedroom and never went into
the kitchen.

His plan for the living-room was really pretty
wonderful. There had been very few living-rooms,
probably, with as many masculine comforts in-
cluded. There was, for instance, a place for his fa-
vorite leather chair, which was well worn and com-
fortable. And there was a good floor lamp with a
bright bulb arranged so that one could read with-
out shifting around in the chair, moving the lamp,
and otherwise wasting a great deal of time and
comfort.

Within arm's reach on one side was the radio.
On the other there was a smoking stand with room
for magazines, a couple of books, a jar of tobacco,
and four or five pipes.

One side of the room was to be lined with
10

books, because the Man liked to read. And there
was even a cabinet which when opened up would
turn into the most ingenious bar imaginable.

When the plan was done, the Man showed it to
his wife. "This" he said, "is the plan of the living-
room in our new house. Isn't it wonderful? Look."

"No," said his wife, "it isn't wonderful at all. In
fact, I'd hardly call it a living-room. It looks more
like the extra bedroom upstairs that you wanted so
that you could have a quiet place."

"Why, what do you mean?" sputtered the Man.
"Now, look—"

"A living-room," interrupted his wife icily, "is
called a living-room because other people in the

HOME IS WHERE YOU HANG YOUR ARCHITECT

family will have to live in it besides you. When my
friends come in for bridge, what good will that
ratty old leather chair of yours do them? And I'm
not sure I will even allow that in our new house,
anyway. Don't forget that I am chairman of two
committees, one of which has sixteen members, and
when they come to the house, as they will have to
do at least once a month, I must have room for
them. And if we have tea we are going to need
tables. Besides, what will people think if instead of
a decent living-room we have this smoke-filled den
you seem bent on acquiring!"

"Well, maybe you have a point there," said the
husband, who always ended up by agreeing his wife
had a point there. "What had we better do? I've
wanted a decent place to read, you know, for quite
a long time, and this seemed like a good chance to
get it. You're not going to spoil my corner, are
you?"

"Certainly not," said the wife, who was much
more cheerful now that matters were obviously un-
der control and moving in the right direction. "Of
course not. After a long, hard day at the office you
need a nice place where you can read in comfort.
But about the living-room. I saw the most attrac-
tive picture in House and Home last month. It had
a charming fireplace with some really stunning

eighteenth century French andirons. And right in
front of the fireplace there was an antique coffee
table with a sofa on each side. Then behind one
sofa* there was a high table with a pair of very
handsome Chinese lamps on it."

At this point their daughter, who had walked in
on the discussion a few minutes earlier and had evi-
denced mounting indignation, burst in.

"I never heard anything so ridiculous in all my
life! Isn't there going to be any place in this house
where your children can carry on a normal social
life? Why, anybody would think you didn't have
any children or didn't care about them. Why don't
you build us a separate house?"

The Man and his wife, having weathered these
outbursts for a good part of the last sixteen years,
regarded their daughter with their usual mixture of
affection and perplexity, tacitly dropping their own
argument to join forces against the forthcoming
attack.

"A living-room," continued their daughter in-
dignantly, "is a place where the family should live,
isn't it? Why do you have to dress it up like a third-
rate interior decorator's dream of life in a pent-
house? Do you have to clutter up the room with
that heavy table and those two Chinese lamps? I
know what you're talking about. We saw it in

O~

wra

II

HOME IS WHERE YOU HANG YOUR ARCHITECT

Roan's window when we were downtown day be-
fore yesterday. Now, I ask you ! How do we ever
move that out of the way if we're having a party
and someone wants to dance? And with those* two
chi-chi sofas so close to the fireplace, how would
anybody ever get in there to make popcorn or toast
marshmallows? What's more, if a girl wanted to
entertain somebody — just one person, I mean — she
would have about as much privacy as a — a — ."

"Goldfish," suggested her father helpfully.

In the brief silence that followed, many thoughts
were whirling around in the minds of the living-
room planners.

"Guess I lose my reading corner," thought the
Man.

"I don't suppose I'll ever have a really nice liv-
ing-room," thought his wife, "and I've wanted one
for so long."

"Why don't they ever do things right," fretted
the daughter. "Does a girl have to wait until she's
married to get a nice place to live?"

Habit was strong, however. But with the first
move towards compromise, in walked son John,
age fourteen, whose passion for swing bands
had turned the dinner hour into a silent, recurring
battle over whether he or his father would get to
the radio first when dessert was cleared away. And

the three suddenly realized that this was the most
difficult factor of all — John and his drums and his
three music-loving companions who weekly made
the neighborhood air quiver with their uneasy ef-
forts to achieve something new in contemporary
music.

Late that night the discussion continued in the
privacy of the master bedroom.

" — And you see, my dear," continued the wife,
decisively snapping her hair net into place, "there
also has to be at least one decent place where I can
work. There's all the mending, which means some
kind of cabinet in the living-room, because it's silly
to run up and down with a sewing basket, and a
good strong light. And we need a desk, because we
have to keep bills and household accounts and
write letters somewhere."

Overwhelmed by the seemingly endless list of re-
quirements, the Man grunted and fell asleep. So,
eventually, did his wife. And her consciousness of
the requirements and desires of the rest of her fam-
ily must have penetrated her subconscious, for she
drifted presently into a dream of Bessie, an irate
Bessie, the maid they had had the longest time and
a family member they were most anxious to keep.

"I quit!" Bessie was saying over and over again
in the dream. "I can't clean that living-room! You

SjpM-CA.

HOME IS WHERE YOU HANG YOUR ARCHITECT

should have one servant just to work there and no-
where else. I can't get the vacuum cleaner under
those spindle-legged sofas, so I have to move them.
But you can't move them, because there are tables
on both sides. So I move the tables. But you can't
move the tables, because they're too heavy. Then
there's that corner of yours. No matter what I do
to that old leather chair, it never looks right. And
there are the cigar ashes on that beautiful new rug.
Master John won't let me move his drums, and I
can't clean around them or under them. And Miss
Peggy's friends got toasted marshmallow all over
one of the upholstered chairs last night. I can
hardly move around, because you've got three floor
lamps now.

"I quit!" screamed Bessie, vanishing into a black
void where the wife could not even find a fragment
of pride in working out a living-room that would
make everybody in the family happy.

Breakfast the following day was better. Planning
was in the air. Each member of the family sensed in
his or her own way the challenge and excitement of
arranging things so that this room would do every-
thing that they demanded of it. They were all gen-
uinely fond of one another, and the bickering was
almost always amiable.

"Let's make a list," said the mother.

A list was made forthwith. Or, rather, four lists
were made.

Putting them together was the most fascinating
game of give-and-take the family had ever played.
But as the room emerged from this building-up of
requirements, it took on a rather curious and dis-
turbing quality, for it was not like any room any of
them could recall having seen before.

There were, for example, thirteen different
sources of light. Some were high and some were
low, some were dim and some were bright, some
were direct and some were indirect. They had never
seen a room with thirteen lights in it before, but the
idea seemed to make sense. And, anyway, they had
gotten rid of the three floor lamps, because nobody
liked floor lamps. There was even to be a funny
black spotlight, screwed on the wood wall in the
alcove, just like the ones in the show windows
down at Lloyd's. But they had mulled over the
question of lights, and this they knew was what
they needed.

There was acoustical tile on one wall— just as
there was in Dad's office — to counteract some of
the effects of the swing band. And there was one
wall that seemed to be mostly glass, which could be
made to slide so that in summer the porch would
become part of the living-room, and everybody

rvodio /Uttprujvt
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13

HOME IS WHERE YOU HANG YOUR ARCHITECT

TY\8, Jiocott

would have more space.

At this point they went to their Architect, who
was a very distinguished old gentleman. He had
built the local courthouse, a very fine Italian Re-
naissance building. The main lobby had a wonder-
ful corridor with a ceiling you would have sworn
was made out of wood beams. Everybody in town
knew they were concrete, of course, but nobody
had ever seen so good an imitation. He had done
houses in the best sections of town — stately Geor-
gian mansions, the most intimate kind of French
farmhouses, and even a Mediterranean villa, which
looked too tropical for words, except, of course, in
the worst part of February.

The Architect looked at the list and heard all
about the thirteen lights and the sliding wall and
the acoustical tile and everything else that was
needed for the living-room. And the slight wrinkle
in his distinguished forehead broadened into a po-
lite frown that gradually became fixed.

"It's impossible," he said finally, delicately tap-
ping his gold pencil on the top of his antique desk
(one of the finest Chinese Chippendale pieces ever
produced west of the Mississippi). "It's simply im-
possible."

The Man and his wife looked at each other.

"Why?" they asked.
14

"Because," said the Architect, "there has never
at any period, in any style, been the kind of living-
room you are talking about. If you should build
this astonishing creation, it would have no Propor-
tion, Symmetry, or Style. In fact, it would have no
architectural quality of any kind. It would be in-
correct. It would be bad form. You would become
a laughing stock. And I cannot allow any of these
things to happen to any of my clients."

The Man and his wife were silent and subdued.
How had they managed to break so many rules?
All they had wanted was a living-room.

"Well," said the Man finally, "I can see that we
should have come to an expert in the first place.
You had better go ahead and show us what we
should have in our living-room."

Gratified, the Great Architect smiled benignly
and reached behind him for the well-thumbed
copies of Stately Homes of the English Aristocracy
of the Early Eighteenth Century by Marmaduke
Chilblane, and Country Houses of the Borgias, Il-
lustrated with Photographs and Detail Drawings, by
Baron Occhio di Porco, and Rooms Louis XIV Was
Particularly Fond Of by Lady Meddle. The Great
Architect was ready to design another house.

The ending of this story is very sad or very beau-
tiful, depending on how you look at it. The thirteen
lights were replaced by four very chaste gold-and-
antiqued-mirror wall brackets and two lamps that
easily gave enough light so that nobody stumbled
over the long-legged little tables that were scat-
tered all over the fine imitation Aubusson carpet.
When the house was finished, the Man did his
reading in the bedroom, his wife did her sewing in
the kitchen, their daughter took over the rumpus
room in the basement (which was built as an after-
thought and in sheer desperation), and the swing
band found quarters in somebody else's house.
This last was admitted to be a very successful piece
of planning on the part of the Great Architect.

The story might have had a different ending, but

HOME IS WHERE YOU HANG YOUR ARCHITECT

the Man and his wife did not find this out until
many years after the house was built. By then they
had become so accustomed to the dreary correct-
ness of their house and its living-room, and had so
adapted themselves to its manifold inconveniences,
that they forgot about the living-room that was de-
signed for living rather than the gratification of a
Great Architect, the home magazines, and the most
sheeplike of their friends.

But many other people did not forget. There had
already begun to appear in Switzerland and Swe-
den and Holland and France, in San Francisco and
Spring Green, Wisconsin; in New York, Chicago,
and other places, architects and designers who
were not shocked by the idea of thirteen lights in

one room or sliding walls or old leather chairs.

To these people it seemed perfectly natural to de-
sign a room for those who were going to use it. A
room was a space created by walls of some sort and
a floor and a ceiling, so fitted with equipment and
furniture that you could do exactly what you
wanted in it in the way you wanted to do it.

One of these architects even made a proclama-
tion about it in the early days. "A house," he said,
"is a machine for living in."

The people who came later thought that even
this declaration cramped their style. And they be-
gan to forget about the "machine" as an end in it-
self and to think more about what it could do for
better living.

15

CHAPTER THREE

HOW TO PLAN A
LIVING-ROOM

FIRST, WE DO exactly what the family in the last
chapter did. We make lists. Certain activities will
cancel each other out. For example, writing letters,
doing homework, settling the household accounts,
and various other occupations can all be taken care
of at a good desk. To be sure, there will be occa-
sions when one desk will prove inadequate. Some-
one will want to write letters at the same time
someone else wants to do homework. If such
situations are likely to arise very often, planning
takes this into account by providing a secondary
desk. This might be the dining-room table or even
a table in the kitchen. Possibly it will be decided
that homework will not be done in the living-room
at all, but in the bedroom, and a space there will be
planned for it.

NOISE

Some of these overlapping requirements may have
fairly elaborate solutions. But it is both good fun
and real economy to do this kind of multiple plan-
ning wherever possible. For example, it is being
recognized that acoustical treatment has almost as
important a role to play in the house as it has had
in offices and moving-picture theaters. As it hap-
pens, a wall of books has certain acoustical prop-
erties. It does not reflect sound as readily as a
16

smooth wood or plaster wall. Book covers are soft
and tend to absorb some of the sound. So do the
cracks between the books and the spaces above
them. Libraries, you know, are traditionally quiet
places, and many of us have thought that it was be-
cause everyone took care not to make any noise.
Actually, however, the existence of walls lined
with books constitutes an excellent sound-dead-
ening treatment. The atmosphere of quiet in many
libraries is due as much to the books themselves as
to the considerate behavior of the people reading
them. Here we have a real tool in planning a liv-
ing-room— provided, of course, that there is a
desire to absorb sound and make the room quieter,
and provided, also, that one happens to own a lot
of books. If both of these conditions obtain, and
in a great many families they do, we have a method
of absorbing sound that won't cost a cent, because
the books have to go somewhere, anyway.

This is just one example of dozens which might
be listed.

If acoustical treatment is to some extent expen-
diture of money and to a larger extent a matter of
using one's head, the same is more true of lighting.
Lighting in the average home is so important, and
it has been so badly handled to date, that we have
devoted an entire chapter to it. This much, how-
ever, might be said here.

;

HOW TO PLAN A LIVING-ROOM

LIGHT

In the living-room more than in any other room,
flexibility of lighting is exceedingly desirable. The
room should be bright on some occasions, dim on
others. It should have many special installations
designed to make reading, sewing, and other ac-
tivities as easy on the eyes as possible, and at the
same time it should not become so cluttered with
fixtures — either table or floor lamps — that cleaning
and moving around become inconvenient.

The problem of providing light where it is
wanted, and in the proper quantity and quality,
cannot be solved with conventional home fixtures.
For this reason many architects have turned to the
equipment produced for commercial and indus-
trial rather than domestic use. They are already
producing home lighting of high quality and
flexibility. (In this book you will find that a great
deal will be said about flexibility.)

FLEXIBILITY

Consider, for example, the initial disagreements
of our family when they began to plan their living-
room. Much of the argument revolved around
questions of seating. Father wanted his comfortable
old leather chair next to the radio. Mother wanted
couches and chairs for committee meetings, bridge,
and entertaining her friends. Daughter wanted
seating facilities, too, but of a different kind. On
many occasions, although they didn't talk about it,
the family wanted practically no seating at all —
just one or two chairs where one or two people
might sit quietly and read or talk or listen to
music without feeling that the room looked too big
or too barren.

Here is a real problem for the planner. How do
you design a room so that it looks warm and inti-
mate with two people in it, but never overcrowded
with thirty? In a way it sounds like an insoluble
problem, unless one assumes that the living-room

is to be made out of rubber and stretched on ap-
propriate occasions.

The problem, however, is not insoluble. But to
find the answer — or, rather, the answers, for there
are several solutions — it is necessary to look at this
aspect of living-room design with something of a
fresh viewpoint.

As we sit here working on this chapter, we are
looking at two photographs of living-rooms. Both
are in houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
One is a very large room; it must be thirty or forty
feet square. It is the main room in his country
house, Taliesen, which was built not far from
Spring Green, Wisconsin. The other is in a much
more modest residence in a Chicago suburb.

In the smaller living-room, which looks as if it
could take care of a cocktail party for two dozen
people, there is not a single visible piece of movable
furniture, with the unimportant exception of a
small coffee table in front of the fireplace. There is,
however, a couch built in under convenient book-
shelves and cabinets which is large enough to
stretch out on, or to seat six or eight people. There
are several counters and tables, built against the
walls, providing very attractive practical surfaces
on which to put books, meals, flowers, or anything
else. In the particular photograph we have, it is also
interesting to see that there are no lamps sitting
around, because the architect built his lighting fix-
tures into the ceiling, and all that shows is a flush
rectangle of frosted glass.

In the big living-room at Taliesen, this use of
built-in living equipment is even more remarkable.
Here, in a small alcove, one can sit all alone in the
evening by the fire and feel quite comfortable. And
the same room functions equally well with as many
as fifty or sixty people. The secret of this remark-
able flexibility is again to be found in the use of
built-in seating, which is always so inconspicuous
that it seems like a part of the room's architecture.
Yet, when a crowd turns up, it is always available
for people to sit on.

17

HOW TO PLAN A LIVING-ROOM

The peaceful atmosphere of such rooms as these
must be experienced to be fully understood. But
the basic idea, that the room itself provide seating
and table top space rather than accomplishing
these functions with furniture moved in after the
room is done, is of great importance. It is also im-
portant to note that in such rooms the essential
equipment is provided at the walls. The center is
free. It can be left clear or chairs and light tables
can be moved in as they are needed. This is part of
what is meant when we talk of flexibility.

How many of the living-rooms with which you
are acquainted are too cluttered? If any of us were
honest about our own houses and those of our
friends, we would be forced to agree that half or
more of the furniture which gets in one's way could
well be eliminated and replaced by less expensive,
less conspicuous, built-in units, and that a great
deal of the junk lying around on bookshelves,
table tops, and so on, could be thrown out or at
least put in cabinets where it would be out of the
way.

STORAGE

The old idea of the living-room never included a
closet. Nor was storage space of any kind consid-
ered essential. There might be a table with two or
three drawers in it, which would be jammed with
playing cards, seed catalogues, letters, canceled
checks, and dozens of other odds and ends. But
this could hardly be considered storage.

Phonograph records, for instance, need to be
kept safely out of sight, away from dust. There is
no need to mess up the room with them. The same
is true of game equipment — chess and backgam-
mon boards, bridge tables, poker chips, score pads,
and the like. And there are always the extra ash
trays, cartons of cigarettes, coasters for glasses, and
all the other paraphernalia of entertainment.

This, incidentally, provides one of the major con-
18

1

HOW TO PLAN A LIVING-ROOM

trasts between the living-room in the modern house,
which invariably has one or several cabinets filled
with shelves, drawers, and compartments, and the
conventional type of interior where nothing of the
sort is provided.

Attention to storage units as a factor in provid-
ing greater flexibility for living also has a profound
effect on the housewife's problems of keeping the
place in order. There is a house in one of New
York's suburbs, for instance, with a living-room
supplied with forty-five running feet of storage
cabinets. These extend the full length of one wall
and out into the hall. The whole house, in fact, is
equipped with all sorts of storage units in addition
to the usual closets, and one result, according to
the owners, has been a great saving in time and
energy and money.

Originally it was believed three servants would
be needed to keep the house in order. When the
family moved in, it was found that two did the job
very well — a saving which paid for all of the extra
units (in a few years, it might be added). Then,
when the war came and servants disappeared, the
family found that it could run the house under its
own steam without too much difficulty.

"Clutter" can mean a great many things. In
many of Frank Lloyd Wright's houses the floors
are of brick or polished concrete. In some cases the
rugs have been omitted entirely. This might sound
like an exchange of comfort for ease in cleaning,
and most people would prefer the comfort. How-
ever, these houses are radiant-heated through warm
water pipes embedded in the concrete floor slab.
The major source of discomfort with this kind of
floor — its coldness — has consequently been elim-
inated.

This does not mean, of course, that rugs should
be discarded. It simply suggests that they can be, if
for any reason the owner feels that it would be de-
sirable or more economical.

Pictures on the wall are another, and a particu-

larly irritating, way of cluttering up interiors. The
pictures in most houses are so appallingly ugly or
commonplace that it is impossible to understand
how they got there in the first place. They have long
since ceased to be objects providing any enjoyment
for the family or its friends, but nobody dares to
get rid of them because of the marks they would
leave on the wall and because the room would look
so "bare" without them.

The argument here is not against pictures — if
they are pictures one can look at with honest en-
joyment— but against the misunderstanding of the
essential purpose of a picture and its proper use.

A picture is not a decoration. It represents in a
limited area some experience an artist has had,
which, when communicated to other people, gives
them a certain amount of pleasure and a better un-
derstanding of the world around them. In this
sense a picture is not entirely unlike a book. But
who would sit and read the same book over and
over and over again day in and year out? The only
known example — the hypothetical castaway on the
imaginary desert island with the ten best books — is
the closest approximation to date, and who would
want to be in his spot?

It is true that decorators will frequently "build
a room" around some picture. They will set a print
of a masterpiece — for instance, a Van Gogh land-
scape— over the fireplace and take the yellows and
greens and blues and earth red and repeat these
colors in the curtains, upholstery fabrics, wall paint
or covering, and so on. The result is proclaimed to
be an artistic and harmonious job where picture
and room become a unified whole. Actually, it is
the cheapest trick imaginable for borrowing some
of the respectability of an acknowledged work of
art for the purpose of making a decorating job look
more impressive.

Keying a room to a picture would be a good idea
if one didn't get tired of the picture. But anyone
with eyes in his head and a minimum of honesty

19

HOW TO PLAN A LIVING-ROOM

must confess that any picture, however fine, be-
comes very boring if looked at for very long. The
reason most of us do not get impatient with the
pictures in our houses is that we have long since
ceased to look at them.

The solution here is again provision for flexi-
bility. One of the storage cabinets whose uses we
have just been considering could perfectly well hold
a dozen or a hundred favorite pictures. Whether
they are originals or reproductions, incidentally,
doesn't matter a bit, except to those snobs who are
unable to appreciate art except in terms of how
much it costs. The reproductions on the market to-
day, so many of which are the same size as the
original and very faithful in their rendering of color
and even of texture, are just as good from the view-
point of the average man as the originals. This is
indicated clearly enough by the fact that you can't
tell half the time whether you are looking at an
original or reproduction until you are about six
inches away from it — and who wants to look at a
picture at a distance of six inches?

A storage cabinet, perhaps one placed under the
window, would probably hold more pictures than
the average person buys in a lifetime. There's no
need to worry about storage space for frames, be-

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cause they could perfectly well stay on the walls.
With four frames of different sizes and all of your
pictures mounted in mats to fit one or another of
these four standard frames, you could change your
pictures whenever you wanted to, and in about the
same way that museums have always done it. Any
reliable framer, by the way, can fix the backs so
that mats can be slipped in and out conveniently.

The reason for talking about pictures and pic-
ture framing at such length is very simple. We are
not interested in passing on home decorating ad-
vice— useful as such an activity may be. The pur-
pose of this book is to build up an attitude towards
the house and all of its parts, an attitude which will
help produce a living design adapted in every way
to the physical and emotional requirements of the
family.

From the attitude stems a course of action. It
consists of clearing out everything whose useful-
ness is doubtful and retaining only those items that
stand up under critical examination. This involves
analyzing your needs, a provision not ordinarily
made.

PLANNING FOR USE

This method of attacking the whole question of
how to live can pay the most extraordinary divi-
dends in the most unexpected ways. Take, if you
like, the question of the dictionary which most
families own. In a surprising number of cases this
dictionary is a fairly husky volume. If the library is
the living-room, as is usually the case, this diction-
ary will be tucked away on a bookshelf, and be-
cause it is so clumsy to handle, it really doesn't get
handled, and the purpose for which it was bought
is therefore lost. Nevertheless, there are ways of in-
stalling dictionaries in the average home so that
their use is made easy, in fact, made definitely at-
tractive. One — and a fairly old one, at that — is the
provision of a sloping shelf, somewhere in the

HOW TO PLAN A LIVING-ROOM

book-shelf section of the room, reserved for the
exclusive use of the dictionary. If possible, there
should be a small light over it. The normal prob-
lems of handling a clumsy book are eliminated by a
design which takes care of it. Other solutions would
involve the use of one or another of the gadgets
sold to libraries and schools, which consist of turn-
ing stands built on the principle of a Lazy Susan,
or inclined shelves on arms, set into the wall so that
they can be swung out of the way.

Is this too much trouble to take for a dictionary?
It could be. It depends entirely on how much you
want to use one and whether or not you want the
children to grow up with the habit of referring to
the dictionary when they don't know the meaning
of a word.

Design in this sense is an expression, an exceed-
ingly personal expression, of a way of living. Hous-
ing the dictionary is part of this way of living, and
this problem will be solved or not depending on
how you feel about dictionaries. Multiply this proc-
ess by a thousand, and you have a house that is
really designed.

Up to this point we have been looking at the liv-
ing-room as a series of solutions to very practical
problems like the provision of storage space, the
proper handling of pictures and special books,
flexible seating, getting the right amount of light in
the right place, and so on. There are other qualities
to be produced which are quite as important in
their way but much less tangible.

SPACE

For example, there is the whole question of space,
the most vexing problem of all the problems the
modern architect has to contend with. Should a
living-room look spacious or small? Both kinds are
good; a combination is best. Should it be higher
than the otheK rooms or the same? Should it open
out to include a porch or a garden, or should it re-

main shut in? Will it have to function at its best
with a lot of people in it or just a few? Is it to be
formal or informal?

These questions are hard to answer, except in the
most specific terms applied to specific problems.
Yet answer them we must.

The little sketches below indicate some of the
steps to be taken on the way to a solution.

We start with a rectangular box sixteen or eight-
een feet wide, twenty or twenty-four feet long,
seven and a half to eight and a half feet high. This

is a good enough size for the better-than-aver-
age home. Unfortunately, the better-than-average
home rarely gets any further in its design than the
provision of this rectangular box.

The nice thing about a box is that it is familiar,
easy to design and build. Its disadvantages are that

HOW TO PLAN A LIVING-ROOM

it is comparatively inflexible, hard to light, visually
uninteresting, and acoustically atrocious.

These sketches, which show one kind of transi-
tion from a conventional boxlike interior into one
that is better organized for use of indoor and out-
door space, illustrate some of the possibilities at
the disposal of the designer today. If the house is
largely or entirely a one-story design, the freedom
to change ceiling height and the outlines of the
room is greater, of course, than if there were a floor
above. This is one advantage of the one-story
house, and as we go along we shall come across a
good many others.

MATERIALS

Along with the question of space comes the re-
lated question of what encloses the space. Here we
find all the richness of modern technology and tra-
ditional building to delight and confuse the would-
be home builder.

Not so long ago it was generally assumed that
the walls of a room — any room — were finished in
plaster, which was either painted or papered, and
that was about all. If one could afford it, plaster
was replaced by wood paneling in the study and by
tiles in the bathroom, and that was really all.

Today the list of materials actually used by ar-
chitects for the interiors of houses is a very long
one. First come the dry sheet materials with which
you can make a wall or ceiling in no time at all.
Some of these materials are designed to be left ex-
posed. Most of them, however, require painting or

inpfi r-

papering and are not radically different in appear-
ance from plaster. They are just more convenient
to handle. Some of them are insulating boards in
addition, which gives them an advantage over
plaster.

Then there are the laminated materials— the
most common of which is plywood — whose use
makes it possible to get a tremendous variety of
natural wood finishes without spending much
money.

Some architects have used exterior materials in-
side the house, and with great success. For exam-
ple, a brick wall is finished as brick inside as well as
out. Similarly, you can have walls of natural stone
or wood. These devices are used primarily to give
the house a unity inside and out that conventional
houses seldom have, but in addition they have
great decorative effect and the advantage of requir-
ing no maintenance. This is not a new idea; it was
used in some of the best of the early Colonial
houses.

A rule that the wise home builder should follow
is never to use a material that requires maintenance
if one can be found that does not. This saves mon-
ey, to be sure, but far more important, it keeps the
house looking well year after year. Houses of per-
manent materials that do not require maintenance
age gracefully and inexpensively. A wall of brick
or stone will look as well in a hundred years as it
does when built. More accurately, it will look a
great deal better, because time deals kindly with
such materials, softening their sharp edges and en-
riching their color.

22

LIVING ROOMS

One of the nicest things about contemporary design
is that it has no set pattern: you can have as much
formality or informality as you like, and you can mix
these qualities in any way you see fit. Both of the
rooms shown on this page, for example, are archi-
tecturally severe, but they differ radically in furni-
ture. Room I is extremely informal, emphasizing
comfort and conviviality. Room 2 shows a carefully
studied, even ascetic furniture grouping. The hand-
some chairs and tables are American-made pieces
designed by Alvar Aalto, famous Finnish architect.

Not all modern interiors are bare, nor
need they be unless you happen to
like bare rooms. Good contemporary
design varies all the way from the
severe simplicity of the apartment liv-
ing room shown in view I 3 to the
rich warmth of room 1 7 or even com-
bines the two effects, as has been done
in the combination study-living room
pictured in 15. View 16 shows the
living room in a city house, designed
especially for entertainment and care-
fully studied to produce ideal acous-
tical conditions. The glass wall looks
out on an enclosed, and therefore
completely private, court around
which the house was built.

Pattern and decoration may be provided by the fur-
nishings, by construction materials, or even by cer-
tain essential equipment — as in the case of the
corrugated ceiling panels which furnish radiant heat
for the story-and-a-half living room shown in picture
21. Sometimes the most important decorative
element may be the view outside the window, as
in room 22. In the city apartment shown, in 18, a
glass block wall serves the dual purpose of shutting
out street noises and providing light and an interest-
ing background for the furnishings; the simplicity
of room 20 is set off by a ceiling of v-jointed boards.
And, as picture 19 shows, a rough stone fireplace
can be just as much at home in a modern interior
as in its traditional setting.

24

Some of the drama which large glass areas make
possible is suggested by picture 23, which shows
the living room of a beach house overlooking
the ocean (picture 24 shows the opposite side of
the same room). That similar effects can be achieved
on a smaller scale is demonstrated by the other
rooms shown, all of which employ walls of fixed and
movable glass to add to the feeling of space.

The large window— modern architecture's most
important contribution to house design— can be
used in a great variety of ways. In 28, the de-
signer has employed a series of large, fixed,
lights separated by structural posts to form the
entire view side of a second-floor living room.
In 29, the living room has been divided into
two parts by use of fixed, floor-to-ceiling glass
—flanked by ventilating sash— in one portion
of the space. Views 3 I and 32 show a large,
two-level living room which combines a glass
wall opening onto a terrace with a projecting
plant window at one end. Picture 30 shows
still another window treatment employing a
checkerboard of wood mullions to support fixed
glass. Big glass areas of this type have been used
as successfully in the northern part of the coun-
try as in the south and in California.

Planned furniture arrangement, worked out for
convenience as well as appearance, is another im-
portant contribution of modern architecture. Pic-
tures 33 and 34 show two views of a large living
room designed with a definite use-pattern in mind.
In this example, notice how two entirely different
furniture groups have been provided— one around
the fireplace, the other, mostly for daytime use,
near the large windows. In 35, a terrace window
takes the place of the conventional fireplace as the
focus for the main furniture group. Pictures 36 and
37 show how similar planning principles are applied
to less pretentious houses.

r:

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CHAPTER FOUR

WHERE SHALL WE EAT?

THOSE OF us who grew up in the traditional middle-
class home of thirty or forty years ago remember
quite clearly that dining was never much of a prob-
lem. There was a large kitchen with a table in it for
the hired girl — newly arrived, in all probability,
from Sweden, Ireland, or Poland. She was an af-
fable, immensely competent person who could
whip up anything from a snack to a banquet at
short notice and somehow managed to do not only
the cooking and dishwashing but the serving as
well. For dining, the family had the dining-room.
Everyone who was anybody had a dining-room.
The notion of eating anywhere else would have
been considered very strange indeed.

Because families were bigger, the dining-room
was a pretty ample space, and its already large
table in the center could be expanded with leaves
so that a dozen people could sit down together for
Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Over the center
of the table, hanging on gilt brass chains, was the
most ornate lighting fixture in the house. It usually
had at least three lamps and a dazzling array of
stained glass. This fixture was not only the fanciest
piece of applied art in the house of the period, it
was also the most efficient. And presently, in dis-
cussing the dining-room of today, we shall find that
we come back to it.

In the early 1900's a tablecloth with folding pads

underneath was considered a "must." Few, if any,
people had even dreamed of replacing the expen-
sive, hard-to-launder tablecloth with today's place
mats. As a result there was a second piece of fur-
niture in the room — a sideboard, which was really
a linen closet turned on its side and set up on legs.
This contained the tablecloths for everyday dining
and formal family dinners, and the wonderful lace
contraptions which were spread out only on the
most impressive of ceremonial occasions. The top
of the sideboard contained the silver, which, if
Father had made any money at all, was almost as
hard to lift as it was to clean. This alone kept the
maid pretty busy, for gleaming silver was the hall-
mark of a properly run household. But this was not
all. Somewhere else in the room there was a great
glass-and-wood cage, usually with an intricately
carved front behind which the family kept its real
treasures. There was the set of china that Grand-
mother had brought back from her wedding trip
to Germany. There were the porcelain shepherds
and shepherdesses made perhaps in the kilns of
Carlsbad or in one of the great establishments out-
side Paris. There were little china dogs and cats
from the famous English works. And perhaps a
polished piece of stone presented to the family by
Uncle Ezra on his return from a trip to the Petri-
fied Forest. There were cut glass pitchers so ornate

39

WHERE SHALL WE EAT?

that Mother really hated to pour water out of them.
There were small bottles filled with sand from the
beach at Nassau or Bermuda, surrounded, no
doubt, by the inevitable collection of seashells.

All these treasures needed space, and they got
space. Nothing could be farther from our minds
today than a desire to ridicule them. The old-style
dining-room was a fine thing — and let's not forget
it. It was a family social center. It was so comfort-
able that people sat for long hours after dinner,
swapping stories, cracking nuts, and drinking wine.
Because it had the only decent lighting fixture in
the whole house, this was where the children did
their homework, and where games were played.
Special tables for whist were to be found only in a
few big houses, and the folding card table was not
yet what it has since become.

This picture lasted into the twenties, when two
things happened simultaneously. First was the
surge of prosperity which swept the country from
one end to the other and reached its peak in 1929.
Second was the fact that Greta the maid had found
that she could make more money and live much
more pleasantly if she got a job in a store or office.
40

Because of these two things, something new ap-
peared in the middle-class house. The dining-room
remained, but a brand-new element, the breakfast
nook, was added. This was sometimes part of the
pantry, sometimes a separate little sunroom with
benches for four and a table in between. The break-
fast nook was both a sign of the general inflation
going on at the time and a very practical response
to the shortage of servants. The family began to do
most of its eating in the breakfast room, because it
meant less work and fewer steps for Mother, who
was now the cook. The dining-room turned into a
kind of architectural vermiform appendix, which
was kept because the operation of removing it had
not yet become fashionable.

The next stage occurred in the thirties, when, as
Macy's puts it, it became smart to be thrifty. Sud-
denly a split arose in the ranks of the house plan-
ners. By now money was scarce, and something had
to be done to provide adequate houses within
shrinking budgets. The dining-room was the logi-
cal victim. Elaborate scientific studies were made
to prove that here was a room which should never
have existed in the first place — it took up many

WHERE SHALL WE EAT?

cubic feet of space in the house but was used only
three or four hours out of the twenty-four. This,
they cried, was inefficient — and the era of the liv-
ing-dining-room was inaugurated.

The more modern-minded architects saw a num-
ber of rather interesting features in the living-din-
ing-room. They were being forced to make living-
rooms smaller— again because of shrinking income
— and they didn't like it. Moreover, some space
had also to be provided for eating. By using one
end of the room for this purpose, or perhaps an al-
cove, they were able to create the illusion of more
space than actually existed for general living pur-
poses. But once the first flush of enthusiasm for the
new idea began to wear off, it became obvious that
here was no millennium. The living-dining-room
was a makeshift, frequently quite satisfactory, to be
sure, but nevertheless an expedient to save space
and money. For family meals it worked fairly well,
although the peace of the living-room in the even-
ing was sometimes shattered by the setting of the
table at the beginning of the meal and the removal
of the dishes at the end. Moreover, the kitchen was
now next to the living-room, and the clatter of
dishes being washed came through the swinging
door so clearly that people began to wonder why
they bothered to have a door. For formal meals,
dining in the living-room was much less satisfac-
tory, because while the family might have hardened
itself to these new inconveniences, there was no
reason to inflict them on the guests.

This brings us to today. As far as the middle-in-
come family is concerned, the maid-of-all-work is
farther away than ever. Budgets are more ample
than they were during the depression years, but
more and more money is being diverted from space
into equipment, most of which is by no means gad-
getry of a luxury nature but machinery which must
be purchased to make up for the lack of available
labor.

So the problem of the forties is much the same

as it was in the thirties. The temper of the people,
however, is not the same. There is evidence of a
growing desire to recreate certain aspects of social
life within the home on something approximating
the old-time basis. Its reflection in the work of mod-
ern-minded architects is very interesting. Among
these architects, who are still comparatively few in
number, there is this feeling about dining : that no
arrangement is acceptable unless a definite space
can be established where meals may be set up and
cleared away without causing disturbance to any
other part of the house.

AN ANALYSIS OF DINING

There are five places where a family can have its
meals: it can eat (1) in the dining-room; (2) in the
living-room; (3) in the kitchen; (4) in a breakfast
nook; and (5) outside. It is perfectly clear from
these possibilities that the dining-room is ideal if
service facilities exist ; that the living-room is only
partly satisfactory ; that the same is true for the
kitchen (at least, the kitchen the way it is today);
that the breakfast nook to do a complete job must
really become another version of the dining-room;
and that meals outside are either a seasonal affair or
confined to limited sections of the country.

There is another way of analyzing eating require-
ments. We have (1) family meals; (2) meals for the
younger children, probably served separately; (3)
formal dinners with or without guests; and (4)
snacks — whether at midnight or any other tune.

How these requirements are met is a decision
primarily for the family rather than the architect.
If you won't consider giving a formal dinner any-
where but in a separate dining-room and the bud-
get won't stand the cost, formal dinners will have
to go by the boards. Should family meals in the
kitchen seem most practical except for a prejudice
against dining in a cold, white room, consider the
possibility of treating the kitchen as the warmest,
most cheerful room in the house.

41

WHERE SHALL WE EAT?

Solving the problem of where to eat, however, is
not nearly as uncompromising a matter as it used
to be. There are all sorts of new solutions: some
are so unconventional that the kinds of space de-
veloped do not yet have generally accepted names.

THE ROOM THAT WAS NEVER LIVED IN

One of the first proposals of this kind was a room
in an exhibit at the New York World's Fair. It was
designed by Allmon Fordyce.

Fordyce's approach to the problem was based on
an analysis similar to the one just outlined, and he
decided that a solution worth trying was an en-
tirely new kind of room, which he called the kitch-
en-living room. In this room there were easy chairs
and a dining space and all of the cooking and dish-
washing facilities. It was divided by a kitchen coun-
ter which contained a sink, with cupboards and
shelves above. Instead of a white stove and refrig-
erator, these fixtures were a dull midnight blue. The
white sink was replaced by gleaming metal, and
everything else in the room, including the cup-
boards, was carried out in natural color wood. If
the "ooh's" and "ah's" in front of this exhibit
could have been converted into shiny five-cent
pieces, architect Fordyce would have been a very
wealthy man by the time the Fan" closed, because
people saw in this design not just a good-looking
kitchen, but a brand-new way to live in a house.
Here was a kitchen which accepted the fact that
nobody except the very rich was going to have serv-
ants. The kitchen-living room not only lightened
the burden of housework, but it was also good-
looking enough for guests. This was a completely
new idea and yet a very old one: Fordyce had
simply resurrected and modernized the old farm-
house kitchen.

During the next few years other versions of the
kitchen-living room appeared in various parts of
the country. Generally, the reaction was pretty fa-
vorable. Somehow this new kind of space corre-
42

sponded not only to an economic situation but also
to a changing idea of how to live. The snobbery of
the twenties disappeared. No one thought it strange
that the housewife should do the cooking and that
guests should help with the dishes.

Meanwhile, designers were finding that there
were almost as many variations to the living-
kitchen idea as there were families. In 1943 maga-
zines showed a kitchen designed for the Libbey-
Owens-Ford Glass Company. Use of a sliding wall
made it possible not only to open the kitchen to the
dining and recreation area, but even to merge these
spaces with the living-room on occasion. A series
of hardwood covers for sink, stove, and other
equipment converted the work area into an interior
handsome enough to glamorize any buffet supper.
This ingenious publicity device was nothing more
than a re-use of many separate ideas which had
been suggested by many different architects. It
proved that one could have a living kitchen or a
more conventional arrangement, depending on the
position the sliding wall happened to occupy.

We like the living kitchen. We think it solves
many problems which would otherwise stump the
family of moderate means. But maybe you don't
like it at all. What then? Who is right? The thing
about houses that makes designing them so end-
lessly fascinating is that everyone can be right. If
your life is not complete without a room devoted
solely to dining, if the idea of eating in the same
room where food is prepared is revolting, it is your
inalienable right to demand a dining-room. There
is nothing whatever wrong with that. Just remem-
ber that it costs more than no dining-room, which
brings us back to where we started — to tastes and
budgets.

NEW PROBLEMS

While we now seem to have a solution which
can be worked out with a great number of varia-
tions, we also have new problems. One is the mat-

WHERE SHALL WE EAT?

ter of acoustics, and you will find considerable dis-
cussion of sound control in the kitchen in another
chapter. This much, however, is worth emphasiz-
ing here: The more flexible a plan becomes, and
the more it relies on open spaces which can be sub-
divided or merged at will, the more acute becomes
the problem of acoustics. The kitchen is a natural
noise-producing center, and what sounds cannot be
stopped at their source must be absorbed in one
way or another by the ceiling and walls and floor.

There is also the problem of cooking odors,
which are now free to move through the entire liv-
ing area of the house. This is discussed in Chap-
ter X.

Lighting also becomes a problem, because one
kind is needed for the work center, another for the
dining table, and a third for the living area. If
spaces are to be related in a flexible manner and
activities overlap, lighting will also have to be flex-
ible. Equipment to meet all these problems exists.

VARYING THE ROUTINE

One of the most wonderful houses ever built is
Taliesen, the home of Frank Lloyd Wright, out in
the hills of Wisconsin. It is an immense, rambling
sort of structure, which today is beyond the means
of any except the most wealthy. One thing that
strikes the visitor most forcibly about this house is
not so much its size or cost, but the manner in
which the architect and his family and students
vary the eating routine; with little difficulty and
considerable satisfaction. In addition to the sepa-
rate dining-room where everyone generally eats,
there are little terraces here and there where on
good days meals can be taken on wheeled serving

tables. And there are also built-in tables in the
living-room and sitting-room.

The same possibilities should be considered for
a house on a much smaller scale — even the average-
size house built for four or five people and contain-
ing three or possibly four bedrooms. If there is a
fireplace in the master bedroom, there is no reason
at all why this space should not be used on occa-
sion— not by the whole family, of course, but by
one or both of the parents. Small outdoor sitting
spaces, whether sheltered or open to the sky, are
equally usable if planned in convenient relation to
the kitchen. The living-room or the library alcove
could have similar provisions.

This part of dining has nothing whatever to do
with efficiency, but with the fact that family life,
due to the necessary repetition of a number of un-
interesting chores, can become extremely dull, and
even slight variations from normal habits can pro-
vide a considerable lift.

This seemingly minor problem was left to the
end because it highlights what should be the funda-
mental approach to planning. Questions of effi-
ciency, mechanical design, lighting, acoustics, and
so on, are important; but they should be solved
and brushed out of the way as fast as possible. The
basic requirement is to provide a framework for
living, not for running machinery — and this is the
foundation on which really successful planning
must ultimately be carried out. The broader the
picture of how to live, the better the plan. If this
extends to an occasional snack in front of the fire-
place, so much the better. It is the joint responsi-
bility of the family and the architect to see to it
that not a single one of these small enrichments to
the pattern of daily existence is omitted.

43

CHAPTER FIVE

LIGHTING

FOR MANY YEARS lighting in the home has been pro-
vided as an afterthought. It was conceived in terms
of fixtures rather than illumination and occupied
an almost negligible place in the building budget.
For this reason the interior of the average home,
which should be the best-lighted interior that could
be designed, is among the worst. People do their
evening chores, homework, bridge playing, read-
ing— in fact, carry on practically all home activ-
ities— under lighting conditions which the owner
of the corner delicatessen would not tolerate for a
moment and which would run a factory owner out
of business in no time.

Homes are badly lighted, but not because of lack
of knowledge. Quite the contrary is true. Our tech-
nicians know a great deal about lighting, and the
purpose of this chapter is to describe some of the
things they have found out. Since lighting experts
are not hired, as a rule, to work on designs for the
home, many of our examples will be commercial or
industrial. The fundamental principles of good il-
lumination, however, are the same. If we seem to
wander away from the house from time to time,
these digressions will not be irrelevant.

We are going to start to talk about lighting in
terms of the eye rather than the fixtures. Illumina-
tion is something related to seeing, and only to
seeing. Consequently nothing could be more to the
point in a discussion of lighting than an under-
standing of the peculiar limitations of the eye and

its extraordinary latitude. A number of technica
terms are going to be used, but not one represents
an idea that is too complicated to grasp, and each
has to be understood before home illumination can
be discussed with any degree of sense.

THE PROBLEM OF THE TUNNEL

When the Holland Tunnel was built, the engineers
who designed it were very conscious of the impor-
tance of this great project for linking Manhattan
with New Jersey, and they tried to make their cal-
culations as nearly perfect as possible. This was
particularly true of the lighting, for with the im-
mense volume of automobile traffic planned, no
single factor was more vital in assuring a safe and
steady flow of cars. After the tunnel was com-
pleted, it was discovered that the lighting, for all
the trouble taken with it, was anything but perfect.
It was also found that there was no such thing as
an "ideal" amount of light.

This is what was the trouble. Drivers who en-
tered the tunnel on a brilliantly clear day invariably
found the inside quite dark at first. This was caused
by the difference in intensity between full sunlight
and the lamp light in the tunnel, and there is not
as yet any practical apparatus for lighting things as
brightly as the sun does. Moreover, on entering the
tunnel after dusk, the same group of drivers found
the same intensity of illumination too great. In

44

LIGHTING

other words, "perfect" lighting for the Holland
Tunnel was not a fixed quantity at all. To work
properly at all times it would have to vary in in-
tensity, depending on what was going on outside.
The same problem, in a different form, appears in
the home.

THE PROBLEM OF THE NIGHT BOMBERS

Some years ago, when the RAF began its great
bombing raids over Germany, there were many
stories of how the fliers were conditioned for their
hazardous night missions. They were fed carrots.
They were kept in darkened rooms for hours, so
that retinal sensitivity would be increased to a
maximum. Everything which could be imagined
was done to reduce the pilots' difficulties in dis-
tinguishing the targets they were to find and de-
stroy. For a while everything went well.

One night a fleet of Lancasters and Halifaxes,
probing its way to the heart of Germany, ap-
proached one of the industrial cities. It was
greeted, not by the customary blackout, but by a
barrage of intense light thrown up by hundreds of
searchlights. The result was the same 'as being
awakened in the middle of the night by a flashlight
in one's face — complete inability to see anything.
New procedures had to be developed to meet this
new weapon.

i

We have here two very clear illustrations of the
inability of the eye to adjust itself rapidly to ex-
tremes of intensity. The British fliers, for instance,
would not have been particularly disturbed by the
searchlight barrage had they not been conditioned
to be almost abnormally sensitive to light. Had
they flown over in brightly lighted planes the story
would have been quite different. The drivers in the
Holland Tunnel had the same difficulty in adjust-
ing themselves to comparative extremes of inten-
sity within a split second.

Because improper lighting in a vehicular tunnel
could mean terrible accidents with disruption of
traffic as well as loss of life, engineers — the very
best that could be found — were engaged to work
on this problem. Because the British high command
could not afford to waste a single night raider,
they, too, gave their lighting problem the most ex-
pert attention obtainable. But improper lighting in
the home doesn't kill anybody or cost measurable
amounts of money or produce any other immedi-
ately noticeable effect, and in consequence it has
been pretty largely ignored. To be sure, it is a far
cry from the RAF to the reading corner in the
living-room. But it isn't as far as it seems.

HOW MUCH LIGHT IS ENOUGH?

The question of enough light is something most
people think about, though not necessarily in very
precise terms. Did you ever go down to the local
electrical supply store and wonder what wattage
bulb to get for a certain fixture? One reason it is
hard to choose is that the quantity of illumination
by which the eye can function varies almost beyond
belief. If the light by which you are reading this
book comes from a floor or table lamp, the illu-
mination on the page is probably somewhere be-
tween five and fifteen foot-candles. (Afoot-candle
is the quantity of light thrown by a single candle
on some point a foot away from the flame.) If to-
morrow afternoon you were to take the book out-
doors and read in the shade of a tree, however, the
illumination would be around 500 foot-candles, or
thirty to one hundred times as much. And, as far
as comfort is concerned, it would be hard to tell
the difference.

"Fine!" one might say at this point. "This little
fact will save me a lot. If one can read at almost
any intensity, why waste good money on unneeded
wattage?" The eye is a willing and wonderfully

45

LIGHTING

adaptable instrument ; if necessary it will function
admirably for reading even by firelight. Unfor-
tunately, while we can see remarkably well under
extremely unfavorable conditions, there is a mus-
cular and nervous strain involved and a dispropor-
tionate amount of energy expended. So this saving
would not pay off nearly as well as one might
think. In the first place, as the intensity is lowered,
we see more slowly. This has been proved by an ex-
periment repeated so many times in hundreds of
factories that industrialists now take it for granted.
People have been given jobs to do with X foot-
candles of illumination on their work ; then the in-
tensity was stepped up, for the same work. It was
found every time that as brightness increases, the
rate at which the work is accomplished increases
with it. Up to a certain point the amount of work
done increases in direct proportion to the amount
of illumination. After this point is passed — it is in
the neighborhood of 100 foot-candles — the quan-
tity of work continues to increase, but no longer at
the same rate as the illumination. Finally the
amount of work increase levels off almost entirely.

It might be thought that somewhere around 100
foot-candles would be the most efficient level of il-
lumination. But continuing the experiment pro-
duced another fact: above the point where the rate
of work failed to increase, fatigue continued to de-
crease sharply. The experiment demonstrated two
things very clearly: with more light we not only see
more quickly, but more easily as well. In this latter
respect there seems to be almost no limit to the
amount of light we can profitably use. It might be
noted that even 100 foot-candles is way beyond the
level of illumination we are accustomed to in homes
and offices.

In the best of the modern factories, fluorescent
or mercury-vapor lamps are jammed together so
tightly above the tools and assembly lines that
some interiors seem to have a solid ceiling of light.
At the Dodge Chicago plant, largest producer of
46

airplane engines, no less than $2,700,000 was spent
on the lighting installation alone. And every penny
of this sizable investment was made by men who
do not buy things for factories unless they pay off
in terms of production. Matthew Luckiesh — prob-
ably the outstanding authority on lighting — seems
to consider the best factory installations not yet
good enough, for his investigations have led him
to recommend intensities at working levels of 500
to 1,000 foot-candles for some operations, running
as high as 3,000 for tailors who work on blue serge.
A few years ago such levels of brightness would
have been considered unthinkable.

The first facts to be noted about intensity, there-
fore, are (1) that our eyes are extremely bad judges
of quantity of illumination; and (2) that so far as
productivity, comfort, and health are concerned,
we can scarcely get enough light. Point one can be
taken care of by using the services offered by most
local offices of the electric light companies, which
will provide data on desirable levels of illumina-
tions, lamps necessary, etc. Some will even send
around a man with a light meter to check the pres-
ent installation. Point two is partly a matter of bud-
get, since current costs money, and partly a matter
of fixture design. Lamps with tight, heavy shades
can absorb most of the light paid for before it gets
into the room.

"Enough light" is not the whole story. We have
all experienced the unpleasant sensation of sud-
denly entering a room that was "too brightly
lighted." The same effect is sometimes produced
by a show window on a dark street. The quantity of
illumination is not the important thing here, but
the sudden change in quantity. The show window,
for instance, might have been lighted to 150 foot-
candles, the room to 100 — and yet a pleasant view
from a mountain may be lighted to as much as
5,000 foot-candles by the summer sun. The catch
is that what we consider too much or too little in
the way of light is a matter of where we have been

LIGHTING

just before entering or looking into the space in
question.

A while back it was stated that from the prob-
lems of the RAF to those of lighting a corner of
the living-room was not a very far cry. It is equally
true for the shop window and the factory. In all
cases the eye is at the receiving end, and some ap-
paratus at the other. Eyes have to function in
safety and comfort whether at a turret lathe or the
evening paper. There are many industrial jobs far
less exacting than darning socks, as far as seeing is
concerned. It is as important to have sufficient light
for home tasks as for operations on the production
line, even if the home tasks never appear on any
balance sheet. But "enough light" doesn't do the
job if the lighting is all out of proportion to the
general illumination of the room. And the general
illumination, in turn, must be so scaled that it is
not blinding to eyes that have been "dark adapted"
—like those of the British night fliers — by a walk
home through poorly lighted streets.

It appears, therefore, that while intensity is a
vital consideration in proper lighting design, it is
by no means the only one. Contrast is the next fac-
tor to be considered. Just what does this mean?

CONTRAST

Let us imagine that a person is sitting in his favor-
ite armchair, reading a magazine by the light of a
floor lamp that has a 100- watt bulb. This lamp,
shining on the magazine's page at a distance of
three feet, produces the relatively low intensity of
twenty foot-candles. But there is no other light in
the room, so that areas around the magazine are
only dimly illuminated by the stray light from the
lamp. The foot-candle intensity of these areas will
be one foot-candle at most, producing a contrast
ratio of twenty to one between the white page and
the surrounding areas. Thus if the person reading

47

LIGHTING

has occasion to look away from the page from
time to time, his eyes have to adjust themselves
very rapidly to a considerable change in brightness.
This is hard work, and the demands made on the
eye are serious. When the eye first turns from
brightness to darkness, the iris has to open up to
its widest aperture, quantities of retinal fluid have
to be generated very quickly; and even with these
great efforts on the part of the eye, it takes a few
seconds before anything can be distinguished in
the comparative obscurity. Then, when the eye
turns back to the bright page, the reverse process
has to be gone through, with the result that for a
moment you have an uncomfortable feeling that
the page is much too bright and glaring.

Now consider another case of contrast. Imagine
a living-room in which there is a central lighting
fixture containing a single exposed bulb — say,
1,000 watts. The room would be very brightly
lighted, but it would also be very badly illumin-
ated, in spite of the amount of money being spent
to run the 1,000-watt lamp. It would be bad be-
cause the light source would be visible from all
parts of the room and would therefore be a source
of discomfort; because every shadow cast would be
relatively black; and because the very brightness of
the illumination would defeat the purpose of seeing.
One can see into a shadow only when some light
issues into it, either by reflection or directly. The

sun, incidentally, gives the same kind of lighting as
the 1,000-watt lamp: it is a brilliant point source
which casts sharp, dark shadows. It is the custom
to talk of the sun as an ideal kind of illumination.
It is, if you perform the simplest, most "natural"
activities in sunlight. But it is very bad indeed for
the many complicated jobs eyes have to do under
modern conditions. Therefore, while the sun will
appear again in this discussion, it must be under-
stood that proper room lighting is far more com-
plex than setting up a single bright source of il-
lumination.

BUILDING UP

A LIGHTING PATTERN

One place to look for more clues to good home
lighting is in the newer retail shops. Here the same
trend appears that was noted in the factories: ever-
increasing intensity of light. We also find special
characteristics which stem from the nature of a re-
tail business, but these can be disregarded. The
modern shop has a high level of over-all illumina-
tion. This may be provided by strips of fluorescent
lamps or cold cathode tubing, by coves, by high-
intensity incandescent fixtures, and by a variety of
other equipment. Over and above this general il-
lumination there is special lighting. There are light
fixtures for showcases and built-in displays, spot-
lights for particular items of merchandise, and
lenses set flush with the ceiling to provide powerful
down light at certain locations. These add up to a
lot of ways to illuminate a shop, but the progres-
sive merchant of today, like the progressive indus-
trialist, is finding that he can hardly have too many
of these fixtures for the job he would like to see
done.

Did it ever occur to you to consider how much
simpler it is to light a store than a home? After all,
the merchant has merely to illuminate his goods,
which are for the most part in the same places all

48

LIGHTING

the time, get enough light in the store as a whole
so that people can see their way around comfort-
ably, and attract attention to a few special items by
means of spotlights. Compare this with the prob-
lems of the home, where the light for eating must
be variable in intensity and directed down to the
table; the light for reading (which may be done
after dinner at the table) must be brilliant, and the
surrounding areas must be bright. Conversation in
the living-room needs a dim arrangement, a few
soft pools of light serving more for decoration than
illumination. For constant sewing we have already
noted Mr. Luckiesh's recommendation of 3,000
foot-candles, a standard which could be met only
by use of very special equipment. For reading in
the bedroom one kind of illumination is needed,
and for dressing in the same room a totally differ-
ent type is needed. There should be night lights in
the bedrooms bright enough to see by, but ar-
ranged in such a way that the children won't be
awakened. And so on.

The job of lighting the small house is just as ex-
acting as the job of lighting the local department
store. Yet the normal investment is less than a
hundred dollars for the wiring, and a few dollars
more are thrown in for the necessary wall and ceil-
ing fixtures. When next you hear someone predict-
ing a better, cheaper home of the future, think for
a moment of what it would cost to produce any-
thing approximating adequate illumination.

Expenditures for lighting have to be increased

because they have never been up to normal. Even
the houses of the very rich suffer in this respect, not
because of lack of funds, but because there was no
understanding on the part of the owner or archi-
tect of what should be done. Today the story is dif-
ferent. There is a vast accumulated experience
which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to ac-
quire but is now at your architect's disposal for
practically nothing.

ENTER THE EXPERT

Let's assume that you are building a new home, re-
modeling the old one, or fixing up an apartment,
and you have called in a lighting consultant. A trip
through the rooms might prove instructive. A spe-
cialist worthy of the name will not talk fixtures pri-
marily; this much should be clear from what has
already been written. He will talk about certain
qualities to be created through the use of specific
equipment. He will be interested in getting results.
If our expert started on the living-room, he
would probably point out a number of deficiencies
right away. If there are any of those silly little wall
brackets builders inserted so freely into dwellings
a few years back, he would undoubtedly suggest
tearing them out. They are annoying to look at,
clutter up the wall, catch dust, and don't give any
light worth mentioning. He might criticize the floor
lamps as being clumsy, space-wasting fixtures. It

49

LIGHTING

would undoubtedly turn out that most of the table
lamps were too low to read by or had poorly de-
signed shades. Little of the lighting equipment
would meet with his complete approval. In setting
up an illumination pattern for the living-room, our
expert would probably establish the following re-
quirements: (1) A reasonable over-all intensity
throughout the room. No dim corners. No black
shadows; (2) concentrated, direct light where it is
needed; (2) flexibility, both in placing of light and
in intensity.

Meeting these requirements is highly technical,
and not easy, but the ideas are simple. Point (1),
for example, means that the room must be flooded
with light, and the common procedure is to install
some kind of fixture that throws light up to a white
ceiling which, in turn, reflects the light back to all
parts of the room. This can be done with a lighting
cove that goes all around the edges of the ceiling,
or with lamps that direct light up instead of down.
The ceiling itself might be luminous, that is, made
of glass or plastic with lights behind. For a home
such a procedure at the moment is far too costly
and quite unnecessary.

In a room filled with indirect light the Ulumina-
tion is good in the sense that there are no deep
shadows, and light is diffused throughout the area.
But it is not pleasant illumination. There is no con-
trast. Objects seem to lose their sharpness and
solidity. Indirect lighting is "flat." Therefore, in
the well-designed living-room it provides only the
background, not the main illumination.

One way to get this background of light is to use
the so-called "direct-indirect" fixtures. These are
most frequently seen in houses in the form of
lamps so designed that light is thrown up to the
ceiling, and the ceiling reflects it down to the table
or book. Use of translucent shades gives a note of
color and warmth which makes the room far more
attractive and homelike.

But direct-indirect lamps do not always give the
needed amount of light for reading, writing, or
sewing. This is where point (2) comes in. Concen-
trated light can be provided in a great variety of
ways. A bulb in a reflector will do it. So will any of
the inside-silvered lamps which are seen so often
in show windows and art galleries. There are lens-
type spotlights which can be built directly into the
ceiling so that only a flush piece of glass shows.
Also available are the small spotlights used for dis-
play purposes in stores. Some of these will seem
inappropriate for use in the living-room. If the
idea of a spotlight fastened to the wall strikes you
as too radical, use a more conventional solution
such as table lamps with properly designed shades.
The point is: concentrated, direct light must be
provided where it is needed.

At this stage in the process the room may be
said to be well lighted and agreeable in appearance.
There is a general glow of light everywhere, prob-
ably provided by indirect lighting. There are pools
of light created by individual lamps. And if one
wants to read or sew, a strong light source is avail-
able. But there still remains one problem to be
solved.

If people always did their reading in exactly the
same place; if they always sat in the same group-
ing; if they always carried on the same activities—
if these things were true, a fixed lighting scheme
would be the answer. But they are not true. Some-
times people talk but do not read. For this less light
is required. Sometimes they listen to the radio and
don't talk. This requires still less light. These and

LIGHTING

4- a.

other shifts in the use of the room demand lighting
that is not only adequate and attractive, but flexible
as well.

On the stage, if less illumination is required, the
electrician merely operates his dimmers until the
desired level is reached. Few homes today can af-
ford such controls. But they can afford the extra
switches and wiring that will do approximately the
same job. In other words, the living-room should
be so equipped that the wall switches control two
or three lighting patterns. Another control possi-
bility is afforded by the three-way lamp, which is
being used more and more in floor and table lamps.
There are also fixtures which tilt up or down to be-
come direct or indirect. Electrical supply stores
have sockets so built that the bulb can be pointed
in almost any direction. These devices are excellent
for the direct-type lighting units mentioned above.
Gadgets such as swivel sockets and extra switches
are not recommended for their own sake: they add
flexibility and control to the conventional lighting
pattern.

"More light" is a slogan that could be applied
with profit to almost any room in any house. When
considering the living-room, don't be afraid of
making it too bright. The intimacy of an attractive
room comes not from dimness, but from the bal-
ance of the different kinds of illumination. This, by
the way, is easy to prove. If the bulbs in your pres-
ent lamps were taken out and replaced by photo-
floods, which have perhaps fifteen times the light
output, the room would be much brighter, but the
character of the lighting would not be changed

greatly. Should you want to try this experiment,
photofloods can be purchased at any photographic
supply store. But don't leave them in the lamps!
Photofloods have a rated life of only two to six
hours.

LIGHT FOR EATING

We need light to eat by as well as for reading. But
illumination of the dining-room is a vastly different
problem from illumination of the living-room. The
dining table, normally, is a fixed object. The people
who use it are, for the period of the meal, equally
fixed in their positions. This means that the lighting
scheme can be more static.

The only light needed for eating is light on the
table. Background illumination has only to be suffi-
ciently bright to reduce excessive contrast between
the table and its surroundings. But light for the
table is not merely illumination: let us remember
that the one place in the modern home where the
candle still has any functional justification is on

LIGHTING

the dinner table, where the flickering light and
warm color do an excellent job of glamorizing the
food, the tableware, and the diners. The main fix-
ture, whatever it is, must be capable of producing
a comparable result. This can be achieved by hav-
ing a strong, direct light shining down on the sur-
face of the table. The light is best if it comes from
an incandescent bulb rather than a diffused surface
such as a fluorescent tube. The closer the light re-
sembles a "point source" — that is, the bare fila-
ment of the lamp — the more pronounced the glitter
will be, and the glitter of dishes, glassware, and
silver is one of the things that makes a dining-room
table good to look at. Direct downward lighting
has another function: striking the surface of the
table, it bounces back up and provides a certain
amount of illumination for the room as a whole.
The best design, however, does not rely entirely on
this reflected light, but provides a secondary light
source which gives general illumination for the
room.

Types and sizes of fixtures for the dining-room
are legion. One safe rule in their selection is that
the simpler and less conspicuous they are, the bet-
ter. One example of the rule carried to an extreme
is the concealed spotlight that shines down through
a small hole in the ceiling. Here the source has been
made practically invisible, and results are some-
times dramatic. Variations include bulbs on the
ceiling, so shielded with metal baffles that the
source of the light is very inconspicuous. Con-
cealed lamps, while theatrical in their effectiveness,
have a disadvantage. It is not that they can't do a
good job, but that dining tables are rarely used
only for eating.

Light for dining, in the average home, is almost
always used for other pursuits in addition to eat-
ing. For one thing, some dining takes place in the
kitchen and in the living-room. Many houses have
no dining-rooms at all. And if they do, the table is
probably taken over for homework, for the semi-
52

yearly game of poker, or cutting out dresses. So
once again the flexibility question raises its head.
Light for eating can be fixed. But in tomorrow's
house there will be no such thing as a light exclu-
sively for eating. In consequence, when the lighting
pattern for the dining area is created, the same solu-
tions discussed for certain living-room activities
will again be appropriate.

LIGHTING

FOR SPECIAL FUNCTIONS

By now the ways of our hypothetical expert
should be more clear. He is concerned with illu-
mination, not with chandeliers and imitation can-
dles. In each room he seizes upon the major and
minor activities and tailors the lighting to fit. His
approach is creative, not conventional. It is the
same as the approach of the modern architect to
planning. Nowhere does this attitude express itself
more clearly than in the solutions for special light-
ing functions.

In a child's bedroom, for example, the expert
would borrow the idea of enclosed lights, set flush
with the baseboard, from standard hospital prac-
tice. Such lights would be rather nice in halls, too,
and they aren't impossibly expensive.

We have become accustomed to lights in refrig-
erators and clothes closets. In the new bureaus that
are being treated as built-ins rather than loose
pieces of furniture, why not lights in the drawers?

LIGHTING

Anyone who ever tried to find a pair of dark socks
on a dim winter's morning would bless the manu-
facturer for the rest of his days. At the moment
bureau lights sound expensive, but even the cheap-
est cars have lights in their glove compartments.

Most of us take for granted the existence of a
fairly good lighting set-up for the bathroom mir-
ror. But there are other mirrors in the house where
people apply lipstick, straighten hats, and so on,
where equally good illumination is needed. There
is no particular trick in making mirrors that have
their own little lighting systems built in.

Recent models of cars are almost sure to have a
tiny light in the dashboard which illuminates the
area where the ignition key goes in. Yet there is
nowhere that one can buy a similarly convenient
gadget for the front or rear door keyhole. For an
ingenious architect, providing such a convenience
would be no problem at all.

Theaters with stairs have small lights built into
the top and bottom steps of each flight — a wise and
economical safety measure. Did you ever see a
house so equipped? Yet insurance companies are
always releasing horrifying statistics on the number
of accidents that take place on stairs in the home.
Theaters have another device which is agreeable
and inexpensive: tube lights (the same as those in
neon signs) in hollow railings along the aisles. A
stair illuminated in this manner would be safe, and
unusually good looking as well.

One of us once visited a house in the Middle
West which had a very remarkable lighting unit in
the dining-room. It was an elaborate gadget of

frosted glass, containing three lamps — red, blue,
and yellow — each controlled by its own switch and
dimmer. The controls were located in the pantry.
The system, of course, was borrowed from theater
footlights. By fooling around with three knobs on
the pantry wall, the owner was able to get almost
any color and intensity of light he wanted. All
three lights turned on full, for instance, produced
white. The red and blue produced various shades of
violet; the yellow and blue, various shades of
green; and all three used together but in varying
quantities had limitless possibilities.

This kind of toy in the hands of a practical joker
could wreck more than one beautiful friendship.
What a reddish lavender light would do to a char-
treuse dress, for instance, is beyond imagining. And
if the lady in chartreuse happened to be the boss's
wife, it would be just too bad.

Silly as this may sound, there is the germ of a real
idea here. In a living-room it might be desirable to
vary the over-all color within certain limits, be-
cause in this room the atmosphere will shift all the
way from maudlin to meditative, and changing the
color as well as the intensity of the lighting could be
useful either in heightening the mood or suppress-
ing it. The effectiveness of lighting and color is not
to be sniffed at. We all know what the ruddy glow
of firelight does to the mood of a group. The de-
signers of the Palace of the Soviets in Moscow have
planned to use changing color to help regulate the

LIGHTING

speed with which crowds will move through its vast
halls and corridors. And for a father interested in
locating someone to take over the support of his
daughter, a lighting installation using some color
might work wonders.

THE COST OF COMPLETE LIGHTING

Quality in a house or a car or a suit of clothes
costs money. The same is true for lighting. And any
prospective builder who studies this as a separate
budget item will not be too happy when he sees the
figures. One reason the cost will seem high is that
people have always spent much too little on light-
ing. When a family installs a bath, it demands
high-quality fixtures, pipes that will last forever,
and faucets that won't leak all the time. The differ-
ence between the middle-class bath and that in a
rich man's house is, therefore, pretty much a mat-
ter of trimmings. But lighting design for the home
has never gotten beyond the stage of so many out-
lets per room and a few sockets in the walls and
ceilings. Thus, to bring lighting up to snuff— for-
getting the lights in the bureau drawers, etc. — will
cost more than people have been in the habit of
spending.

Against this can be balanced intelligent planning
and wisely selected equipment. Houses are full of
lamps that cost from twenty to sixty dollars, which
as illuminating devices, are good for very little
Hall and dining-room fixtures are often purchasec
on the basis of looks and snob appeal, which re-
sults in a considerable waste of money. One of the
best hall lights we have ever seen consisted of £
swivel socket in a ceiling outlet, an aluminum re-
flector, and a 60-watt bulb. The total cost was
under $1.75. There are ways of saving money in
lighting as well as spending it.

It is not the function of this book to establish
budgets, nor to replace the many product cata-
logues which manufacturers put out. It is our func-
tion to outline procedures and to present ideas.
Nowhere is procedure more important than in
home lighting. It is definitely not an amateur opera-
tion. In working out illumination patterns, the
modern-minded architect will be invaluable, for he
has been forced time and again to seek good solu-
tions that will fit within his clients' restricted bud-
gets, and his ingenuity is considerable. You will
need him, anyway, for the planning and designing
of the house — use him for the lighting as well!

DINING AND
ENTERTAINMENT

Simplicity is the keynote of this modern dining
room from a vacation house in Maine. All of the
materials were chosen for low first cost and ease of
maintenance, but they have been combined so
adroitly that the total effect is of richness and
warmth. Notice also the way the horizontally
sliding doors and windows extend all the way to
the ceiling. This detail, a favorite with modern archi-
tects, improves appearance, lighting and ventilation.

47

Even the most conservative homebuilder is usually
willing to admit the desirability of a generous win-
dow in the dining space, and contemporary architec-
ture, which has made large windows its trademark,
rarely fails to satisfy this universal desire. In all of
the rooms shown here, the windows extend the
entire width of the outside wall, and in two-thirds
of the cases, from floor to ceiling as well. Two of
the rooms (46 and 47) employ large panes of fixed
plate glass set directly in the frame, relying on
smaller sash, or doors, for ventilation. Two more
(49 and £1) have floor-to-ceiling sash that can be
folded back out of the way in fine weather, leaving
the wall entirely open. The other two (48 and 50)
use smaller units of glass set in a grid frame.

Once freed from stylistic restrictions, the problem
of providing space for dining is susceptible of almost
as many solutions as there are houses to build and
people to build them. The dining area may be set
off by a partial partition topped with glass panels,
as in 57; it may be combined with a porch cut out
of the corner of the living room, as in 58 and 59;
it may be so surrounded with windows as virtually
to become such a porch itself, as in 60. Or, as shown
in 6 I , it may be one of an articulated series of spaces
sharing a continuous window but separated by
storage units extending part way to the wall.

61

^*"*' I

• , c

It is in the modest house that the modern approach to
dining pays its biggest dividends: almost any nook or off-
set in the plan offers sufficient space, if properly handled,
for an adequate, attractive dining arrangement — one
which does not necessitate the fuss and bother of unfold-
ing a table and collecting chairs for every meal, and yet
does not require an entire room to go unused between
meals. A prime requisite — which has been satisfied in all
of the examples shown— is that the dining place be pleas-
ant, with a good-sized window and if possible, an attractive
outlook. For this reason a bay window, like that shown
in 64, is almost ideal, although the same effect can be
achieved by other irregularities in the plan, as in 67. In
view 66, the dining area is set off by a plywood panel
which serves to shield the outside entrance to the room.

69

This glazed recreation porch, which connects two
halves of a divided house in California, shows how
much sheer space can contribute to modern living.
Little more costly than an ordinary porch, it pro-
vides ample indoor room for games and parties, and
made possible a plan in which the balance of the
rooms were compact and economical, since fur-
ther provision for entertainment was unnecessary.

Living outdoors— and partially outdoors— is one
of the major pleasures of owning a modern house.
Modern heating methods and structural techniques
which have made possible the window wall and
glazed, horizontally-sliding doors have created en-
tirely new types of rooms, as well as an entirely new
relationship between the house and its site. Some
of the possibilities are illustrated here: a dining
porch in Michigan (70); a glazed wall in the rigorous
climate of northern Pennsylvania (72); a dining
space, half porch, half room, from California (71).
The porch in 73, used for games and entertaining,
is enclosed on one side by a glazed windscreen, open
on the other for fresh air and unobstructed view.

•1

75

CHAPTER SIX

THE WORK CENTER

THE OLD SAYING that there is nothing new under
the sun, like so many old sayings, has a moderate
amount of truth in it, and anyone looking for argu-
ments to prove its truth can find ammunition in
what has been happening to the kitchen during the
past fifty years. Most people in America look back
to a childhood in which much time was spent in a
kitchen quite different from the room called by the
same name today. For one thing, the old kitchen
was big. For another, it was not merely a place
where cooking was done. It was the work center of
the home and it was also a social center. Here, by
the stove, children were bathed, food was canned,
laundry was done, and meals were eaten. In the
evening people sat in rockers by the big, round
table and read, sewed, studied, played games, and
talked. The kitchen was the heart of the home.

In recent years the kitchen, like other parts of the
house, has shown an extraordinary tendency to
shrink. Enthusiasts for the "minimum" kitchen
pointed out that several hundred people could be
provided with complete meals from a dining-car
kitchen so small that you could hardly turn around
in it. The efficiency boys counted the number of
seconds it took the housewife to get from here to
there, the inches to the flour can, the steps from the
refrigerator to the stove and back again. Their
dream was a kind of circular closet where the house
wife stood in the center and reached for everything
without moving. They never got quite that far,
which is just as well, but they did get awfully close

to it, which was not. Efficiency in the home and the
well-being of the housewife depend on more factors
than steps and minutes.

For one thing, the housewife is not a chef on a
Pullman diner. She does not have to feed two hun-
dred people a day. And the chef, lucky fellow, does
not have to make beds, run to answer the door, or
keep two or three children under control while he
is cooking. Moreover, as the kitchen shrank to the
point where it was virtually impossible to get a din-
ing table in it, it simply meant that the steps saved
in preparing meals were more than made up for by
the necessity to get dishes to the distant table and
back to the sink again. If this was efficiency, it was
a very strange kind.

Then there was the question of laundry. There
was no room for it in the minimum kitchen. For
families that had a laundress it didn't matter too

THE WORK CENTER

much if the equipment was down in the basement,
but it mattered a great deal if the laundry was an-
other of the housewife's jobs. Have you ever tried
starting a meal in the kitchen, starting a wash in the
cellar, running up once to see what the children
were doing, a second time to answer the phone, and
a ninth or tenth time to take care of some other
upstairs chore? And have you ever met anyone
who enjoyed the discomfort of working in a damp,
badly lighted space? Maybe hauling sixty pounds
of wet clothes from the basement to the drying yard
was good for mother's figure. The chances are, she
would have preferred to meet this problem in some
other way.

This does not mean there are no reasons for hav-
ing a basement laundry. A recent survey made in
one of the big war housing projects showed that
tenants were about evenly divided in their opinions
on this point. Those in favor of keeping the laundry
underground had two reasons for this preference —
one was that they did not like the mess laundry
makes in the kitchen; and the other was that
clothes could be dried in a pinch downstairs if it
was raining. There are answers to both these argu-
ments, however. One is that if the tenants had com-
plete work centers instead of oversized closets
labeled kitchens, doing the laundry would not
make a mess. But a far more important answer is
that equipment is rapidly getting to this point — in
fact, some of it has been designed — where the
washer, dryer, and ironer take up a phenomenally
small amount of space. The increasingly popular
first-floor heater room, incidentally, would be an
excellent place for drying clothes if it were planned
with this in mind.

There is another potent force which is doing a
great deal to swell the kitchen to its old proportions
— that is, the servant problem. Very few families,
percentagewise, have ever been able to afford hired
help. Servants, as a group, are disappearing. World
War I took women out of domestic occupations
72

and put them into offices. World War II took a
vastly greater number and put them into factories.
The middle-class families and the rich, thrown
more and more on their own resources, have been
casting a jaundiced eye on the minimum kitchen.

WORK CENTER-SOCIAL CENTER

The modern kitchen cannot be a small room. It
must be a big room — possibly the biggest room in
the whole house. It should contain all the cooking
facilities, all the laundry equipment, probably the
heater, and certainly all necessary space and facili-
ties for family meals and even meals when guests
are present.

You will remember that a while back we talked
about the kitchen-living room, an idea which has
steadily gained in popularity. This is merely an
expansion of the work center idea. Advocating this
kind of planning doesn't mean that it would make
sense for every American family to start doing
everything in the kitchen. It certainly does not
mean that dining under all circumstances has to go
on next to the sink. But it must be emphasized that
if families who do their own work are going to re-
duce the mechanics of living to the minimum, this
scheme has a great deal to be said for it. If you can
afford a kitchen work center plus a dining-room
and a living-room, well and good. But unless you
are in the top income group, you won't be able to
afford all of them. This is the main argument for
the work center. The housewife spends a dispro-
portionate amount of her time working around the
kitchen, and there is every reason why this room
should be designed to be a completely livable, as
well as workable, interior.

One of the great inventions of the thirties was the
so-called streamlined kitchen. It was full of cab-
inets which stuck out a uniform distance from the
wall and below-counter cupboards which made it
difficult or impossible to sit comfortably on a stool

THE WORK CENTER

TVvi.

while you worked. The streamlined kitchen was
sold in the name of efficiency and good looks, and
it was made this way because it was easy to manu-
facture. It was an improvement, but it was by no
means a complete solution. Food preparation re-
quires, among other things, the provision of work-
ing surfaces at different heights. Some operations
can best be performed standing up, others sitting
down. And if you sit down, there has to be some
way of getting your knees under the counter. The
streamlined kitchen, unless it included a planning
desk or an old-fashioned table in the middle, of-
fered no such conveniences.

There were other faults in this de luxe interior.
The refrigerator was — and still is, for that matter—
a bulky, clumsy box, poorly adapted to most types
of storage and exceedingly wasteful of power. Get-
ting at one small item meant holding a big door
open while quantities of expensively cooled air
spilled out. The present day stove, in which the
broiler and oven are practically down at the floor,
is another example of equipment which in some
respects is worse than the models sold twenty years
ago.

The ideal stove and refrigerator have been

attempted time and again by designers, but they
have yet to be put into production. Ultimately we
will be able to buy packaged kitchen units which
include refrigerators broken up into three or even
more separate compartments, and stoves which
have broilers and ovens at working height. Unfor-
tunately we cannot wait for "ultimately."

However, there is one weakness in the stream-
lined kitchen we can do something about. That is
the disposition and design of the storage cabinets.
By building a ring of over-counter cabinets all
around the room we get a considerable amount of
well-located storage space. Unfortunately, the
windows suffer. Some architects have tried to solve
this by putting glass above and below the cabinets.
But a far more attractive and workable approach
would be to take all the cabinets off the main win-
dow wall and put them elsewhere. There could be a
storage wall (see Chapter XII) on one side of the
kitchen. Running from floor to ceiling, it would
have adjustable shelves like the existing cabinets,
but it would have far more of them than we are
accustomed to. It would also provide the shallow
storage space which is so desperately needed. Cans,
bottles, glasses, and small packages of food should

73

THE WORK CENTER

not be stacked three deep or, for that matter, two
deep. An irritating operation performed in any
kitchen (it would probably be more accurate to say,
in every kitchen) is the endless business of taking
down everything at the front of a shelf to find some-
thing sitting at the back. No millennium is needed
to remedy this; if your architect works out a suit-
able design, any mill or even a good carpenter can
build it. One trick is the arrangement similar to the
one we have on refrigerators, where the door itself
contains some of the shelving. It would be no
trouble at all to build some storage cabinets so that
half of each shelf is on the door and the rest in the
unit itself.

DESIGNING THE COOKING AREA

There-seem to be only three general plans for the
arrangement of cooking equipment and the accom-
panying fixtures. There are the U, the L, and the
straight-line plan. We have seen examples of all
three types in kitchen work centers. Since they all
seem to have advantages, it would be difficult to
recommend one over the other two. With the U,
for example, one leg sticks out into the middle of
the room. In many ways this is excellent. If the sink
is put into the projecting leg, it means that dishes
can be taken directly from the table to the sink
without going into the cooking area itself. The U
scheme also tends to segregate the cooking opera-
tion— which has its points.

The L, on the other hand, because it follows two
walls of the room, leaves more open space in the
middle, which again has its advantages. The straight-
line set-up has the outstanding virtue of being the
least conspicuous, because once the dishes are put
away the entire room becomes available for other
purposes. On this point you will have to make up
your own mind. The arrangement should be re-
lated to family habits and personal preferences and
74

a pat solution which will work equally well foi
everybody cannot be developed.

EQUIPMENT

When we think of a kitchen, we think of three
items: sink, stove, and refrigerator. The work cen-
ter, however, has a lot more than three items. It
would be wise to plan for possible additions. Foi
one thing, it will almost inevitably have a quick-
freeze unit — which will finally be reduced to com-
pact, cabinet size. It will also contain the laundr>
equipment, which, as we have seen, is also shrink-
ing to manageable proportions. The rapid improve-
ment in dish- washing machines, some of which will
also dry the dishes (this has been a standard ar-
rangement in many restaurants for some years)
means that more and more people will consider
them necessary rather than luxury items. The same
is true of that wonderful gadget which disposes of
garbage by grinding it up and flushing it away.

We have here, incidentally, still another reason
for increasing the size of the kitchen. The old
kitchen simply isn't big enough, anyway, if these
additional items are going to be included. But let
us not assume that new equipment is the whole
story. The greater the number of things, the more
important the planning. If the room is so arranged
that traffic through it and work in it conflict at any
point, the room is no good. You can't have a
laundry, no matter how efficient, if it interferes with
food preparation because it isn't in the right place.
The same is true of the placing of storage units.
And the same is true of the dining furniture.

THE HEATER

The house described all through this book is a
basementless house. The main reasons for leaving
out the basement are described in Chapter XII. Such
a house works only if equivalent space is provided
above ground. This is particularly true of the fur-

THE WORK CENTER

nace. It used to be necessary to keep the heater in
the cellar because most systems worked on gravity.
Heat rose to the rooms above by convection,
whether air, steam, or hot water was used, and it
fell again, thus completing a cycle. Most plants
today, however, are of the forced circulation type —
that is, they use a fan where air is the medium and
a pump where water does the job. This removes the
original reason for keeping the furnace in the base-
ment. The gradual shift in fuels is the other reason.
It would be possible to put the furnace in a sep-
arate room somewhere on the ground floor, but it
would be equally possible to put it into a kind of
closet opening off the kitchen. We are assuming
here that the furnace will use either gas or oil. For
coal, even stoker-fired coal, much more space will
be required. But if one of the compact new plants
can be installed in a closet off the kitchen, it has
one tremendous advantage, and that is, that the
kitchen itself contains the space which any heater
needs to have around it for inspection or repair.
The saving of space to be achieved in this manner
—by eliminating the cellar — is worth making. -

PICTURE OF A WORK CENTER

Let us now try to imagine what the room itself
might be like. It has one or more big picture win-

dows, because storage cupboards have been grouped
in such a way that picture windows could be used.
It has a fan and duct which keep out most of the
soot and grease. It probably has an acoustically
treated ceiling and a resilient floor. If the architect
has been intelligent in his approach, the room is
completely free from its familiar hospital operat-
ing-room atmosphere, thanks to the incorporation
of natural wood surfaces, bright color, and fabrics.
The wall adjoining the dining space is movable,
opening perhaps on the play yard, which might
also serve as a convenient dining terrace. The
lighting is wonderfully flexible. There is local illu-
mination for the work surfaces, direct light for the
dining table, and soft, general illumination which
can give this room the same air of livability as the
living-room itself. If it functions for a good part of
the day as a playroom, it contains cupboards for
toys and games. It works beautifully for a large
number of household tasks, and it looks so well
that you would be glad to entertain in it, too.

A short while ago we described the work center
to a friend of ours. She listened quietly at first, then
with growing excitement. Finally she interrupted,
"I could work in that kind of a room!" Of course
she could! But that's not what we're driving at.
The point is, she could really live in it.

75

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE ROOM WITH-
OUT A NAME

A FEW MONTHS ago a young architect who worked
in Washington wandered into our office to pass the
time of day and exchange whatever bits of news
there might be. It was obvious, however, that he
had something else on his mind. We waited. Pretty
soon out it came, along with a fat black pencil.
Paper was found and shoved under the pencil.
Architects, as you may have heard, are very fond of
flavoring talk with drawing. Again we waited.

"Want to see the perfect house plan?" he asked
finally. He smiled apologetically, but we didn't. Our
visitor was one of the most brilliant architects in
the country, and his ideas always made sense and
were frequently inspired.

"Sure we want to see the perfect house plan.
Let's have it!"

"Well," — he began drawing — "you start with a
living-room. Only it isn't really a living-room. Too
small. It has room for only four or six people, and

the walls are covered with built-in bookshelves,
desk, etc. Guess you might call it a study, or parlor,
or maybe a kind of retiring room. Parents might
use it to get away from the kids."
76

This was a little disappointing. "So what?" we
asked. "We've seen studies before."

"I'm not through"— still drawing. "Next to it
there is a small kitchen, cooking on one side, dining
on the other."

coo

"Well?"

"Well," he continued, "between this kitchen and
a third room there is no partition, or maybe just a
glass partition. The third room is big. Biggest room
in the house."

r^n

|_| coola*,^ I

/

i

"It does look big," we conceded. "What happens
there?"

"Everything, practically. Ping-pong, bridge,
movies, dancing. The children can play there. Or

THE ROOM WITHOUT A NAME

you could cook in the fireplace. Good place for a
dinner party, too."

"What do you call it?"

"I don't know," he said, puzzled. "I was going
to call it the 'dirty room' because the materials
would be practically indestructible, and the kids
could make any kind of mess without doing any
damage. But that's not a very good name. It would
be pretty swell-looking when it was fixed up."

"It doesn't look like much of a plan to me," one
of us snorted. "Where's the entrance? Where are
the bedrooms?"

"Wherever you want to put them," he retorted.
"And it isn't a plan, anyway — it's a diagram."

"And what makes it the perfect plan?"

He looked up from the drawing, surprised. "Why,
the big room, of course. The room without a name."

A few days later another architect walked in. He
had come in from the West Coast by way of Brazil
and points north. For some reason or other, the
talk again turned to houses. Our West Coast visitor
also had a house on his mind. And his house, too,
had a big room — in fact, leaving the bedrooms out,
all it seemed to be was a big room.

There were only two partitions in the main living
area : a light screen wall for the kitchen, and a heav-
ier barrier that set aside a study, space for reading,
or just privacy. This latter consisted of bookshelves
that did not reach the ceiling.

This seemed to be too good to be a coincidence.

cooKv

bi

o

Had he seen the first plan? No, he hadn't. He had
been mulling over the idea for quite a long time.
Looked like the kind of house one might want for
oneself.

"Funny," he said, looking at the sketch our
friend from Washington had made.

"Yes," we agreed, "it is funny."

Less than a week after this a man came in from
Detroit. He was not a house architect at all, but a
member of a big office specializing in industrial
plants and office buildings. But he couldn't talk
anything but houses because he had just purchased
a piece of land and was going to build himself one.

Would we like to see the house? Yes, we would like
to see the house. Out came the pencil.

Many features of the house were unusual, be-
cause of special consideration given to the view and
the sun. But a couple of things immediately at-
tracted our attention.

"What's that?" we asked, pointing to a small
square at the back of the plan.

"That's the living-room. Good place for it, don't
you think? No street noises."

"Sure," we replied. "But it's tiny. You couldn't
get more than a half dozen people into it without
a shoehorn."

"That's true," he admitted. "Iguess you shouldn't
really call it a living-room. It's more a kind of study
or parlor, I suppose. My wife and I wanted it be-
cause we thought it would be a good idea to have

77

THE ROOM WITHOUT A NAME

one room where we could shut the door and have a
little privacy once in a while. Anyway, we have a
big room for parties and for the kids."

Yes, he had the "big room" right across from the
kitchen. It even had folding doors along the side to
make it bigger. We told him about the architect
from Washington and the architect from the West
Coast. He looked crestfallen, but also pleased that
he was traveling in such high-powered company.
"Damn it all!" He grinned. "I thought I had an
original idea for once."

"Don't fret," we said. "You did. You worked it
up on your own, didn't you? That makes it orig-
inal enough for anybody. By the way, what do you
call that big room of yours?"

"You know," he confessed, "I've been wonder-
ing about that myself. I've thought of several —
you've heard them all — but they don't quite seem
to fit. The room's functions are kind of mixed, any-
way. It's hard to describe them in a word. Any
suggestions?"

"No," we said. "No suggestions. But what we
want to know is why are all of you people suddenly
designing houses that always have one room with-
out a name?"

No, we did not invent these stories. The conver-
sations took place in exactly the order we have
related them. What is more, other architects have
since come around with variations on the same
theme. Why? We aren't sure why this is happening
in so many different places at the same time, but we
have an idea.

A FLAW IN THE HOUSE

Contemporary houses have been planned to pro-
vide an acceptable minimum of living facilities
within an absolute minimum of space. In playing
this game, architects and builders took the living-
room, bedrooms, kitchen, and bath, and worked
them over and over until the last "wasted" square
78

inch had been extracted. "Living-room, dining-
room, kitchen, and bedroom" became a set for-
mula which was supposed to provide all the living
space the average family needed. The only trouble
with the formula was that it ignored living. But
people don't forget about living, no matter what
the smart speculative builders and the routine-
minded architects say.

People, praise God, don't stay put in pigeonholes,
no matter how the compartments are labeled. And,
because they are neither animals nor machines,
they end up by demanding space for activities that
don't fit into the pigeonholes, although nobody
seems to be able to find a suitable name for that
space. The purposes and potentialities of the space
are too indefinite to label as yet, but they are none
the less real.

Our "room without a name" is not entirely new.
Many houses used to have something like it. Do
you remember the houses of the seventies and
eighties that had towers growing out of a tangle of
roofs? Generally absurd in size and shape, the
towers were always picturesque. The funny little
cut-up rooms inside were the exciting property of
the children, who used them for everything from
playing steamboat captain to hiding from imag-
inary enemies. Such leftover rooms, however, were
not always for the children alone. In some of the
more accessible rooms Mother kept her sewing
things and odd assortments of household para-
phernalia. In others, Father created his private den,
where the happy disorder of papers, books, pipes,
guns, and the rest was never disturbed by the
intrusion of a dustcloth or broom.

Old houses had other spaces, too. In many base-
ments there were comparatively uncluttered spaces,
where electric trains could be set up and the mes-
sier hobbies carried on. The "rumpus room" of
more recent vintage extended these activities to
include games, dancing, movies, and so on. Such a
basement room, though more completely deco-

THE ROOM WITHOUT A NAME

rated, was still a makeshift or afterthought, and it
was usually the unforeseen result of shifting from
coal to a cleaner and less bulky fuel. Moreover,
none of the basement playrooms covered the broad
range of uses we are talking about.

Some people have already gone beyond the base-
ment playroom in their houses. A striking example
is a house built to sell for $20,000 in a Chicago
suburban development. It has a ground-floor space
called a recreation room, which is about as large
as the living-room and is separated from it by a large
sliding door. It can be reached from both front and
back entrances without going through the living-
room, and it is well equipped to serve the purposes
of the "big room." The idea obviously had genuine
appeal, for the house was sold in short order.

WHY HAVE A NEW ROOM?

There seem to be as many reasons for this kind of
room as there are people. A successful woman edi-
tor of a New York magazine is planning to build a
room without a name as an addition to her home.
Connected to the house by a glassed-in passage, it
will function partly as a greenhouse, partly as a
breakfast and miscellaneous-purpose room. For
any family interested in hothouse plants and flow-
ers such a room would provide a fascinating back-
ground for living as well as space for its hobby.

The greenhouse idea suggests any number of
other hobbies which might be served by such a
room. Properly designed, it might take care of
messy ones, such as indoor gardening, carpentry,
model building, metal working, painting, and the
like; or others, such as music, which require only
space for their full enjoyment. It is in connection
with the noisy and dust-producing activities like
the use of a power saw, however, that the advan-
tages of the room are most effectively demonstrated.

On closer examination the room without a name
shows a number of definite characteristics. An im-
portant one is that it is totally lacking in privacy.

Any member of the family may use it, and for
practically any purpose. Since a major complaint
about the house as it is now planned is the lack of
privacy, it is interesting to see a room appear which
insists on its "public" nature. We would not be en-
tirely correct in concluding that this is just the
living-room function slightly revamped, for the
living-room traditionally has been set aside for the
adults, and for a limited number of activities.

There is another interesting point about this
room: it marks the first time a room for the whole
family has appeared in the home since the days of
the farmhouse kitchen. Coming at a time when the
family is less tied to the home than ever before in
its history, this fact presents something of a contra-
diction. "For the family," by the way, doesn't
mean that all rooms in today's houses are specifi-
cally limited to certain members; we are merely
pointing out that the "big room" is intentionally
set up to cover the family's social and recreational
needs, and that the usual adults-versus-children
distinction has been abandoned.

A third idea also presents itself. By frankly de-
veloping a room which is entirely "public" as far
as the family and its guests are concerned, privacy
is made possible. Because there is an "extra room,"
the other living space can really be enjoyed in peace
and quiet. The children's rooms, too, are no longer
under the same pressure to double as playrooms
and sleeping-study spaces.

These three ideas combine to produce a picture
of a need and a trend. The need is clear enough: a
house must be planned to meet adequately a nor-
mal family's requirements of both privacy and
joint activity. It need hardly be mentioned that a
"normal" family's requirements are by no means
standardized. Some families are sociable, others
are less so. Some have their fun with lots of noise
and a considerable expenditure of physical energy,
while others have as good a time more quietly. The
room without a name, therefore, cannot follow any

79

THE ROOM WITHOUT A NAME

stock design or stereotyped arrangement; it is far
too intimate an expression of a family's tastes. In
spite of this, the room does seem to have certain
standard features. Its furnishings and materials are
definitely on the "tough" side, designed and se-
lected to stand up under extremely hard usage. In
all probability it will not include anything that
might be damaged by dirt or dust, and it should be
easy to clean. Since it will, on occasion, serve for
entertainment of a fairly formal kind, it will have to
have storage cupboards where toys, games, and
tools can be kept out of sight. What furniture there
is would tend to be built-in, or light in weight and
highly mobile. None of these characteristics, inci-
dentally, prevents the big room from being a very
handsome one.

Granting the need, the actual trend is less clear.
Can it mean that people are insisting more and
more on living their lives in the way they want to?
That they are more concerned with this than with
impressing the neighbors? The present-day living-
room, as we well know, is something of a "front."
This is where guests are entertained; here we gen-
erally find the best furniture, the most expensive
carpet, and the least evidence of normal family dis-
order. For these very reasons its uses are limited.
Anything that might damage the furniture or dis-
rupt the orderly arrangement is taboo. There are
families to whom this does not apply, of course,
but in general the picture seems fairly accurate.
Can it be that the living-room is going the way of
the old-fashioned parlor — or more properly, is it
turning into a special-purpose room like the study?
Will its functions be divided in the future between
the small, quiet retreat and the big room? Possibly.
Certainly the idea has much to commend it.

Other questions of a broader social character
suggest themselves. We have all read articles about
the family — its difficulties in the world of today,

the inadequacies of parents, the waywardness of
children. Could the room without a name be evi-
dence of a growing desire to provide a framework
within which the members of a family will be better
equipped to enjoy each other on the basis of mu-
tual respect and affection? Might it thus indicate a
deep-seated urge to reassert the validity of the fam-
ily by providing a better design for living? We
should like very much to think so, and if there is
any truth in this assumption, our search for a name
is ended — we should simply call it the "family
room." As a matter of fact, even without social
theories, it is still a very good and completely accu-
rate name.

This much we do know : when a number of out-
standing architects arrive almost simultaneously at
the same planning idea, each being entirely igno-
rant of the others' activities, something is brewing.
This "something" may not come to a head for
many years, but it is a matter of experience that
artists (this includes the best architects) reflect in
an uncannily sensitive way currents in thought and
design long before they are popularly accepted.
What they seem to be anticipating now is a further
development of the general living area of the house,
a more freely organized arrangement of public and
private spaces which would be closer to the actual
needs of the modern family than anything that has
been seen hitherto.

If this should prove to be the case — and none of
us will know for some time whether it will or not —
the validity of the underlying thesis of this book
will have received confirmation from an unexpected
quarter. The thesis, as we have outlined it, is that
tomorrow's house needs no new inventions, ma-
terials, or techniques for its realization. What is
required is a deeper understanding of today's
trends, coupled with the most creative and bold use
of the techniques already at hand.

80

HEATING

CHAPTER EIGHT

As FAR AS THE home builder is concerned, there are
two ways of looking at heating, and only two. One
is to consider the equipment — the furnaces, boil-
ers, ducts, radiators, controls, and all the other
paraphernalia that go to make the modern heat-
ing plant what it is. The other is to think of heating
in terms of bodily comfort and health. Since very
few of us are equipped to evaluate one piece of
complex machinery as against another, and since
we are concerned with the results and not with the
means, we will look at heating from the second
point of view.

There are certain pleasant experiences having to
do with heating which everyone can recall. Most
of us can remember the old-style kitchens of our
parents or grandparents which had a great, black
coal stove in one corner. And we can remember,
too, the wonderful sensation of well-being pro-
duced by this stove on a cold winter's day. The big
pot-bellied coal stove in the general store, which is
still the social center of so many rural communi-
ties, produces the same agreeable effect. These ex-
periences don't all occur indoors. Have you ever
gone out on a chill, sunny day in spring or fall and
noticed what a fine heating job the sun can do once
you are in a protected corner out of the wind?
Skiers are familiar with this even in midwinter, for
it is possible to strip to the waist and still feel com-
fortable in the direct rays of the sun and those
reflected from the snow. Most familiar of all, prob-
ably, is the experience of getting into bed in a cold

bedroom and, after a brief tussle with frigid sheets,
enjoying the extraordinary pleasure of breathing
fresh, cool air while one's body is enveloped in the
most delightful kind of warmth.

These examples — and we can think of others —
have to do with heating, in spite of the fact that
the "equipment" in one instance is one's own body,
in another, the sun, and in a third, a stove. It is
important to remember such experiences when
thinking about heating, because all we are buying
the machinery for is to duplicate in one manner or
another these feelings of comfort.

HEATING IN YOUR OWN HOME
If you live in an average house, it probably con-
sists of a number of separate rooms, all of which
can be closed off from one another. It probably
has two floors, sandwiched between a basement
and an attic. Finally, the windows in relation to
the total wall area are fairly small. You will recog-
nize in this description, of course, a typical Colo-
nial, English, or Victorian house. This kind of
house is compact and easy to heat.

If you have a better-than-average heating plant,
it furnishes automatic heat — that is, it runs on gas,
oil, or stoked-fed coal, and has a thermostat which
turns the furnace on or off depending on room
temperature. Yet even with this plant, which repre-
sents many decades of patient experimentation by
manufacturers, it is not difficult to recall occasions
when something less than optimum comfort was

81

HEATING

produced. Frequently there are drafts. Heating is
often sporadic and uneven. The air near the floor
tends to be rather cool, and one of mother's major
chores is to keep small children off it in cold
weather. Also, the thermostat sometimes behaves
in a strangely unreasonable manner. When it is set
at 70° in the evening, the rooms may be too chilly
for comfort. When it is set at 68° on a sunny day,
the rooms facing south may be overheated. It may
have other faults as well. If the system uses steam,
the radiators are sometimes noisy, occasionally
produce an unpleasant odor, and tend to soil the
walls behind and above them. Also, people fre-
quently complain that the rooms heated in this
manner are stuffy.

HEATING IN THE MODERN HOUSE

The tendency in home building today is to move
farther and farther away from the traditional old-
style house. Survey after survey has shown that an
increasing number of people are demanding houses
on one floor. They don't care particularly whether
they have basements or not. They like the idea of
the "open plan," where living, dining, and even
kitchen facilities are related rather freely to one an-
other. In the newer plans partitions are omitted to
gain a feeling of space, as many doors as possible
are left out, except in rooms like bedrooms and
baths where privacy is essential, and generally to
simplify the whole living pattern within the house.
This is equally true in expensive houses, where
people can build all the enclosed rooms they want
to, as well as in cheap ones, where it is necessary to
eliminate such elements as the dining-room because
the budget isn't large enough.

The modern house brings with it great advan-
tages. That is why people are building more and
more of them every year. It also brings very real
problems. We all know that a house with insulated
walls and few windows is easier to heat comfort-
82

ably than a house where entire walls may be made
of plate glass. We can imagine, too, that if an open
living space extended from the warm side of the
house to the north where a cold wind might be
blowing, there would be a measurable temperature
difference at the two ends of this space, and warm
and cold air currents would promptly be set up,
creating drafts and all of the attendant discomforts.
When the first modern houses were built, their
architects were aware of these new problems, and
they tried in a variety of ways to solve them. One
method they tried was to use radiators of special
shapes. For instance, where a picture window ex-
tended almost the full width of the room, long row
radiators were installed under the sills so that cold
air falling away from the window surface would
immediately hit the radiator. Where air condition-
ing was used, the typical register was replaced by
long grilles which ran the full length of the window,
the purpose being the same — to keep the cold air
from getting into the room and causing discomfort.
Nevertheless, when all of these things had been
tried, it was found that air near the floor was still
colder than it should be even with the thermostat
pushed up to 76° or 78°. And in basementless
houses where the floor was set directly on the
ground or above a shallow unheated air space, the
problem was very serious. Serious, that is, until
the day when some nameless hero had an idea. A
very good idea. He thought, "Why not let the floor
be the radiator? A radiator so big could have a
very low surface temperature. This would eliminate
cold floors, and it might have other advantages."

THE RADIATING FLOOR

Young students of architecture who have to learn
about buildings of many periods run into descrip-
tions of the Roman bath — probably the most lux-
urious athletic club in the history of the world. In
studying it, they find that the furnaces were un-

HEATING

derneath the rooms, and before the hot flue gases
were allowed to escape through the chimneys,
they passed through the hollow floors, thereby pro-
viding a very agreeable temperature inside. In
Korea ages ago the houses of the noblemen gener-
ally had one room called the spring room, where
they could escape the bone-chilling dampness of
the Pacific winter. These rooms were heated in ex-
actly the same way as the Roman baths. There was
a little furnace, and underneath the floor there was
a labyrinth through which all of the hot air had to
pass before it got to the chimneys. These rooms
did not have heating in our sense — they really had
climate. And it was possible for the fortunate few
to enjoy quite literally the pleasant freshness of
spring by returning to the room that was set aside
for this purpose.

When Frank Lloyd Wright went to Tokyo to
build his world-famed Imperial Hotel, he knew
about this ancient method of heating, and in the
bathrooms he installed electric radiators under the
floor — possibly the first large floor heating instal-
lation in modern times.

In Europe during the twenties and thirties
"radiant heating," as it was called, began to be
used rather widely. The heating elements were usu-
ally put in the ceiling instead of in the floors. How-
ever, for reasons which we will see presently, the
exact location of the equipment did not make a
great deal of difference.

HOW RADIANT HEATING WORKS
The most common system of installing radiant
heating in American houses is to lay a concrete
slab on the ground with coils of pipe underneath
the slab. Through the pipes passes steam or hot
water — the latter is preferred at the moment. When
the furnace is turned on and the heated water be-
gins to circulate through the coils, the slab above
warms slowly until it reaches a temperature of
about 85°. A surface at this temperature is barely

warm to the touch. Instead of radiators scattered
through the house, we now find that a large part
of the house itself has become the radiator.

This huge radiator is not a radiator at all in the
conventional sense. To understand why, we have
to make a brief but important digression. We have
to find out how heat is transferred from one object
to another. Those who can still remember high-
school physics will probably find the story familiar.

HOW HEAT MOVES

Heat, the textbooks say, can be transferred in
three ways: by conduction, convection, or radia-
tion. A traffic policeman who must stand for hours
out in the cold often uses a wood platform about
three inches high. This prevents contact with the
cold pavement, or, as we would put it, the transfer
of heat from his feet to the pavement by conduction.

People are made uncomfortable by sitting on a
cold stone fence or by leaning against a cold win-
dow. The method of transfer in each case is the same.

In the average living-room where steam or hot
water radiators are installed, heat is not trans-
ferred by conduction at all but by convection.

Convection refers simply to the movement of
currents — in this case, air currents — resulting from
the fact that some currents are warmer than others.
In the living-room the air touches the radiators,
gets hot, and rises to the ceiling. Then the cooler
air comes in to take the place of the warmed air,
hits the radiators, is also warmed, and also rises.
Eventually the air loses its heat, drops to the floor,
and the cycle is repeated.

What we call radiators are therefore far more
accurately described as convectors, and this, in
fact, is what the heating engineer calls them. In a
gravity-type warm air system (this is the old-
fashioned kind), the convector is in the basement.
It is the furnace itself. The cool air drops into the
air jacket around the fire chamber, gets heated,
rises in the ducts, and enters the rooms through

83

HEATING

the registers. True radiation, however, is quite a
different matter.

Radiation is the third type of heat transfer, and
the only one that can be made independently of a
supporting medium. If this sounds like scientific
jargon, consider one or two examples. Between us
and the sun there are unimaginably vast spaces
which contain no air at all. Yet the warmth from
the sun covers this ninety-three million miles at the
rate of almost two hundred thousand miles a sec-
ond. This radiant heat emerges from the great
clouds of incandescent gas that surround the sun,
goes through the sub-zero temperatures of inter-
stellar space, then through our own atmosphere,
which is a sixty-mile blanket of air and water va-
por, and it is still doing a pretty good job when it
lands in your back yard.

This is the way a true radiator works. It shoots
out heat at a prodigious rate of speed, and the
transfer from the radiating surface to whatever is
warmed has nothing whatever to do with the tem-
perature of the air between. This was demonstrated
in an extremely dramatic fashion by some experi-
ments which were made over a period of about five
years at the Pierce Hygiene Laboratory in New
Haven, Connecticut.

THE COPPER ROOM

In the Pierce laboratory there is a booth which is
made entirely of copper — walls, floors, and ceiling.
Copper, like other metals, reflects radiant heat.
Hidden in the corners of this booth are electric
coils which can be switched on to provide almost
any desired amount of heat. Through a duct open-
ing into the booth hot or cold air can be passed,
depending on what the experimenters are trying to
find out.

In the course of the experiment in the copper
room hundreds of people passed through it and
described their sensations. These sensations, to put
it mildly, were extraordinary. One series of people,
for instance, sat around the room and complained
84

that they were uncomfortably hot. Yet the ther-
mometer showed an air temperature of only 50°.
Why were they hot? Because the copper walls were
radiating a great deal of heat, almost as much as
the body was losing to the surrounding cool air.
The net heat loss, therefore, was less than we or-
dinarily need to remain comfortable.

The same subjects went into another room where
the air was above heat-wave temperatures — say
120° — and yet these people felt cool. Again it was
heat radiation that furnished the clue, for the walls
of this room had been cooled down to the point
where they could almost have been used for making
ice cubes, and the hot air was not sufficient in this
case to counteract the loss by direct radiation from
the body to the frigid walls. Here the experimenters
came across — in extreme form, to be sure — a com-
mon reason for discomfort in the average home.

THE INVISIBLE RADIATOR
Most everyone has heard of "cold 70°"— that is, a
decidedly chilly condition in a room where the ther-
mometer showed a temperature that should have
been adequate for comfort. The explanation is not
to be found in the heating plant but in the reactions
of the body.

If you walk into your bedroom and ask how
many radiators are in the room, and there happen
to be two units, one under each window, you might
think the answer would be two. But it isn't two. It
is three. For you yourself are the third radiator. If
the bedroom has large, cold window surfaces, or if
the walls are uninsulated and therefore cold, your
body will start radiating heat to the cold surfaces.
And unless the air temperature is extremely high,
you will lose more heat by radiation than you gain
from the warm air. Here, we have a condition
which is quite like that which the Pierce Founda-
tion scientists set up artificially. If you insulate
yourself rather than the walls, you will feel warm
again. That is why, for example, we sleep comfort-
ably under wool blankets in cold bedrooms. The

HEATING

history of clothing and bedding, incidentally, is one
of those stories of things that were developed in a
highly unscientific manner to produce technically
admirable results. One piece of research, also car-
ried out by the Pierce Foundation, is a particularly
fascinating example of what clothing does.

THE AIR-CONDITIONED ARAB
In the course of some investigations of heating
and its relation to hygiene, one of the Pierce scien-
tists stumbled across a strange and baffling ques-
tion: Why, in the hot, dry climate of North Africa,
did the Arabs go around wrapped in garments
made up of layer upon layer of fine white wool?
An Eskimo, he reasoned, might have very good
reasons for traveling about in this manner. But
why an Arab?

The white explained itself very easily. White
tends to reflect rather than absorb solar radiation;
which is why we wear light-colored and white
clothes in the summertime. But how explain the
wool? Finally, after studying the problem very
carefully, he came across the answer. The wool
formed an insulation layer between the air on the
outside and the air touching the body. Evaporation
through the pores cooled the skin, and the tempera-
ture of the skin was therefore actually lower than
it would have been if exposed to the intensely hot
air of the desert regions. In other words, while the
outdoor temperature might be 120° or more in the
sun, the air between the wool clothing and the body
might be 90° or less. This strange tale, a by-product
of impersonal scientific research, has one instruc-
tive moral: heating cannot be considered solely in
terms of equipment, since comfort is the object in
view, and this may be influenced by a wide variety
of factors, none of them having anything to do
with furnaces or radiators.

RADIANT HEATING AGAIN
Where heating coils are used in the floor with per-
haps supplementary coils imbedded in the walls or

ceilings, the normal tendency of the body to radiate
heat to cold surfaces is counteracted because most
of the surfaces are warm. Some surfaces are warm-
ed by the heating coils directly behind them. These,
in turn, radiate heat not only to the body, but also
to the walls, furniture, and other objects in the
room. Presently these objects also become warm,
and they, in turn, become radiators, though at a
lower temperature than the primary source of heat.

THE ADVANTAGES OF RADIANT HEATING
We are all familiar with changing styles in Ameri-
can houses. We know about the Colonial dwellings
of the seventeenth century, and how Colonial was
given up in favor of a Greek revival in the early
nineteenth century. This was followed by neo-
Gothic, Victorian, and all the styles up to the pres-
ent day. Less familiar, perhaps, are the changes in
heating styles. From 1920 to 1930, for example,
steam was the system in vogue. This was refined to
become "vapor," which was nothing more than a
steam system operating at less than atmospheric
pressure; that is, the temperature of the steam in
the radiators was lower and heating was easier to
control. Hot water was used, but not very much,
because it was rather sluggish in operation. When
this disadvantage was overcome by using circulat-
ing pumps which forced the hot water through the
pipes and radiators, the hot-water system began
to compete with the better types of steam and vapor
installations.

All these systems, however, took something of a
beating when air conditioning came into vogue.
All that this "air conditioning" amounted to was a
redesign of the old hot air furnace, and the addi-
tion of a fan to push the air around, filters to keep
dust from coming into the rooms, and a tray of
water to keep the air from becoming too dry. True
air-conditioning systems, which involve cooling as
well as heating, have been confined, in the housing
field at least, to the most expensive residences, for
there is nothing cheap about them.

85

HEATING

Now we have radiant heating coming up as a
contender. What are its chances? We must ask this
question because, after all, its use is still limited.
There are probably no more than five or six hundred
houses in the entire country which are kept warm
in this manner, and this is a mighty small number
compared to the twenty-odd million dwellings.

One big advantage of radiant heating is that
there are no visible radiators. There are no chunks
of cast iron or copper under the windows, no grilles
or registers to disfigure the walls. In other words,
the system as far as the housewife is concerned is
completely out of the way, which is a very signifi-
cant point when you have to do the dusting. Radi-
ators not only catch the dust but also deposit dirt
on the walls around them.

The second advantage is that the floor is warm.
This means that instead of having to grab the baby
off the floor, mother can dump him there, because
it is the most comfortable place in the room, and
also the safest as regards colds.

The third and outstanding advantage of radiant
heating is its evenness. Tests made in a number of
dwellings in an eastern city showed temperature
differences between air at the floor and air at the
ceiling running as high as 20°. One room, for ex-
ample, had an air temperature at the ceiling run-
ning as high as 80°, while the ah- at the floor was
only 64°. Others showed variations less extreme,
but still with temperature differences of 10° to 15°.
This means expense, since heat losses to the outside
become very high when air temperatures move up
to 80° or more, and creates drafts.

The radiant-heated house shows practically no
variation between floor and ceiling temperatures
and, if insulated reasonably well and weather-
stripped, is almost completely free from drafts. For
old people and invalids as well as for small chil-
dren this condition is ideal.

"All this is very fine," we can hear you say, "but
what about the cost? Won't any system which
works such wonders be fabulously expensive?"
86

THE COST OF RADIANT HEATING
The answer, based on actual experience, is that
radiant heating installations are comparable in cost
to high-grade air-conditioning (without cooling) or
hot-water systems. If the house is designed for radi-
ant heating — that is, if it uses a floor slab laid
directly on the ground — there is a saving in founda-
tion costs; and this may in some cases make it
actually cheaper than an old-fashioned heating
system.

A major worry of most people confronted with
the idea of radiant heating is that pipes, inextric-
ably imbedded in rock under three or four inches
of concrete, could become a terrible headache if
they ever sprung a leak or broke or froze. These
troubles, however, have not developed, because
modern welding techniques and testing methods
are pretty close to foolproof.

Is radiant heating, then, the complete answer to
all our problems? It could be, in the opinion of
many authorities, if other factors were present.
One of the factors is house design. This kind of
heating works at its best in a one-story house, al-
though it has been successfully applied to those
with two floors. Its demands in the way of insula-
tion and double glazing are greater than those pre-
sented by other types of heating.

This emphatic recommendation of a kind of
heating that is not particularly well known as yet
does not discount by any means the certainty of
further developments and further improvements in
the years to come. The basic elements of heating,
however, will remain precisely what they were in
the days of the cavemen, for they stem directly and
inescapably from the reactions of the human body
to its physical environment.

Radiant heating by itself does not provide all the
factors needed to control indoor climate. It does
nothing about ventilation. It lacks air-condition-
ing's ability to clean and humidify incoming air.
These problems, which can be met by separate
equipment, are discussed in a subsequent chapter.

KITCHENS AND BATHS

There is a widespread notion that today's houses
have about the most up-to-date kitchens and bath-
rooms imaginable. This is only partly true. Modern
designers who have given the cooking and sanitation
departments a fresh look have come up with all
sorts of new ideas. One such is the modern version
of the "old fashioned" service opening shown in 76
and 77. Besides opening the kitchen to the dining
space, this puts the percolator and toaster within
reach of the table, giving the master of the house
something to do while he is waiting for his eggs.

A great many variations of the service-opening idea
are possible, depending on just what you want to
accomplish. The one used in 79, for example, is
primarily intended for sliding trays of soiled dishes
back into the kitchen, while picture 80 shows an
entirely different approach: a 'two-way cupboard
into which glassware is placed as it is washed at the
sink, accessible from the dining room when setting
the table. All such expedients, however, are simply
compromises in comparison with the full-fledged
living-kitchen shown in 81 and 82. In this arrange-
ment cooking, eating and relaxation areas are
merged in one attractive space, divided only by a
waist-high bar. Ideal for servantless living, this
scheme is both sociable and convenient, saves space
and construction dollars.

Another illustration of the living-kitchen scheme,
this series of semi-divided rooms was exhibited at
the New York World's Fair. Its carefully studied
plan provides separate sinks for food preparation
and dish washing, and a great deal of storage space
at just the points where it is most useful. Cooking
and living areas (83 and 85) are divided by open
shelving for glassware. An important feature of the
design, basic to the whole living-kitchen idea, is
the use of rich, attractive materials throughout, so
as to eliminate the aseptic atmosphere ordinarily
associated with the separate kitchen. Natural wood
cabinets, dark linoleum work surfaces, monel metal
sinks and generous use of exposed brickwork all
contribute to making the space pleasant to live in
as well as work in, and equally attractive throughout.

These designs come as close to the "dream house"
category as anything you will find in this book.
Views 93 and 94 show a full size model of an ideal
kitchen developed by a glass manufacturer to stimu-
late use of his product and including redesigned, and
so far unobtainable equipment. The one-piece,
manufactured kitchen shown in 95, which has a
drawer refrigerator instead of the usual type is
actually in production but not yet in wide use. Pic-
tures 96 and 97 show another one-piece unit, with
bath and kitchen fixtures on opposite sides, from a
much-publicized prefabricated house that is no
longer manufactured. The basic idea, however, is
being applied elsewhere.

106

107

While these bathrooms are all of the luxury type,
the design-approach they represent can be applied
as easily to the modest house as to the mansion.
Views 1 04 and 1 05 show a combination bath-
dressing room with a continuous counter fitted
with drawers for clothing and finished in wood
veneers and plastic. The room shown in I 06 and
I 07 has walls of structural glass, and an angle tub
with a broad rim which serves as a seat. The trans-
lucent top of the dressing table .is lit from below,
providing illumination for the lower part of the face.
View I 08 shows a bath finished in natural wood
and marble, and equipped with a counter lavatory
very similar to those used in Victorian houses. Such
materials are not much more expensive than the
ones ordinarily employed in bathrooms, and are
considerably more attractive.

108

I 12

Here are five versions of the counter lavatory,
worked out in different materials and to fit
various planning ideas. View I 09 shows a re-
cessed unit set in the wall of a bedroom and
concealed, when not in use, by a swinging door.
The counter in I 09 is of varnished mahogany,
and the fluted apron, made of half-round mold-
ings, forms a cupboard for towels. Valves are
controlled by foot pedals. View I I I shows an
ingenious arrangement of shelving attached to
the cupboard doors, view I I 2 a double lavatory,
in marble, for a family bath. The unit shown in
I I 3 is suitable for factory production, and shows
how the counter-lavatory idea might be applied
to a stock fixture. This one is located in- the ante-
room of a divided bath, with doors on either
side leading to compartments for the tub and
water closet.

9 *

CHAPTER NINE

BATHROOMS ARE
OUT OF DATE

WHAT is A bathroom?

"A bathroom," someone replies, "is a room con-
taining a water closet, a lavatory, a tub, and maybe
a shower."

How big is a bathroom?

"A bathroom," continues our informant, "is
about five and a half feet wide by six feet long."

Why is it that size?

"That's easy," we are told. "These dimensions
are about the smallest that will take the three re-
quired fixtures."

Oh! So the bathroom was designed for the fix-
tures. What about the people?
"I guess the builder didn't think about them."
That is what is wrong with bathrooms.

Now let's try again. What is a bathroom?

In the first place, it isn't necessarily a room at all.
When plumbing was first installed in city houses, it
went into the hall bedroom, which was about the

only available place. In the seventy-odd years that
followed, the bath has stayed the same old hall
bedroom, slightly streamlined.

The functions served by the bathroom require
plumbing fixtures, maneuvering space, counter
area, good lighting, and adequate storage. For one
person, or possibly two, there is no reason why
these functions should not be performed in a single
room. But for a family there are good reasons why
they should not.

Some time ago one of us had the job of designing
a very elaborate and expensive town house in New
York City. The top floor was to be the owner's
suite, with one large bedroom for himself — bath
adjoining, of course — and across the hall another
large bedroom, also with bath, to be used as a
guest room. As the plans progressed the owner de-
cided that somewhere on this floor he needed a
third room which could be used part of the time as
an office in the home, part of the time as a second
guest room. This meant chopping one bedroom in
half and somehow providing, in a now restricted
area, bath facilities for not one bedroom but
two.

This might have been solved, as it has been solved
so frequently, by putting a bath between the two
rooms. But it turned out to be impossible. If we
had done this, there would have been practically

103

BATHROOMS ARE OUT OF DATE

no space left for beds in the sleeping rooms on
either side.

The plan as it finally worked out is not a bath-
room at all, but a string of separate compartments.
Each bedroom has a separate lavatory with laundry
hamper below the basin, installed in a shallow
closet. The water closet has its own compartment
with a door from each room. And, finally, there is
a third space with a shower, also accessible from
both rooms.

This system of breaking down the bathroom
into its component elements can be worked with a
great many variations. Where there are a number
of bedrooms on one floor, for example, and there
is no possibility of providing a bath for each room,
the scheme of having a lavatory in each bedroom
will work wonders in taking the pressure off the
bathroom. It is possible to go to the other extreme,
where space and funds are available, and convert
the bath into a bath-dressing room whose ameni-
ties are vastly superior to those of the usual re-
stricted space. But the main advantage of consid-
ering the bath not as a fixed room of a standard
type is that it frees planning all through the sleep-
ing area, can increase convenience at no increase
in cost, and generally provides that flexibility so
important in the house planned for living today.

THE THREE-PASSENGER BATH
The most spectacular example of the bath-in-com-
partments yet produced is a unit designed by
Morris Ketchum, Jr. and Jedd Reisner for Life and
The Architectural Forum. Created to meet the
needs of a whole family, it is ingenious in plan and
attractive in appearance.

The largest space in the bath is taken up by a
lavatory and a mirrored storage compartment. The
lavatory has foot controls for the faucet, a broad
counter, and a generous cupboard below. Above is
a medicine cabinet, in which the shelves are at-
tached to the swinging mirrors.
104

Each of the other two fixtures which make up
the bathroom has its own compartment and its
own door, and the tub-shower compartment is suf-
ficiently large for dressing as well as bathing. Now
let's consider this bath as it would work in the
average home.

Whoever got up first might dash into the shower
compartment, leaving the lavatory and water
closet both free and private. If there were only one
bath in the house, father might be shaving while
mother was dressing and while the children were
using the bathtub.

The Ketchum-Reisner bath has one serious dis-
advantage: it takes up a square space between
three and four times as large as the minimum bath-
room. The "three-passenger" principle, however,
can be applied in less space and other shapes. It
will work very well, for example, in a space about
five and a half feet deep and fifteen feet long. In
the typical modern house plan, which is long and
rather narrow, such a shape fits very conveniently
between a corridor and the north wall, leaving the

W-C.

southern exposure for the bedrooms. All compart-
ments, in this variant of the family bath, get out-
side light.

THE BEDROOM LAVATORY
To develop the idea a little further, let us assume
that in addition to some such compartmentalized
arrangement, two of the three bedrooms have
built-in washbasins. These units, as we have al-
ready seen, can be compact, inconspicuous, and
efficient. A space eighteen inches by thirty inches
closed off by a door provides the needed facilities
not only for washing, makeup, and shaving, but
also for soiled linen. If these two built-in lavatories
existed in addition to the bath, we would have a
house where, without undue expense for plumb-
ing, the various members of the family would
never get in each other's way and almost all of the
luxury of individual bathrooms could be enjoyed.
The bedroom lavatory is an item that could, and
certainly should be, prefabricated. It should be
possible, and perhaps it will be one of these days,
to wander down to the local plumbing supply
place and pick out one or two models which would
be delivered complete with lights, laundry hamper,
shelves, door, and so on. An ingenious manufac-
turer could work wonders with this unit. He could
take a leaf out of the book of the Pullman car de-
signers, for example. The familiar type of wash-
basin in sleeping cars that tilts up to become part
of a wall cabinet is by no means beyond the capac-
ity of a plumbing fixture manufacturer, and its
advantage would be that the whole unit could then
be made so thin that it would literally fit within the
thickness of an oversized wall. Not even closet
space would be required for its installation.

COUNTER SPACE

One of the most frequent complaints about the
modern lavatory is that no matter where you put

BATHROOMS ARE. OUT OF DATE

the handbrush, hairbrush, toothbrush, or soap, it
usually manages to slide down into the bowl.

There is a very simple way to eliminate this dif-
ficulty. It should be familiar to most of us, because
the solution has been used in the kitchen for years.
It consists of a flat-rimmed bowl set into a counter
covered with rubber, linoleum, or some other re-
silient material.

This type of lavatory installation, of which a
great many excellent examples can be found, must
be considered in the planning, for the lavatory
having such a counter must be given elbowroom
and more. To be sure, this is another factor which
tends to make bathroom space larger, but it is
worth the extra space. The space underneath the
counter can be used for shallow drawers, linen
hamper, towel storage, and other items, such as
extra soap, which should be kept in the bathroom.
Another source of occasional irritation, although
a very minor one, is the necessity of having to
twist faucets while one's hands are covered with
slippery soap. This isn't a very serious matter, but
there are devices on the market which will elimi-
nate the faucets entirely if for any reason you
would like to do so. These gadgets, rarely seen in
houses, are regularly supplied to hospitals and
other institutions where it is not only inconvenient
for people to handle faucets but dangerous, since
it might involve transmission of germs. There are
two types: knee-operated and foot-operated. The
latter sit on the floor and have pedals for hot and
cold water.

Foot controls, like the double lavatories some-
times put into master bathrooms, are definitely in
the luxury class, but fortunately there are people
in this country who have the good sense to deny
themselves necessities so they can enjoy luxuries.
Also in the class of luxury items is instantaneous
circulating hot water, which involves the creation
of a loop in the hot water supply line so that
whether or not the hot water is being used, it is

105

BATHROOMS ARE OUT OF DATE

continuously circulating, though very slowly,
through the pipes. This means that the moment
the water is turned on, it runs hot. Most inexpen-
sive of all the luxuries, and most satisfying, is an
oversized supply pipe for the tub. If you have ever
waited twenty minutes for the tub to fill up, the
virtues of this item need no description.

The infra-red lamp is a gadget that has a great
future in the American home once people become
aware of its remarkable properties. Automobile
and refrigerator manufacturers have used infra-red
lamps for years in drying tunnels where car bodies
and other freshly painted parts move through on
conveyor belts. In the bathroom three or four dol-
lars' worth of infra-red lamps could work wonders.
That familiar chill when one steps out of the
shower could be eliminated entirely by switching
on one or two of these lamps, located in incon-
spicuous sockets on a wall or even in the ceiling.
To produce a comparable feeling of well-being
with conventional heating equipment, it would
probably be necessary to heat the bathroom up to
about ninety degrees, which of course would make
it intolerable at all other times.

STORAGE

There is an entire chapter on storage which deals
with the general problems of where to keep things.
The special problems of the bathroom, however,
are worth detailed discussion. The ideal bathroom
— whether it's one room or in compartments-
would have one feature on which agreement would
certainly be unanimous. It would have room for
all the towels ever used in it — in other words, it
would have its own linen closet. It would have
ample cupboards for the soap, toilet paper, infre-
quently used medicines, hot-water bottles, eyecups,
and the host of miscellaneous items which some-
how seem to get put away in two or three different
closets in various parts of the house. Everything
needed in the bathroom would be in the bathroom,
106

and there would be no need to race through chilly
halls looking for things.

SHOWER VERSUS TUB

The most inexpensive and common expedient, of
course, is to combine the shower and the tub in the
same fixture. Where this is done, it is done rather
badly, as a rule. Almost always there is a towel
rack over the tub so that towels have to be re-
moved if the shower is used. The curtain rod is a
rather unattractive element in the room, and the
curtains themselves are a nuisance. Furthermore,
there is the inconvenience and danger of dancing
around under an icy spray in anything as slippery
and restricted as the average bathtub. The best so-
lution, therefore, would be to separate these two
items, even though additional space is required.

A stall shower does not need tile walls and
chromium-plated trimming on a plate-glass door,
desirable as these may be. It can be a space the
size of a closet with walls made out of inexpensive
asbestos sheets, or waterproof plywood covered
with a good varnish. It can be one of the inex-
pensive prefabricated metal stalls which have been
on the market for some years. The materials in the
stall shower will range, therefore, from very cheap
to very costly, and, whatever your budget, if you
can afford a house you can probably afford one or
another kind of shower installation.

In planning, two points should be considered
carefully. A shower thirty inches square is usable
but not very pleasant. If you can possibly do it,
make it about four feet long by two and a hah0 or
three feet wide. This extra space will not make
much difference in the size of the house, and it will
turn a nasty little slot into a really luxurious place
for bathing.

WALLS AND WINDOWS

We have already noted a certain dissatisfaction
with the exceedingly unimaginative approach to

BATHROOMS ARE OUT OF DATE

the planning of the sanitary facilities in the average
bathroom. Equally striking to any architect con-
cerned with building better houses is the really re-
markable conventionality of the approach to the

design of this room. The windows are usually small
in spite of the fact that the bathroom needs as
much light as any other room and is entitled to
just as good a view. And this tiny window, more-
over, which invariably proclaims the location of
the bath to the passer-by, is frequently set over the
tub, where it is hard to reach, or over the water
closet, where it produces a draft. It is true that pri-
vacy in this room is considered essential by the
average homeowner, but there are many ways of
getting privacy besides cutting down the window
to the size of a porthole. One, if the view is no
good, is to use translucent glass. Another is to keep
the window high but at the same time to make it
broad. Such a window extending from wall to wall
and from the ceiling down to five feet above the
floor will give ample privacy under almost any con-
dition and at the same time transmit a great deal
of useful light.

The attitude toward materials until now has been
as restricted as the treatment of windows. Tile is
run from the floor up to average elbow height,
with painted plaster above. If the builder is very
lavish, maybe the tile goes to the ceiling. But tile,
for all its unquestioned merits, is not the only ma-

terial suitable for use in a bathroom. In a number
of bathrooms which have been built in California
houses redwood was used. Redwood, as you may
know, like cedar and cypress, is filled with natural
oils which give it a great advantage if it is located
where it gets wet occasionally.

If the idea of a wood-paneled bathroom sounds
strange to you, think about it a little while, and
then see if it still sounds strange. There is no reason
why the bathroom, just because it contains a few
plumbing fixtures, should look like an operating-
room on a battleship. If you like the idea of wood
but don't want to use it in the form of planks, there
is waterproof plywood. This material, made up of
layers of veneer glued together with waterproof
plastics, has been used very successfully on torpedo
boats and airplanes. We can assure you, therefore,
that you need have no qualms about its durability
in your future bathroom.

Equally suitable are the flexible sheet materials,
such as rubber and linoleum, which, as mentioned
elsewhere, have desirable sound-deadening proper-
ties. They have the further advantage of bending
around corners with the greatest of ease, so that a
room sheathed with one of these finishes could
have all round corners and be a lot easier to take
care of. For that matter, round corners have long
been used in tile baths and can be made of wood
and metal as well.

LIGHTING

The critical point in lighting the bathroom cen-
ters on the lavatory. Here is the shaving mirror,
and here, too, unless there is a separate dressing
table, is where noses are powdered. Despite the
fact that there are cabinets on the market which
have built-in illumination and fixtures which will
throw a great deal of light directly on the face, few
people are thoroughly satisfied with the result. In
a theater dressing-room, where good makeup is of
vital importance, you will find that the mirror over

107

BATHROOMS ARE OUT OF DATE

the dressing counter is completely surrounded
with a ring of electric light bulbs. This may not be
very pleasant, because the heat and glare from the
brightly glowing bulbs are intense. But the idea is
good, for the ring of lights gives even, shadowless
illumination from above, from the sides, and, most
important for shaving, from below.

Something of this kind has to be developed for
the home lavatory, and it need not be unduly com-
plicated. The simplest method, and the cheapest,
involves the use of a single light over the mirror,
plus the use of the white basin below as a reflector.
Most basins are much too low for comfortable use,
and if the lavatory were raised, its efficacy as a re-
flector would be increased. The single light need
not be an incandescent bulb; it could perfectly well
be a fluorescent tube. Still better would be the addi-
tion of two other lights on each side of the cabinet.
Tube lights are much better in this location than
incandescent bulbs, because the light would be
spread over a bigger surface, and consequently
there would be less discomfort from glare. What
glare there is can be reduced further by the use of
frosted glass or by hiding the bulbs and using
curved reflectors of aluminum or stainless steel to
direct the light to the face. An ideal solution, fol-
lowing the theater dressing-room example, would
be to complete the ring and provide a light source
from below as well. If you have an ingenious archi-
tect you will find that this solution is far from im-
possible. Perhaps some manufacturer will one day
bring out such a unit. To date, however, it has not
appeared, and if you want one it will have to be
put together specially.

A few years back a demonstration house was
built in New York City. It had an inside bath and
therefore required full-time artificial lighting and
ventilation. Instead of tacking up lights on the wall
here and there, the architect, Edward Stone, made
the entire ceiling a lighting fixture. The ceiling con-
sisted of a grid of light wood bars about three
inches deep, which made it look a little like an egg
108

crate. Above this there was a layer of frosted glass,
and in the space above that were fluorescent tube
lights. The grid directed all illumination down-
ward, and the natural wood color softened and
warmed the light, thus producing a really wonder-
ful effect. In addition, there was local illumination
on the lavatory mirror.

THE INSIDE BATH

In a single house it has usually been taken for
granted that the bath will be located on an outside
wall so that it will have its own window for day-
light and ventilation. In big city apartment houses
and particularly in large hotels, the reverse gener-
ally holds true, for land is so valuable and space
so restricted that baths have to be buried in the
core of the building to save valuable outside wall
space.

Most people contemplating the building of a new
house would probably reject the suggestion that
they put one or more inside bathrooms in the plan,
on the ground that such a bath is unpleasant to use
and unhygienic. Nevertheless, they will think noth-
ing of going to an expensive, up-to-date hotel
where they will use the artificially lighted and ven-
tilated inside bathroom without the slightest dis-
comfort. In fact, they might even enjoy the unpre-
cedented degree of privacy which this type of room
affords.

When approaching the question of the inside
bath, it is necessary, therefore, to distinguish be-
tween facts and prejudices, and between the real
advantages and the real disadvantages of such an
arrangement. It is true that in the great majority
of houses there is frequently no particularly good
reason why bathrooms should be removed from
outside walls. There is usually all the perimeter
needed for all of the rooms, and giving up ten or
fifteen feet of exterior wall space for bathrooms
does not create any shortage of such space. How-
ever, there are occasions when, by placing the
bathroom within the core of the house, a consider-

BATHROOMS ARE OUT OF DATE

able increase in planning flexibility can be achieved.
This is particularly true when the bathroom is
changed from its conventional form into a related
series of compartments where the various func-
tions are divided to give added usability.

There is another point about the inside bath-
room that must be considered in evaluating its de-
sirability, and that is, that in a one-story house or
on the top floor, the inside bath can also be natur-
ally lighted and ventilated by using clerestory win-
dows or skylights. During the period of emergency
war building a great many housing projects of a
temporary nature built in various parts of the
country used precisely this scheme. According to
the few tenant surveys that were made, these bath-
rooms were well liked. Privacy was considered one
advantage, while the added wall space, thanks to
the elimination of the window, was another.

But war housing was not the first example of
such planning in this country. Decades ago Frank
Lloyd Wright, who seems to have had almost every
good idea about houses some twenty years before
anyone else, was building bathrooms and kitchens
where the walls extended well above the roof so
that light could be brought in from the sides.
Wright has already emphasized the virtues of this
scheme, not only for the reasons given above, but
because, as he pointed out, kitchens with extra
high ceilings and raised windows function in the
same way as the large chimney — that is, general
movement of air through the house would be set
up, the high windows furnishing the outlet for the
air. In a kitchen of this kind the problem of cook-
ing odors is well on the way to solution, because
air currents would be coming into the kitchen and
passing out directly, carrying the odors with them.
The same applies to the bathroom.

This is what The Architectural Forum has written
about the inside bathroom : "One reason why inside
bathrooms work better than those on outside walls
is that they are usually better ventilated. Artificial
ventilation insures a constant flow of air in one

direction — that is, from other rooms into the bath,
where objectionable odors are drawn off which
otherwise might be distributed throughout the
apartment. Mechanical ventilation establishes fixed
constant ventilation not only of the bath, but cross-
ventilation of other rooms. Because air is drawn
from the rest of the apartment, the bathroom tem-
perature remains fairly constant.

"Secondly, this ventilation works all the year
round, whereas bathroom windows are frequently
closed almost all winter. One cold blast of air is
enough to keep the window closed for the re^
mainder of a day, if not the season. Neither are
city dwellers likely to leave a bathroom window
open for long and let the soot sift in.

"The equipment in the inside bath may be eco-
nomically arranged on one wall without blocking
access to a window, as is often the case with the
outside bath. This has been the cause of serious
accidents, as the tenant may easily slip on a wet
floor or tub when reaching over or stepping into
the tub to open the window. Light from the small
window is generally inadequate for either shaving
or making up, and for this reason artificial light is
preferred."

Use or rejection of the inside bath idea is a mat-
ter of personal taste. As far as that goes, so is the
use of bath-in-compartments. What we have tried
to show, and what is more important than the few
new ideas discussed, is that the kind of thinking
that produced the standard minimum bathroom is
outdated, that an unprejudiced approach to one's
living requirements can produce an astonishing va-
riety of new and interesting solutions. Only a few
years ago it was generally felt that the bathroom
problem had been completely solved — that arrang-
ing three fixtures in a small area left little or no
room for variations. We have seen that this is not
the case. And there is a very good reason why it is
the modem architect who has contributed the
changes. It is because he forgets about the fixtures
and remembers that he is designing for people.

109

CHAPTER TEN

MANUFACTURING

CLIMATE

A COUPLE OF weeks ago we helped a friend paint
his kitchen. It had been a white kitchen to start
with, and was getting a new coat of the same color.
Except that it wasn't the same color at all. Wher-
ever the new white went on the walls, the old white
next to it suddenly turned a muddy yellow gray by
contrast. Even the enameled electric clock, which
had been faithfully scraped every month or two,
seemed a rather dingy beige once the new paint sur-
rounded it, and not the gleaming white everyone
had imagined it to be.

This kitchen is in no way particularly remark-
able. It isn't in the city, where soot discolors every-
thing in sight, and it has been taken care of as well
as a room could be. Yet after less than two years a
high quality white paint was transformed into
something just this side of mud.

What this leads up to is the observation that the
activities in certain rooms produce their own "cli-
mate." The average kitchen, for example, is a Pitts-
burgh in miniature, where minute particles of soot
from the cooking fire, burned food, and plain ordi-
nary everyday grease get into the atmosphere and
wander around the kitchen, and the adjacent
rooms, too, until finally they land on the walls or
furniture. In fact, laboratory analysis has disclosed
that some of the fish mother fries on the kitchen
110

stove is likely to condense on an upstairs window-
pane within a matter of minutes. In the properly
designed house this is not to be tolerated. Such a
condition is dirty and it is wasteful. The house-
holder should have the power to control the climate
produced inside the rooms of his house.

The concern of this chapter is with the creation
of the best possible physical environment within
the house. Heating takes care of the elementary
problem of keeping warm. It stops short, however,
of what is technically feasible at the present time
and will probably be universal practice in the near
future. As good a place as can be found for an ap-
proach to this question of climate is the kitchen.
Of all the rooms in the house it is the worst of-
fender in producing unpleasant climate. And it is
the worst offender because of two essential pieces
of equipment — the range and the refrigerator.
What the range does has already been described.
The role of the refrigerator is probably less
familiar.

A refrigerator makes things cold by extracting
heat from them. The heat has to. go some place, and
generally it goes right into the kitchen. During the
summer this is particularly objectionable.

A clear course of action is indicated for whoever
is planning the kitchen in terms of climate as well

MANUFACTURING CLIMATE

as mechanical efficiency. There should be a hood,
or at least some kind of collecting duct, over both
stove and refrigerator to get the dirt and the un-
wanted heat out of the kitchen as quickly and as
directly as possible.

Hotels and restaurants have been doing this for
years by the use of exhaust fans. For the home
there is an additional refinement that should be
considered. If the exhaust fan were hooked up to a
thermostatic control located in the duct or hood,
the fan would go on automatically whenever the
refrigerator exhaust or cooking raised the tempera-
ture a few degrees. This isn't suggested because of
a feeling that the housewife is getting soft and is
unable even to push buttons any more, but simply
because people do forget things, and the remem-
bering might just as well be left to an automatic
gadget.

The next offender in order of importance is the
bathroom. One advantageAof the inside bathroom,

•

already noted, is that it has year-round ventilation,
which is more than can be said for the average out-
side bathroom. People hesitate, quite understand-
ably, to open bathroom windows in cold weather,
because the room is used intermittently all day and
evening, and, once chilled, takes time to warm up
again. A practical way to get around this situation
is to install some kind of artificial ventilation and
leave the window closed. Some architects have gone
so far as to install sheets of fixed glass, thus relying
on the window only for light, and an exhaust fan
to provide for a change of air. If by any chance
the bathroom is located next to the kitchen, pos-
sibly the kitchen fan could be made to do double
duty.

If we stop and consider the climate question for
a moment, we find that we now have the beginnings
of a rudimentary system of artificial ventilation
which is quite independent of the heating plant.
This ventilating arrangement — of fixed glass for
light and exhaust fan for change of air — applies to

more than the bathroom and kitchen, because once
it is in operation, new air has to come from some-
where, and this somewhere has to be the other
rooms in the house. Thus a general movement of
air is set up all over the house towards these two
rooms. This is far better, of course, than having the
air come from them.

A device that has been gaining popularity during
the past few years is the so-called attic fan. It has
been adopted with particular enthusiasm in the
Southwest, and also wherever else the summers get
uncomfortably hot. One reason for attic fans is
that houses are badly designed. The average
pitched-roof house has either an attic or an air
space. This air space is not vented to the out-of-
doors, with the result that in summer the air
trapped under the roof gets so hot that the ceilings
below it are turned — literally — into radiators. It is
a simple matter to design a house so that air under
the roof can be vented as it becomes hot. Farmers
have been doing this in their barns and chicken-
houses for generations. But because the attics in
conventional dwellings have been designed as traps
for super-heated air, people have to install these
fans to get rid of it. This does not mean that the
exhaust fan is a useless apparatus but that it has
been misused. Its function should not be to cool the
attic, but to control the climate of the whole house.
Turned on at night, it brings in the cool outside air,
and if the air is dry enough, the result is a refresh-
ing breeze. But the fan doesn't have to be located
in the attic, although this is a perfectly good place
for it. It could be used to push air into the house as
well as to pull it out, and where summers are very
humid it could be used in conjunction with a de-
humidifying system.

Dehumidifiers are fairly simple pieces of equip-
ment that take moisture out of the air. The com-
monest type uses a material known as silica gel,
which is highly moisture-absorbent. If this silica
gel is placed in a chamber through which the air

III

MANUFACTURING CLIMATE

supply for the house passes, it will take moisture
out of the air until it becomes so saturated that it
can't absorb any more. At this point the equipment
provides for removal of the saturated material,
which is then heated, usually over a gas flame, until
all the moisture has been driven off, and it is then
re-used. In most installations the setup consists of
a slowly revolving drum, so constructed that part
absorbs moisture and part gets rid of it — an ar-
rangement which provides continuous service.

A combination of the items mentioned so far —
exhaust fans for kitchens and bathrooms, an attic
fan, and a dehumidifier if its use should be desir-
able— would establish a pretty high level of com-
fort in the average house if it were installed in con-
junction with a first-class heating system. The pre-
cise manner in which home ventilation would be
handled varies not only with the prevailing summer
climate but also with the location of the house. If
it is in a city or an industrial neighborhood, the
attic fan becomes something of a liability, because
the air which is pulled in through the windows is
laden with dirt, and cleaning becomes more of a
problem than it was before. In such cases the fan
should probably be installed in the basement, if
there is one, or in a ground-floor utility room, and
some type of filter should be used to take the soot
out of the air before it hits the fan. Incidentally,
there is one rule about the fan itself that should be
observed. The bigger it is, the quieter it will be in
operation, because to move a given quantity of air
through the house a big fan will be operated more
slowly than a small one. Ventilating fans up to four
feet in diameter, and still larger ones, have been
installed in houses.

VENTILATION VERSUS COOLING

At this point one might well ask, "Why not shoot
the works and add cooling?" At the present mo-
ment there are several reasons why this is not as
112

good an idea as it sounds. For one thing, a venti-
lating system requires no ducts; and by the simple
expedient of leaving doors and windows open or
closed, the flow of air can be directed as desired.
With a cooling system, this is not quite as feasible.
Ducts are needed, and large ones — a fact that im-
mediately complicates and raises the cost of instal-
lation. Added to this is the fact that residential air-
cooling is still very definitely in the luxury cate-
gory. If there is a compressor which requires an
electric motor, the motor is generally a big one and
costs a lot to run. Another reason is that for houses
in most parts of the United States ventilation
comes pretty close to doing the job that is needed
during the summer months. It is only in the hot and
humid central southern regions that air-cooling is
desirable in spite of its relatively high cost.

Shortly before the outbreak of World War II,
one manufacturer brought out a gas unit designed
to handle both heating and cooling in one pack-
age. It was fairly expensive, but by no means un-
reasonably so when compared to any other good
installation. The gas flame worked exactly as it
does in the gas refrigerator, and tests on actual in-
stallations showed that while the cost of summer
cooling was fairly high, it was by no means beyond
the reach of the middle-class budget. Certainly in
the regions where natural gas is cheap and plenti-
ful, units of this type should be highly successful.
Possibly with refinements they will become so effi-
cient and inexpensive that they will be suitable for
installation in all but the cheapest houses. At the
moment, however, this is not the case.

One manufacturer interested in the field of sum-
mer air conditioning for houses said that before a
cooling system could be sold the owner would have
to buy awnings. In the most recent houses where
the roof design has been worked out to let the sun
in during the winter and keep it out in summer, the
awnings would not be required. But the point was
well taken. Engineers setting up a cooling system

design it with what they call the heat load in mind
— that is, they find out how much heat comes into
the house, which, in turn, tells them what machin-
ery will be required to get it out again. The smart
thing to do, obviously, is not to let it get in, which
can be accomplished by proper design, the use of
reflective insulation, self-ventilating roofs similar
to those installed on barns, and the judicious use of
planting.

This last should not be disregarded, because it
can be immensely effective. A wall thickly covered
with ivy, for example, will never get hot on the in-
side, no matter how long the sun shines on it, for
the green leaves absorb some of the heat and reflect
some, while the pattern of the foliage permits a
free passage of air currents up the face of the house
so that the wall behind never has a chance to get
warmed up.

It is conceivable — indeed, quite probable — that

MANUFACTURING CLIMATE

all houses will be completely air-conditioned the
year round at some future date. At the moment,
however, there is not much point in considering it
unless there is a generous budget established to
cover not only the first cost of the equipment but
its use and maintenance as well.

Good climate is something that can be defined
rather simply. It involves having clean air at the
proper temperature summer and winter, the hu-
midity being kept fairly well under control at all
times. For the average house in this country a good
ventilating system, coupled with a radiant heating
installation and the special handling of kitchens
and bathrooms already discussed, will come pretty
close to providing optimum living conditions. Dur-
ing the next few years, at any rate, that extra
equipment which would provide scientific perfec-
tion of interior climate will cost more than most of
us are willing to pay.

113

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SLEEPING

OF ALL THE rooms in the house the bedroom has
changed least. It would almost be accurate to say
that the only essential difference between the sleep-
ing chamber of today and one of the post-Civil
War period is the absence of the chamber pot. Be-
cause of the simplicity of the activities involved,
there has been little incentive to change the equip-
ment. Beds and mattresses have been improved
since the days when people threw a blanket over a
pile of straw in a corner. And the modern closet
with automatic door switches and special hanging
gadgets is easier to use than the antique wooden
wardrobe. But beds are still horizontal chunks that
take up most of the floor space and have to be
made and unmade periodically. Closets, while built
in and improved somewhat, still show a strong re-
semblance to old-fashioned clothes cupboards.

This does not mean that when the bedroom is
planned there is nothing to do about it. Tremen-
dous changes are about to take place which will
influence most of our sleeping habits; but even
without these proposed innovations, some of
which verge on the fantastic, there is plenty to be
done in bringing the bedroom, as a space, up to the
standard of quality displayed by more highly de-
veloped sections of the house.

Let us take time out and look at the bedroom,
not as a room with some standard furniture in it,
but as the area in which a great variety of activities
takes place. People read in their bedrooms, they
dress there, occasionally eat there, frequently
114

smoke, and sometimes write; they may listen to
the radio, and they certainly make love.

In a bedroom there is also the question of sleep,
which has been studied very intensively by a num-
ber of research institutes, and here proper design
can, but usually does not, play an important part.
The factors having an effect on sleep are noise,
whether from within the room or from outside,
light, heat, and air. Most people, we strongly sus-
pect, do not sleep particularly well, and the reason
for this conjecture is that all of us seem to be able
to recall with extraordinary clarity some occasion
when we slept especially well. Such an occasion
might have been a night in a cabin in a pine woods,
where the temperature and quality of the air were
the essential factors. City dwellers react very
strongly to their first night in the country because
of the absence of familiar noises, of which they be-
come conscious only when the source has been re-
moved.

These factors, the scientists tell us, are exceed-
ingly complex, but for our purposes it should be
possible to simplify them. The quieter the room,
apparently, the more peacefully one sleeps. This
has a bearing on design, because rooms can be
made quiet. Maximum physical comfort seems to
exist when the body is warm and the air a little on
the cool side. Typical disturbances such as streaks
of light from the nearest lamppost, a reading light
in the adjacent bed, or headlights from passing
cars, also tend to interfere with sleep. These, too,

SLEEPING

can be controlled. Thus we see that there are two
approaches to planning a bedroom — one based on
the creation of the qualities which induce sound
sleep, the other based on the other activities carried
on there.

THE BEDROOM
AS AN ACTIVITIES CENTER

Some years ago a book was published in Paris by
a Swiss architect named LeCorbusier. LeCorbusier
was interested in developing entirely new standards
for house design, and in the course of his provoca-
tive discussion he came to the subject of the bed-
room.

No one could have been more emphatic: there
should be only one thing in the bedroom, said he,
and that was the bed. The idea of dressing in the
same space was completely revolting aesthetically
and undesirable hygienically. LeCorbusier's fellow
citizens were shocked by his attack on what was
universally considered a good arrangement.

Quite recently a woman active in public life de-
scribed to some of her friends the kind of bedroom
she would like to have. Nothing could have been
more remote from LeCorbusier's ideal of the mon-
astic sleeping chamber, but it made perfectly good
sense none the less. The main feature of this bed-
room was to be a remarkable motorized bed. At-
tached to the bed was a kind of dashboard with
about a dozen buttons on it : one operated a writing
desk, built into the wall, which would swing into
position when wanted; another button worked a
carefully designed reading light; a third took care
of opening and closing the windows; a fourth oper-
ated the blinds; a fifth brought a small refrigerated
compartment within reach; and others took care of
a radio, record-player, maid, telephone, and so on.

There are few of us who spend this much time
in our beds, and there are even fewer who could
afford the elaborate sets of motors and controls

required. Nevertheless, the example does serve to
define clearly the range of design possibilities,
which in turn represent varying tastes and living
habits.

From the foregoing we see that a bedroom can be
a great many things. It can be a second living-
room, giving members of the family needed pri-
vacy for conversation, reading, or study. Or it can
be a sleeping chamber which also includes dressing
facilities. And, finally, it can be nothing more than
a sleeping compartment containing only the beds
and the necessary controls for ventilation, light,
sound, and the rest.

Fortunately, there is nobody who can tell you
which of these kinds of rooms is the best kind.
When a house is planned, a choice will be made
only on the basis of how one prefers to live. Even
this preference, however, will not be completely
free, because the budget at some point will enter
the picture. Space in a house is comparatively
cheap to build — that is, empty space costs less than
subdivided space. This means that if a given area is
to be divided into a dressing-room and a sleeping
chamber, it will cost more than a single room in
which both activities are taken care of. Neverthe-
less, space does cost something, and the bed-living
room, which has to be large, will be more expensive
than the old-style bed-dressing room.

The sleeping-compartment with separate dress-
ing-room scheme, for example, has one tremen-
dous advantage: the dressing space can be kept
warm even if the windows in the sleeping unit are
left open all night. There is also the matter of
quiet, since a space containing only one or two
beds can be very satisfactorily soundproofed at no
great expense. The bed-living room scheme, on the
other hand, offers the pleasant prospect of sleeping
in a room of really generous size with the possibil-
ity of a very agreeable, casual kind of existence
where one can work or talk without the inconven-
ience of getting up and going downstairs. Once the

115

I 17

20

121

An ancient and honorable way to provide for beds
is to place them in an alcove (Thomas Jefferson, one
of the first modern architects, kept his in one which
served as a passage between two rooms, and pulled
it up to the ceiling during the day). Views I 1 7 and
I 18 show two up-to-the-minute versions of the
alcove scheme, which is applicable either to the bed-
sitting room or— when space limitations are espe-
cially stringent— to other rooms as well, to provide
accommodation for guests. The pictures above show
what architect-designed built-in equipment can do
to solve the problem of clothes storage, save floor
space, and improve appearance. In view 120, note
particularly the handy wall recess for shoes just in-
side the sliding doors. Such a recess, placed be-
tween the partition studs, takes no space at all, and
can be built by any carpenter.

123

124

The bedroom above is the handsomest we 'have
come across in a good many years of looking at
modern houses all over the country. It is interest-
ing how "at home" in this thoroughly modern
room is the bow-back Windsor chair, the best
piece of furniture America has produced. For
certain functional needs like the dressing table
in view 122, the desk in view 123 and the
bedback in view 125, modern furniture is man-
datory. But do not hesitate to mix in traditional
pieces if you happen to feel like it, or insist that
the furniture be modern because the architec-
ture is.

125

In the sleeping as well as the living portions of
the house modern planning ideas can be employed
to save space, increase comfort or add entirely
new functions to commonplace rooms. View I 26,
for example, shows how a sliding partition can be
used to create a combination bedroom-playroom
for the children, sunny and spacious by day, cozy
and intimate by night. In the room shown in 1 27,
the same device is employed to divide sleeping
and dressing areas, so that the latter can be kept
warm all night long. The pictures on this page
show several versions of the popular double bunk,
including one (129) in which the upper bunk is
offset to take advantage of the space above the
sloping ceiling of a stairway.

Nowhere in the house are the fittings so important
as in the bedroom, where space is usually at a pre-
mium and the storage question is critical. In the solu-
tion of this problem there is almost no limit to what
ingenious design can accomplish. A few examples of
such ingenuity are shown here: a variety of built-in,
space saving chests of drawers; closet doors which
also function as a fitting-mirror (134); a minimal
guest room (135 and 136) scarcely larger than a
good sized bath, but providing a writing desk and
fireplace as well as a generous closet. All are carried
out in an attractive, economical fashion; the main
investment is in design, not in space or materials.

136

140

One criticism frequently leveled at the large win-
dows employed in modern architecture is that they
do not leave enough wall space for furniture. The
rooms shown here provide a striking refutation of
this argument. As view 140 shows, window and
furniture design can be integrated in a way that
provides a maximum of both glass and storage space,
and a simpler, better looking wall to boot. The same
principle has been applied to the windows in 139
and 141, while view 138 shows how it can be ex-
tended to the bedroom corridor. View 137 shows
a storage space for fireplace logs tucked into the
bottom of an inside "storagewall" flanking a some-
what similar passage.

144

146

147

Built-in storage equipment can make as great a con-
tribution to the living rooms as it does to the bed-
rooms of the modern house, and it also has the
important job of creating functional divisions in the
"open plan." Thus the three storage units on the
facing page serve as semi-partitions between a dining
room and stairway (142), and living and dining
rooms (143 and 14-4 — in the latter, note the con-
venient slots at the end of the unit for card tables
and trays). The views on this page show wall-high
cabinets for books, and two of the units, 145 and
146, include built-in radio-phonographs. The shelv-
ing in 147 is covered by a horizontally-sliding ver-
sion of the roller desktop.

From storage cabinets and furniture attached to the
walls, as in 1 48 and 1 49, it is only a step to the use
of such equipment to form the walls themselves— a
device which we have named the "storagewall."
This arrangement takes only a little more space than
the ordinary partition, and is extremely flexible,
since the various units used to make up a particular
wall can be arranged in any desirable pattern and
faced in either direction, serving two rooms with
the same wall. The wall shown in ISO (which we
designed for LIFE) is intended for use between a
living room and entrance hall, and is I 2 inches thick.

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151

CHAPTER TWELVE

ORGANIZED STORAGE

ONCE UPON A TIME all houses had attics and base-
ments. The basements were full of furnaces, vege-
tables, garden tools, rubber boots, canned goods,
trunks — the familiar combination of junk and use-
ful things a family accumulates. The same was true
of attics, except that their contents were mostly
junk. World War I had the highly desirable effect
of removing a lot of scrap iron from these attics,
thus bringing a semblance of order to the storage
spaces of millions of American homes. By the time
World War II came around, the attics and base-
ments were just as full as they had ever been.

One of the minor miracles in everyone's experi-
ence is the annual cleaning bee, during which
mother or the entire family, on an appointed day
in the spring, swoop up into the attic for the yearly
cleaning. The amazing part of this operation is not
the elimination of things, but the fact that once the
junk is stacked in orderly piles there suddenly
seems to be a tremendous amount of space left
over, although at the beginning the entire room
was so cluttered that you could hardly walk around
in it. It is the moral behind this recurring experi-
ence that forms the basis for the theme of this
chapter; that is, if you have an adequate number
of storage spaces, properly shaped and properly
located, you can take care of everything that has
to be kept out of sight and still have a good deal
of space left over.

THE SHRINKING HOUSE
It is common knowledge that the house today is
smaller than it used to be. Part of this shrinkage
has taken place in the rooms themselves. However,
not only are individual rooms smaller, but there
are fewer of them. Part and parcel of this process
of shrinkage is the gradual disappearance of both
attics and basements. Attics have disappeared for
a number of reasons. One is the popular practice
of tucking bedrooms under the eaves and using
dormers to let in the light. Another is the increas-
ing popularity of low-pitched roofs, which do not
have a space under them big enough to be used
as an attic.

Basements are disappearing for a number of
equally good reasons. One is the fact that modern
heating plants are compact. The hot air furnaces
of thirty years ago, looking for all the world like
giant metallic spiders of some antediluvian period,
needed plenty of space in the cellar. Since then
there has been a shift from coal to oil or gas, nei-
ther of which requires cellar space. It is possible
that our oil supply may dwindle to the point where
it will become less available for heating than it has
been; but electricity, which is the most convenient
of all, is coming along to take its place. The change
in heating equipment, however, is by no means the
only reason that basements have shrunk. We don't
keep vegetables in them the way we used to, and

135

ORGANIZED STORAGE

home canning, at least until World War II broke
out, was rapidly becoming a lost art. Finally, the
appearance of radiant floor heating may very well
eliminate basements, or at least reduce them in the
future to tiny storage chambers.

"EQUIVALENT SPACE"

One of the most disagreeable things about small
houses built in recent years is that, while basements
and attics have shrunk almost to the vanishing
point, the builders have included no more space in
the general living area. The result for hundreds of
thousands of families has been sheer frustration,
because in these houses there is no space for trunks,
old furniture, or any of the innumerable bulky
objects which must be kept around the house.
Obviously this is an intolerable situation. The ac-
commodations once provided by cellar and attic
must be replaced by equivalent storage space else-
where. For years the major complaint of the
American housewife has been that never has she
lived in a house with enough closets. When she
says she does not have enough closets, she thinks
she means closets; actually she means something
quite" different. A closet is a place where clothes
and blankets and very few other items should be
stored. For everything else in or around the house,
the closet is no solution at all.

ATIP FROM THE STOREKEEPER

Next time you go down to the corner drugstore,
grocery, or delicatessen, look to see how your local
merchant stores his wares. There are bins, cup-
boards, and show cases, but most of the storage is
wall storage. A shop-keeper may stock hundreds
of individual items, yet he can find any of them in
an instant. If he had to sell his stock out of closets,
he would go crazy. So would the housewife. In a
minor way this is what the housewife is trying to
do in the average house.
136

Just a few days ago, one of us went down to the
local hardware store and talked to the owner. How
many items did he have in his store? "Well," he
said, rubbing his chin, "I don't know. I have never
looked at my inventory that way, but I would
guess that if you counted everything it would be
between six and eight thousand items." Checking
over this impressive array of stock we made an-
other discovery : aside from a few very bulky pieces,
like wheelbarrows and baskets, garden tools and
rope, everything fitted very comfortably on shelves
not more than ten inches wide. Let us keep this
fact in mind, because it is of the greatest impor-
tance in working out a really efficient storage
scheme.

BULKY THINGS

Closets are no good for little things because to-
much space is wasted. They are equally unsuitable
for the larger objects which have to be put away
in every household. A list of such things would
include the baby carriage and, when the children
grow older, their bicycles. It would include the
lawn mower and the roller, the rakes and luggage,
the summer rugs and out-door furniture. Where do
they go? In many houses, if there is a basement,
they go in the basement. But the chances are that
your new house may not have a basement. Cer-
tainly no one is going to build a cellar, which is
an expensive construction, just for the baby car-
riage, because it should never get off the ground
level, anyway. The same is true of garden tools
and bicycles.

One excellent solution for this storage problem
is the garage, where there is room to store skis,
luggage, summer furniture, and other awkward-to-
handle items which are moved only once or twice
a year. Some garages are equipped with a kind of
storage mezzanine under which the hood of the car
will fit, so that still more space is provided. What
we are considering here, though, is the question of

ORGANIZED STORAGE

possibly making the garage three or four feet wider
than it would have to be if only the car were to be
considered. This extra footage could be fitted with
compartments for the carriage, lawn mower and
roller, bicycles, etc., all of which could be taken
out and put back easily.

The problem of bulky objects can also be solved
independently of the garage. A room for this pur-
pose can be attached to the house, or it can be a
kind of super garden shed somewhere but in the
yard. If this sounds a little like a return to grand-
father's woodshed, what of it? Grandfather had
some pretty good ideas.

THE HEATER

If elimination of the basement as a storage space
can be compensated for in one of the ways men-
tioned, or perhaps in some other, we still have to
remove the furnace. Can a furnace be placed above
ground? In the older types of heating systems
which used gravity to get cold air or cold water
back to the furnace for reheating, the basement
was the only suitable place because it had to be
below the level of the lowest living floor. But mod-
ern heating systems don't work on gravity, that is,
none but the least expensive. The warm air instal-
lations, which are generally described as air-con-
ditioning systems, work on a forced draft, using a

blower somewhere in the ducts which pushes the
warm air into the rooms and sucks the cold air
back in. Reliance on gravity, therefore, is no longer
a consideration, and the same is true of the hot-
water plants, almost all of which have circulating
pumps on the return line from the radiators.

Thus we have the very attractive possibility of
putting the furnace or boiler on the first floor,
where it can be gotten at easily without any loss of
efficiency in heating.

FEW THINGS BELONG IN CLOSETS

Having disposed of the bulky objects, we come to
the question of "active storage." Active storage
covers everything that is used frequently in the
house. It may include a broom, which from this
point of view is very active indeed, or a can of
stewed tomatoes, which may sit on a shelf for
months. They are alike, nevertheless, in that when
you want them you want them right away, and
without traveling to the other end of the house to
get them.

The trouble with ordinary closets when the ques-
tion of active storage is considered is that they are
unorganized space. You can set things in a closet
or you can hang them, but there are few things
which are satisfactorily taken care of by hanging
or leaning.

137

ORGANIZED STORAGE

Are you one of those unfortunates who has to
take a card table out of the front hall coat closet
once every week or two? If so, you are familiar
with the agonizing process of trying to lift all the
coats out of the way and somehow wangling the
table out of its hiding place in the back without
sweeping all the rubbers and overshoes into the
hall. You are lucky if this is all that happens, be-
cause in the same closet there may very well be
golf clubs, a pair of skis, undoubtedly a set of roller
skates, and maybe a couple of umbrellas and a
movie projector. Perhaps you keep just a few of
these things in your hall closet, but the chances are
pretty good that by the time the card table is out
you are more in the mood for a stiff drink than a
quiet game of bridge.

Here are some of the items that most people, for
want of better space, keep in closets: toys, um-
brellas, tricycles, hat boxes, luggage, electric light
bulbs, overshoes, batteries, -wires, tools, tennis
rackets, rubbers, movie screens, and sewing ma-
chines. Every one of these items, and the dozens
you could probably add after going through your
own closets, deserves proper storage space, but
that storage space should be somewhere else.
Moreover, if you get out the tape measure and
check the dimensions of these objects, you will
find that few of them need a space deeper than ten
inches and most would fit in less.

PLACES FOR LITTLE THINGS

We have already seen what shopkeepers, who
have to be efficient people, do about storing goods
— they use narrow shelves and a lot of them. How
does this approach work for the house? We might
start with the broom closet in your kitchen, which,
if it is one of the standard manufactured units, is
a really wonderful thing. Into this cabinet or
closet, which is not much more than twelve inches
deep or wide, you can put one or two brooms,
138

TVJ.

whisk broom, dust rags, floor wax, a mop, dustpan,
and perhaps a vacuum cleaner. They go in easily
and they come out easily. Forgetting the appear-
ance of this unit, let us suppose that the wall in
your front hall is ten or twelve inches thick instead
of six, so that you have about eight of these broom
closets, side by side. A setup like this would give
you organized storage space. You could keep your
golf clubs, skis, or walking sticks in one; in an-
other, the umbrellas and rain coats. In a third there
might be racks for rubbers and overshoes, and so
on. The appearance, to be sure, might suggest a
typical row of gymnasium lockers, but you would
find, if you had an architect worthy of the name,
that he could use a very handsome series of wood
doors, which would look much better than wall-
paper or painted plaster. The joys of a hall so
equipped are not yet ended, however, for in the
space above the broom closets — or whatever they
will be called — there is room for hats, possibly an
overnight bag or two — but there is no need to ex-
tend this list since you probably have the space
filled already. "But what about the card table?"
you may ask at this point. "How does one get a
card table into a broom closet?" The answer is
that you don't, because it is just a matter of making
an opening hi the end of a wall wide enough for
the insertion of card tables, trays, or other objects
that have the same general size and shape.

A THEORY OF STORAGE

It should be clear by now what we are driving at.
Storage space, if sufficiently specialized, can hold
practically anything in the house that has to be put
away. As we have already seen, most of these ob-
jects are small ones. Now let us look at the house
plan. If you take the plan of an average three-
bedroom house and put all of the non-bearing
partitions (that is, walls which do not serve to hold
up ceiling beams) in a straight line, you would
probably find that you had about 150 feet of wall
in a straight line. This is point one. Now let us
assume that this length of wall has been fattened
out from 6 inches to 1 1 or 12 inches so that there
is about 10 inches of clear space on the inside.
This is point two. Now for point three, which is
the payoff: if in these thick walls we installed an
average of six shelves, our three-bedroom house
would have in its non-bearing partitions a total of
900 running feet of shelf space. Could you use it?
We think you could.

This, then, is the theory of essential storage
space in the home — the replacement of certain par-
titions by units which are really cupboards. These
partition-cupboards would be scattered through
the house according to which rooms make the
greatest demands for storage, and they would be
made up of open shelves, as in the living-room or
library, where we want the books to show; draw-
ers, as in the dining-room or kitchen, where we
have to store linens, silver, etc.; or solid doors
which look like nothing more than wood paneling,
where we want to keep things out of sight.

OBJECTIONS

Realizing that this scheme for storing things
might strike practical housekeepers unfavorably,
we took the trouble of checking it with a number
of people before presenting it here. These were

ORGANIZED STORAGE

their objections, and perhaps they coincide with
some of yours:

1) Appearance. — Few like the idea of a wall
covered with knobs and handles. As it happens,
you can find in some fine old Colonial houses
built-in bureaus and cupboards which take up a
large part of a wall, and where the knobs and
handles on doors and drawers make a very pleas-
ing pattern. Nevertheless, you don't have to have
them if you don't want them. There is a kind of
spring catch available, to cite one example, where
a door is opened by pushing lightly on it. With
this kind of hardware, no knobs or pulls are visible.
Then, too, drawers can be designed so that they
can be pulled out without the use of knobs. Sliding
doors can be operated with nothing more than a
recessed finger pull. In other words, despite the
existence of a great deal of concealed storage space,
the walls can be designed so that they give little or
no hint of what is going on behind the surface.

2) Loss of wall space for furnishing. — When this
arrangement was described to one person, she
replied that it sounded very well, but what if you
wanted to put a table against such a wall? Then
the table would have to be moved before you
could get to the cupboard. Here the essential flex-
ibility of the storage wall has to be put into play.
These storage spaces are accessible, as you choose,
from either side of the wall. If the storage wall,
were located, let us say, between the living-room
and a corridor, the space above table height could
open on the living-room side, and the space below
could open o'n the corridor side, and there is a
great deal in the way of games and equipment that
could be stored in the corridor very appropriately.

3) Cost. — Here we have a very real basis for
objection. It is not necessary to make elaborate
cost estimates to know that this type of wall is
going to be much more expensive than a plain
partition, but it should be. After all, consider what
it can do that a partition cannot. There are very

139

ORGANIZED STORAGE

few places where one can get something for noth-
ing, and a house is definitely not among them. In
considering the question of cost, however, there is
one mitigating factor that should be considered
at this point.

ELIMINATION OF FURNITURE

Let us assume that our first wall-storage unit is
going to be installed in the bedroom. In it we will
keep the bed linens, possibly extra blankets, cer-
tainly all our shoes and hats, perhaps a few books,
and, of course, all the clothing now stored in the
bureau. With such a wall, we have no need for a
bureau or a chiffonier, both of which are normally
found in a typical bedroom. And if you felt like
getting rid of the dressing table, a pull-down dress-
ing table installed in the wall would work just as
well and take up much less space than the kind
that stands on legs. By eliminating the bureau, the
chiffonier, and possibly the dressing table, a saving
can be made in actual dollars and cents. To esti-
mate accurately, however, other factors must also
be considered. A great deal of the time spent in
cleaning a bedroom is wasted by the necessity of
getting underneath various pieces of furniture,
dusting and polishing the pieces, and pushing
them around. If you hire people to do your clean-
ing, this saving of labor can be figured in a very
precise manner. Should you be one of the majority
of people who do their own cleaning, think what
the saving of personal wear and tear over a period
of twenty years might be worth, again, if you like,
in dollars and cents.

Now let us try the dining-room. Here a logical
place for the storage wall would be on the kitchen
side, because silver, linens, and dishes will be kept
in it. With cupboard doors opening front and back,
and two-way drawers, we find that the side board
and the china cabinet are no longer necessary. If
you have really fine dishes, china cabinets are no
good for display purposes, anyway. Some section
140

of the storage wall, fitted with glass sliding doors
and illuminated from inside, would turn these
formerly hidden heirlooms into a really beautiful
wall decoration. Another saving, if you want to
try to make it, could be produced by reducing the
size of the dining-room somewhat, since at least
two bulky pieces of furniture have been eliminated

In the living-room the same possibilities are evi
dent. The desk could be a hinged unit which would
swing out of the wall. If you use a typewriter all
the time, a stand for it could be built in. The draw-
ers that make up each side of the conventional
kneehole desk are practically useless because
things stored in a desk should be kept in very shal-
low drawers. You will do far better with two dozen
one-inch drawers than with the present four- or
six-inch drawers; you will be able to store much
more and things will be easier to find. The drawe
of tables in living-rooms, at least most of the tabl
whose owners have allowed us to look inside of
them, are stuffed with playing cards, photograph
albums, ash trays, poker chips, extra cigarettes, old
theater programs, etc. If you cannot bear to throw
out any of these rarely looked at mementos, you
would still be better off if they were stored behind
a wall and out of sight.

A short while ago we asked a famous industrial
designer what he thought the best radio cabinet
was. In a burst of unbusinesslike honesty, he re-
plied, "No cabinet. The best place for a radio and
speaker and record-player is in the wall some place
so that you don't have to dust it and you don't
have to look at it except when you are using it."
Following this suggestion, we would therefore be
inclined to take our radio out of its fancy imitation
Chippendale cabinet and tuck the works into the
storage wall. Placing the speakers in one of the
upper units would give far better acoustical quali-
ties. To hold the record-player and records, the
wall would have to be more than ten inches thick,
which suggests that the wall as a whole be made

I

ORGANIZED STORAGE

deeper, or certain cabinets in its lower portion be
made as wide projecting units. Records and al-
bums and sheet music could all be stored in such
cabinets. So could the movie projector and the
bulkier kinds of amusement apparatus.

If it is your family's habit to serve cocktails or
highballs in the living-room, it is convenient to
keep bottles, glasses, and ice bucket in the storage
wall. It would be a very simple matter to build
the front of this bar unit as a shallow metal-lined
tray which, when let down, would provide a safe
water-proof surface on which to mix the drinks.

These suggestions, of course, barely touch the
possibilities of the storage wall, and uses of the
wall would vary widely from one family to another.
If family A collects ivory elephants, and family B
likes pictures, and family C is proud of its collec-
tion of fine books, and family D subscribes to
thirty weekly and monthly magazines, these units
would be used in totally diiferent ways. Everyone
would be completely satisfied, too. The books and
the elephants could be displayed most effectively,
while the magazines, if installed in slanting racks,
would be interesting to look at and easy to find.
In other words, what we have here is another in-
stance of standardization functioning not as a
straight-jacket but as a means for freeing the ex-

pression of family tastes. The storage wall is just
a framework. It becomes what one makes of it.

WHY HAVE CLOSETS?

It would seem from the foregoing that the good
old closet has been practically eliminated. Such is
almost the case, but not quite. What has been done
eliminates closet storage for almost everything ex-
cept clothes, and now, relieved of the necessity of
doing things for which it is totally unfit, the closet
can become an extremely efficient special unit. As
a shallow box a little less than two and a half feet
deep, it becomes a perfect unit for suits and dresses.
Actually, a hanger with clothes on it can be ac-
commodated in a still narrower space, but we
must provide clearance for the moth bags in which
summer and winter clothes will be put.

The design of the efficient clothes closet is simple.
The hanging rod should be high enough to accom-
modate long evening dresses. Everyday clothes
hun£ from this height will be quite convenient to
get at, so there is no need to install two sets of bars.
This shallow type of closet should have an opening
across its entire front. Whether you use sliding
panels or swinging doors does not matter, although
it has been our experience that the latter are far
more convenient. But a full opening must be pro-

ORGANIZED STORAGE

vided in one way or another, because nothing is
more annoying than trying to reach in through a
narrow door to find clothes at the end of a shallow
closet. In this closet there will also be a light over
the door. Tube lights extending the full length of
the opening inside would be ideal. If the upper
part of the space is to be used for blankets and
odds and ends, it should have its own door above
the door to the closet proper so that they will be
easy to get at. The floor should be raised somewhat
to keep out dust from the bedroom, and all the
corners should be curved for easy cleaning. Clean-
ing, by the way, will be pretty easy, because shoes
and other things that used to clutter up the closet
floor will now be installed in one or another of the
special wall cabinets. The approach to the storage
problem, as we now see, is by no means a matter
of installing a lot of closets. It involves a very
thoughtful estimate of what you want to keep
where, how big it is, and how often it has to be
taken out or put back. The solutions will range all
the way from an enlarged garage or storage shed
out in the back yard to slots in the walls and special
cupboards, shelves, and drawers of the most varied
types. Once this part of the planning process has
been gone through and the right spaces have been
provided, the same thing that we discovered when
the attic was cleaned will be evident. Instead of
having wasted space, as might first seem to be the
case since so much storage space is contemplated
for all parts of the house, we will have saved space.

We will not be putting handkerchiefs, which re-
quire two-inch drawers, into drawers which are six
inches deep. Dishes ten inches in diameter will not
be stacked in kitchen cupboards which are sixteen
inches deep. The house planned on this basis will
have more storage than anyone ever dreamed was
possible in a dwelling of reasonable size; and yet,
because there will be a place for everything and
much useless furniture" will be eliminated, there
will also be more space for unencumbered living.
Don't think that planning this kind of a house
is easy. It isn't. But a lot more will come out of
the work than went into it, because planning a
house is at the most a matter of months and using
it can run into generations. It would be wonderful,
indeed, if we could go down to the local building-
supply house tomorrow and order the storage wall
units and the closets we would like to have; but
we can't. Nobody makes them yet, although the
time is not far off when they will be made. In the
meantime it will be necessary to rely on the car-
penter and the cabinetmaker, who will have to
build these walls from special designs, and the
cost will inevitably be higher. Some of this added
expense can be made up from savings on furniture
and savings in maintenance, but not all of it. As
for the difference, you will just have to make up
your mind to spend some extra money, because
the added expenditure will really pay off. So plan
your storage space as you want it and then build
it as you can best afford it.

142

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SOUND CONDITIONING

ABOUT FOUR years ago we had occasion to make
a general survey of what had happened to the de-
sign of broadcasting studios. These rooms pre-
sented immensely diffi^lt acoustical problems,
partly because of the nature of radio broadcasting
itself, partly because the rooms must be sufficiently
flexible in their engineering design to permit the
perfect reproduction of sounds ranging all the way
from the voice of one person to the very complex
noises made by an entire orchestra. Our assump-
tion when the research was begun was that acous-
tics as a science had a very precise basis, and that
the first broadcasting studios had been calculated
with as much efficiency as the most recent. Nothing
could have been farther from the truth.

One of the earliest studios examined had been
built in 1928. It was a plain rectangular room with
sound-absorbing material on the ceiling. It must
have been quite unsatisfactory from the acoustical
point of view, but at that time so were the receiving
sets, and the demand for fidelity was not nearly so
great as it became in subsequent years.

Another studio, built in 1932, was still a rec-
tangular room except that the corners had been
replaced by diagonal walls, and acoustical material
was used not only on the ceiling but also on some
of the walls. Six years later the Columbia Broad-

casting System installed some studios the like of
which had never been seen in this country. The
walls, instead of going straight up and down, were
tilted. Strange broken surfaces jutted out into the
room. On certain walls where sound-absorbing
material had been used, there were panels of ply-
wood designed to reflect sound and to give it reso-
nance. In the most recent of the studios the walls
have been shifted around so that they are not par-
allel to each other, and the ceilings have been
broken up so that no section of this surface is par-
allel to the floor. What this adds up to is that acous-
tical science, presented with very specific and ad-
mittedly difficult problems, has completely altered
room design in an interval of barely more than a
decade. Today the engineers are sufficiently well
equipped in knowledge and experience to help the
architect produce any kind of acoustical effect in
any kind of interior.

Possibly you have never thought of acoustical
design in connection with your home. Neverthe-
less, sound control can be a vital factor in improv-
ing livability and establishing a greater degree of
privacy. Moreover, the smaller the house, the
greater the need to pay attention to this completely
neglected factor in house design. It is possible —
and, we feel, highly probable — that at some point

143

SOUND CONDITIONING

in the future the rectangular shapes now considered
standard for rooms will be abandoned in favor of
other shapes which to any of us at the moment
would look very strange.

Some of these shapes will be brought into exis-
tence by the requirements of large-scale factory
production, just as your car over a period of forty
years has changed from an assembly of flat planes
and sharp corners to the present complex machine
whose every surface is part of a compound curve.
This belongs to the future, however. The purpose
of this chapter is to examine what can be done
with the house as it is being designed today and
will continue to be designed in the forseeable
tomorrow.

ACOUSTICS IS A NEW SCIENCE

The broadcasting studios, as we have seen, were
the first building interiors to react sharply to the
demands for higher fidelity of sound reproduction.
This is as it should be, for while a very few people
can see what is going on in a broadcasting studio,
tens of millions can hear. When sound came to the
movies, theater design changed. The good movie
houses of the late thirties and early forties showed
the effect of talking pictures very clearly. Again we
find two characteristics: one is the abandonment
of parallel walls or surfaces; the other is the use of
carefully designed surfaces, some of which reflect
sound very brilliantly while others absorb it almost
completely.

Next to feel the effect were the offices, particu-
larly those large rooms where thirty to three hun-
dred typewriters might be clacking away at the
same time. In these spaces it was found that acous-
tical plaster on the ceiling or those attractively
textured and perforated tiles did a great deal to
reduce the general noise level. This was done not
merely to increase the well-being of the employees
— although it did have that effect — but because the
experts who carefully studied the causes of fatigue
and its relation to output found that greater effi-
144

ciency paid for such installations in a very short
time.

It was also found that sound could be controlled
to an appreciable extent by the use of noiseless
typewriters, which brings up a third procedure
that can be applied to the design of the house—
the elimination of noise at its source.

The next building type to fall in line was the fac-
tory. When the war broke out and billions of
dollars were invested in the construction of new
industrial plants, it was found that what held for
office workers and their morale and efficiency was
also true for factory workers. We have already
described the immense bomber plant in the South-
west whose mile-long walls and ceiling are packed
full of sound-absorbing material. This was not as
expensive as it may sound, because the acoustical
material is also used for insulation against heat and
cold. This is another expedient that the home
builder may consider: multiple use of materials so
that the expense for any given requirement is not
too great.

ACOUSTICS IN THE HOME

We now have four techniques with which to
attack the problem of sound control in the home.
The question is, what is this problem we are trying
to attack? For the average family it breaks down
into two parts. The first is the matter of maintain-
ing complete quiet in certain areas — let us say, in
the bedroom where a small child is sleeping. A
solution of this would be letting the child sleep
without forcing the rest of the family to go about
on tiptoe.

The second general situation is one where con-
flicting activities — acoustically speaking, of course
— are carried on in the same room or in the same
part of the house. For example, father wants to
read the paper, mother wants to carry on a long
telephone conversation with a friend, and the chil-
dren want to listen to the latest installment of some
radio thriller. The resulting acoustical conflict is

SOUND CONDITIONING

normally left unsolved, except in the houses of the
very rich where there is enough space for the vari-
ous members of the family to get away from each
other.

In addition to these two very common situations
there frequently arises a third. That is, when the
family takes great pleasure in listening to the radio,
to phonograph records, or to music produced by
the family itself. If you take a five hundred dollar
radio with all of the wonderful quality which has
been built into it and put it into the average small
living-room, the chances are that it will not sound
much better than a fifty dollar radio. However, we
are told by the acoustical engineers that a living-
room can be designed so that its sound character-
istics are not very different from those of a full-
scale symphony hall; that it is possible, in other
words, to design this room so that your five hun-
dred dollar radio (or even the fifty dollar one, for
that matter) gives a performance comparable in
quality to that of an orchestra.

Those who are interested in obtaining this spe-
cial added livability for their home must use an
architect who is willing and able to work with a
first-rate acoustical engineer as a consultant. We
say "willing" because the room that will result
from a successful collaboration on the part of
these two technicians will be rather unconventional
though far from unpleasing in shape, and it cer-
tainly will not fit comfortably into any known kind
of "period" house.

One of us had occasion recently to design a
house in New York where a major factor in the
design of the living-room was precisely this acous-
tical quality. The best radio-phonograph combina-
tion obtainable was not considered good enough,
and one was specially built. Also, there were two
pianos. By the time the architects and engineers
got through, one wall was padded to a depth of
several inches with rock wool and covered with a
kind of grass matting which allowed the sound to
go through the surface; the other wall was paneled

with sheets of oak plywood held loosely in place
so that the proper brilliance of sound could be
obtained; the two end walls, which were entirely
of glass, were set so that they were not parallel to
each other. The ceiling was constructed of wood
frames covered with stretched linen, and behind
the linen were some areas filled with broken sheets
of wallboards so that sounds would be reflected in
an irregular manner; other parts of the ceiling
were heavily padded with rock wool.

This was admittedly an extreme procedure, and
it was by no means cheap. The results, however,
were extraordinary as far as quality of sound is
concerned, and the room's appearance generally
produced a favorable impression. The only point
of this example is that while such a procedure does
not apply to the house of minimum cost, it most
definitely is not restricted to houses for the very
rich. Just as in the bomber plant, the rock wool
padding on wall and ceiling can be used for heat
insulation as well as sound absorption. And finish-
ing materials such as linen and grass matting are
by no means beyond the reach of the middle-class
budget.

However, let us return to the more general
questions of how to establish quiet zones within
the house and how to reduce the discomfort pro-
duced by conflicting family activities.

145

SOUND CONDITIONING

OBJECTIVE OF SOUND CONDITIONING
Basically this objective may be stated in a simple
and precise manner: we want to design a house in
which anybody can carry on any normal activity
without disturbing the rest of the family.

In some of the preceding chapters it has been
evident that a one-story house has many advan-
tages over a two-story house. Where acoustics are
concerned, the advantage is very marked indeed.
In the average two-story house where most of the
bedrooms are on the second floor and the main
noise-producing rooms are on the first, sound
travels far too easily. It goes up the stair well and
into the bedrooms through door cracks or through
the doors themselves. It also goes through the floor
boards, which function in much the same manner
as a drum — that is, any sounds picked up by one
surface are given off by the other. Two-story
houses have their advantages. Their compactness
is perhaps the greatest. But, acoustically speaking,
they have no merit whatsoever.

It is possible — and, for that matter, it has been
done — to build multi-storied houses whose acous-

struction, and many of those who can feel that i :
is pretty much a waste of money. If an attempt is
made to achieve the soundproof qualities of the
concrete-and-masonry house while using wood
something could possibly be worked out in the
way of separating floor and ceiling construction
But it would be costly and not very effective.

Turning to the one-story house we find the fol-
lowing advantages : A one-story house of necessitj
places its bedrooms at some distance from the
main living areas, and distance alone is a factor ir
sound control. The bedroom corridor, unlike the:
stair well, can be treated very easily so that sounds,
which do penetrate into it are absorbed anc
stopped. It is also possible to put sound barriers,
between the noisy rooms and the quiet rooms.
Among those that might be considered, a stone
wall with a fireplace in it comes close to being
ideal, because, as a rule, the thicker and heavier
the barrier, the less likelihood there is of penetra-
tion by sound. If there is no fireplace, a thinner
wall of cinder block or some such material is very
effective. A bank of closets is also a satisfactory

tical properties are admirable. But this generally
involves the elimination of wood construction in
favor of some heavy type of fireproof building
where the second floor is of reinforced concrete or
an equally- dense and weighty material. Few people,
however, can afford to pay for this kind of con-
146

sound-stopper, should the plan permit such an
arrangement.

The essential advantage, however, is the factor
of separation, with the possibility of stopping the
sound before it gets too close to the rooms from
which it should be excluded.

SOUND CONDITIONING

PREVENTION OFNOISEATTHE SOURCE
Anything done to stop sound where it originates
works exactly like the traditional ounce of pre-
vention— it eliminates the need for a cure. Let us
consider some of the rooms that are the worst
offenders.

These rooms include the living-room, dining-
room, kitchen, playroom, and bathroom; of these,
the bathroom is the most annoying because it can
be the most embarrassing. Everyone is familiar
with the disagreeable interruption made by the
noisy flushing of a toilet adjoining the main living
space. And it is an unfortunate coincidence that
the water closet, for functional reasons, is shaped
almost like a trumpet. A trumpet, as one might
well imagine, is no shape for suppressing noise at
its source. Conceivably something could be done
to modify the design of the present-day water
closet to produce a shape more satisfactory acous-
tically and equally efficient in other respects. How-
ever, since no such water closet exists, we may as
well forget it for the time being.

Because of this unfortunate design we have a
clearly unhappy situation, and one which is height-
ened by the fact that the ideal bathroom, as seen
by most prospective homeowners, is an interior in
which all the surfaces are hard, waterproof, and
therefore highly sound-reflective. Here is where we
find the opening wedge for our attack on bath-
room noises at their source. In the first place, soil
lines — that is, the pipes which carry waste matter
from the bathroom fixtures — can be packed in in-
sulating material, which tends to deaden noise
somewhat. Tile and hard plaster can be replaced
by such materials as sheet rubber, linoleum, and
other materials which are water-repellent and also
resilient. This helps to reduce reflected noise. On
the ceiling a standard acoustical material can be
used — either one of the plasters manufactured
specifically for this purpose, or the perforated
metal panels, or perforated or textured fiber boards

which have been on the market for some years.

The floor can be covered with a soft rather than
a hard material. The upper parts of the walls, that
are not exposed to moisture can have the perfo-
rated acoustical materials already mentioned. In
addition, a heavy flush door, weather-stripped in
the bargain, would do a great deal to reduce the
direct transmission of sound. This weather-strip-
ping, incidentally, need not consist of anything
more than a strip of felt, rubber, or some other
material permitting a tight seal to be made, and it
would be attached to the door stop.

Location of the bath can be as important as any
of these suggested control measures. For example,
if we are considering a downstairs lavatory, it could
be 'arranged to reduce transmission of sound. In
one such arrangement there is a fireplace wall be-
tween it and the living-room, and the coat closet
off the front hall serves as an entry. Remember, by
the way, that a closet is a wonderful sound barrier,
because the clothes will absorb any sound that
passes through.

This combination closet-sound barrier also
suggests an excellent solution for the telephone
problem, because if a little telephone desk is in-
corporated with the closet-corridor, conversations
can be carried on without annoying anyone who
might be trying to read or study in the adjoining
living-room.

Acoustical control, it must be emphasized again
and again, is as much a matter of thoughtful plan-
ning as of installation of special materials. It is
true that under certain conditions planning won't
do the job, and special materials have to be used.
A good example of this is the open-front telephone
booth used in New York City's newest subway.
There, even with the terrific clatter of passing
trains, it is possible to carry on an intelligible con-
versation. This seeming miracle is the result of
using three walls of sound-absorbing materials for
the booth.

147

SOUND CONDITIONING

In the house where the corridor-closet-phone
room combination isn't possible, some variation
of this scheme would work very well, for it takes
up very little space and costs very little money.

THE KITCHEN

The annoyances produced by the hired girl in the
kitchen, who tosses your best china around with
the utmost abandon while you are trying to be
polite to your husband's boss after dinner, are too
well known to require extended description. Even
if there is no hired girl and no ceremonial dinner,
the noise problem remains.

There are some expedients for cutting off the
sound at its source, but they are by no means 100
per cent effective. Among them are the replace-
ment of enameled metal surfaces, such as drain-
boards, with work counters of wood, perhaps cov-
ered with linoleum or rubber. A dish or pot
dropped on such a surface will land with a dull
thud instead of a noisy crash. Rubber-covered wire
dish baskets which fit into one's sink if there is a
double sink, or into the laundry tray if there is a
combination unit, are, again, exceedingly effective
in muffling noise. The type of sink which appeared
before the war, usable as a dishpan as well as a
sink, also can help control sound, because once
filled with water the noise of dish and pot washing
is materially subdued. Over and above this, there
is the possibility of sound barriers or sound traps
• of one kind or another.

It is a very convenient characteristic of sound
that, like light, it does not readily travel around

corners. Thus, if you plan a small pantry or utility
space between the kitchen and the dining-room or
the living-dining room, the wall facing the kitchen
door could be covered with sound-absorbing ma-
terial, and what noise did get beyond this second-
ary space would be greatly reduced.

In addition to this, however, the home builder
should consider an acoustically treated ceiling and
a resilient floor for the kitchen. These should be
installed not only to keep the noise out of the other
rooms but also to make work in the kitchen itself
more agreeable. An empty room — and the kitchen
is, acoustically speaking, empty — is far less pleas-
ant than a room containing sound-absorbing ma-
terials. You can check this for yourself very easily
by recalling the difference in sound between a fur-
nished living-room and the same space before the
furniture and carpets were moved in. The hollow
echoing sounds we associate with uninhabited
houses or apartments are the kind we usually get
in the inhabited kitchen. It just happens that in the
kitchen we are used to them and in living-rooms
we are not. Acoustically treated surfaces in the
kitchen would perform the same function as up-
holstered furniture and carpeting in the other
rooms. And who is to say that a kitchen, where
most of the housewife's time is spent, should be
less agreeable in its atmosphere than the living-
room?

CONTROL WITHIN ROOMS

The things discussed so far are concerned chiefly
with keeping noise in one space from getting into
another. What about the family living-room where
three separate kinds of noises may be produced
within the same space at the same time? Obviously,
there is not going to be a perfect solution, because
even if it were technically obtainable it would cost
too much. Nevertheless, there are some highly de-
sirable expedients. Take the case of the radio, for
example.

SOUND CONDITIONING

If the radio faces a sound-absorbent wall, there
will be two immediate results : the room will seem
much larger as far as the sound is concerned; and
noise hitting the opposite wall will not be reflected,
thus reducing the over-all disturbance.

Now what about the person who wants to sit
and read or study while the radio is going? As we
have seen, the noise cannot be eliminated, but it
can definitely be reduced. And the solution is
partly planning, partly use of materials. If the
living-room is made an L rather than a rectangle,
and the smaller part of the L is used as a library
alcove, and if, moreover, the long side of the living-
room is covered with sound-absorbing material,
noise would not be reflected around the corner. It
is pretty likely that this alcove, though completely
open to the living-room, would be a remarkably
quiet and pleasant place even if a considerable
amount of noise were being manufactured in the
rest of the room.

If this doesn't prove to be enough, the list of
expedients is by no means exhausted. A double-
faced row of bookcases projecting out into the
room automatically creates a kind of alcove. Books
themselves ranged on shelves are an exceedingly
effective sound trap. Thus if the noise problem is
sufficiently acute, our sound-controlled living-
room might consist of a large space subdivided by
a baffle and an alcove. In such a room the average
family could carry on its separate activities with a
privacy undreamed of in the average American
home.

This chapter has been anything but a technical
treatise on acoustics, yet we have managed to ex-
amine the many problems of sound control in the
house and some of the techniques developed in
other types of buildings. We have learned that
sound does not travel easily around corners. We
know that getting around them can be made even
harder by putting sound-absorbing materials on
the reflecting surfaces. We know that baffles acous-

tically treated as in the open-front telephone booth
can produce privacy within a space without break-
ing up that space. From the office designer we have
learned that treatment of the ceiling with sound-
absorbing materials and treatment of the floor
with resilient materials or even with carpeting can
work wonders in reducing the general noise level.

It is evident that planning, if carried out with
the question of sound control in mind, can be ex-
tremely effective, and that a little ingenuity in such
places as the kitchen can turn it into a quiet and
agreeable work space.

If you are hesitating for any reason whatever
between a one-story plan and a two-story plan, the
question of acoustics may help in arriving at a
decision, in spite of the obvious fact that nobody
who wants a two-story house is going to shift to
a plan for a single floor just because some of the
rooms might become quieter.

ACOUSTICS AS DECORATION

One reason people have been slow to adopt tech-
niques developed in offices and other types of non-
residential interiors is that they have felt that their
own home interiors would somehow lose charm in
the process. As far as sound control is concerned,
there is nothing whatever to worry about. Every-
body likes exposed masonry walls whether of stone
or brick, and when these are used inside the house
— and there are many such examples in the photo-
graphs scattered through this book — not only is the
wall texture greatly enhanced but sound barriers
are automatically set up. In the most modern of
modern houses and the most conservative of con-
ventional houses, masonry walls are used with the
greatest willingness by architects and their clients
alike. Therefore, consider such surfaces not only
as acoustical factors but also as a decided advan-
tage when the question of decorating comes up.
Everyone likes wood, too. There has seldom

149

SOUND CONDITIONING

been a house where the owner has not been more
than willing to install wood paneling. Ten or fif-
teen years ago this was rather expensive, because
good wood such as mahogany or walnut or oak
could only be purchased in solid pieces, and the
panels had to be installed by expert craftsmen.
Wood paneling, therefore, has always been asso-
ciated in the popular mind with luxury.

Today this limitation no longer exists. Any of
the big plywood companies can furnish laminated
sheets four feet by eight feet in size, or larger, ve-
neered with woods so rare and exotic that their
use hitherto has been confined to the most expen-
sive furniture. There is little question about the
desirability of using such woods in the average
living-room or even in the master bedroom. Some
people are so fond of flush plywood paneling that
they have installed it in their bathrooms. With the
new finishes available on the market, these panel-
ings can be made highly water-resistant.

Here we have the chance to combine improved
home decoration with ideal sound conditioning.

And remember that the few dollars an acoustical
engineer might charge for his consulting services
is not going to affect your total budget much one
way or another. Get his advice.

Sound control techniques embrace many mod-
ern materials in addition to wood and stone. For-
tunately, they are all agreeable in appearance and
rich in texture. The acoustical plasters are much
softer and much better textured than the white
plaster that goes on the average ceiling. The same
is true of the perforated panels, which can be
painted any color and any number of times with-
out impairing in any way their high efficiency as
sound absorbers. These, too, work in particularly
well with the contemporary decorating scheme,
where the attempt is to get textural richness through
the use of machine-produced forms rather than the
fakery of bygone handicraft techniques.

Thus we can end with the assurance that the
sound-conditioned house will not only be pleas-
anter to live in because it will be quieter, but that
it will be much better to look at.

ISO

WINDOWS

Big, well designed windows are the trademark
of modern architecture. They are the means of
bringing together the outdoors and indoors in an
integrated visual and functional pattern that
makes living in modern houses an exciting new
experience. Made possible by modern develop-
ments in building technology, they can be used
to reduce fuel bills and increase comfort. In one
form or another, they are applicable to every
building problem, and modern architects seem
able to go on discovering such new forms and
new applications indefinitely. The examples on
this page suggest the range of this experimenta-
tion: a two-story dormer for a studio-workshop
in Delaware (152), a foldaway window-wall in
a living room overlooking a California hillside
(I 53) and an unusual combination of sash, fixed
glass and glass block from a suburban house near
Philadelphia (I 54).

4*" ^'-

57

Not every house can enjoy the perfect setting of the
one above, but when such an opportunity does come
along it is one of the virtues of modern design that
it is capable of exploiting it to the maximum. And
on the ordinary suburban lot, where nature does
not provide the view, it is possible to manufacture
it, as the other examples shown here demonstrate.
Such effects depend on the most intimate sort of
collaboration between the designer of the house and
the landscape architect, and require more than a
nominal investment in spiky evergreens." They pay
off, however, in a feeling of spaciousness that can
make a compact house seem twice its true size.

1

The big glass areas and movable walls used in
modern houses are not only capable of bright-
ening old types of rooms; they are creating
entirely new types. Thus the space above ( I 59)
is neither a porch nor an inside room, but a
combination of both. View 160 shows a
glazed passage that dojjbles as a porch, view

161 an outdoor living space connected to a
bedroom by a sliding door. On the facing page,

162 and 163 show a sunporch that can be
completely open or completely enclosed, view
164 a modern version of the old-fashioned
"conservatory," with a glazed roof. Connected
by sljding doors to a glass-walled living room,
this room won the grand prize in a contest for
new uses of glass in building construction.

162

163

164

165

167

168

*fc

f*'v

69

The logical final development of the glazed, sliding
wall is the living room that becomes a porch simply
by pushing away the wall, and becomes a room
again by closing it. This arrangement makes lots of
sense, since one set of furniture serves for both out-
door and indoor living, and there is no need to put
away chairs and tables in bad weather. The three
rooms shown here are all true part-time-porches in
which at least one full wall can be removed com-
pletely. With present day equipment and weather-
stripping, such walls slide easily and can be made
virtually draftproof. In winter, they can be opened
slightly for ventilation.

mi

171

172
r~

An obvious objection to the use of glazed walls in
built-up areas is lack of privacy. These designs show
how it can be avoided. Two of the houses (I 7 1-173
and 172) employ almost Identically the same
scheme: a continuous glass wall facing a garden en-
closed by a high fence; in one case, to permit free
passage of air, the fence is built like a Venetian blind
Standing on end. Another solution is the "patio"
plan in which the rooms themselves enclose the
garden, as in 174. Views 1 75 and 176 show two
more versions of the walled-garden idea, one for a
small lot, the other for a large one.

175

177

«all ic

When an entire wall, or a large part of a wall is
made of glass, there is no necessity to use ventilator
sash over the whole area. Big pieces of fixed glass
are better looking, easier to clean (when on the
ground floor), easier to make weathertight, and cost
less than a complex assembly of movable windows.
One of the simplest and most dramatic schemes is
to use floor-to-ceiling panes of plate glass (set in the
type of frame used for store windows) over most
of the area, supplemented by metal sash, as in 177
and 178. And, where fixed glass is used, there ar
convincing arguments for using louvres rather tha
glass in the part of the window given to ventilation,
as in 181 and 182.

ISO

82

II

186

,n lighting a large roc., a given amount of glass se
high in the walls is twice as effective as the same
Lnt at or be,ow eye .eve,, .none story houses

it is often possible to place such windows over the
1L of the room, as in .83 and ,86 and thus

flood the entire interior with daylight of equam-

tensity. Skylights can a,so perform a valuable ^ fun,
tion in bringing the lighting in the intenor pars of

the house up to the standard of the outs,de room.
View 187, for example, shows an inside cornd

in this way. Had this skylight been omitted, t
corridor might have seemed excessively gloomy ,n
relation to other parts of the house.

189

190

In hot weather, the big windows used in modern
architecture would admit entirely too much sun-
shine if they were not protected in some way. Com-
monest solution for this problem is the use of
"hoods," or permanent sunshades proportioned so
as to cut out most of the summer sun while letting
in as much as possible in winter— a device which
works to perfection on windows facing south. Two
such hoods, one used to form a porch, are shown
in. pictures 188 and 189. An idea of the accuracy
with which they operate can be obtained from I 90
and 191, which show the outside of one "solar"
house in midsummer and the inside of another in
midwinter. In the second view, notice how far into
the room the low winter sunshine penetrates, bring-
ing heat that cuts fuel bills substantially.

;

k

S** t*.

192

WINDOWS

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

WINDOWS HAVE been in houses almost as long as
there have been houses. There have been windows
of ice and rock crystal and mica and nothing at all.
The most commonplace, the most completely fa-
miliar part of a house that there is, the window
seemed to most people so simple a thing that gen-
erations went by before it occurred to anyone to
do any thinking about it. And when they finally
began to think, they discovered some very strange
and wonderful things.

Did you know that the window out of which
you look to see if Johnny is coming home from
school, or if the milkman is coming by with that
extra quart — that window so clear and perfectly
transparent — is really as opaque as a solid slab of
armor plate? Did it ever occur to you that this
fragile sheet is daily throwing back a bombardment
of rays of all sizes and shapes?

It was only when some scientifically minded
people began to look at the common pieces of
glass we have taken for granted for so long that
they found they were dealing with an amazingly
complex apparatus, built like a dam with countless
billions of tiny sluice gates which unerringly
opened and closed to let some things through and
to keep others out.

When the scientists got through, a few architects
in various countries began piecing together the bits
of data, wading through formulas and graphs and
other scientific jargon, to find out what this meant
in terms of buildings. None of these architects

was particularly important or financially success-
ful, and this was probably because their curiosity
far outweighed their business acumen. While their
fellow professionals were saying in an unconscious
parody of Gertrude Stein, "A window is a window
is a window," these people were saying "Is it?" and
"What is it?" and "Why is it?"

One of the little tidbits they picked up, a typical
and apparently unrelated scientific fact, is that
glass is opaque to low temperature radiation; that
is, while wide open to most of the heat of the sun,
it is closed to the infra-red waves sent off by any
object cooler than a steam radiator. This is one
reason why the greenhouse makes such a good heat
trap. It is also the reason why the solar house is
possible. But glass, as everyone knows, is also
opaque to the bulk of the ultra-violet rays. In other
words, the average window is a very narrow gate
through which only a little more than visible light
can pass. Attempts to widen it have been pretty
expensive or not very successful, but location of
the gate in the spectrum can be shifted. In terms of
the home, what does this mean?

Some years ago a product called Vita Glass was
put on the market. It was intended to do every-
thing window glass did and let in ultra-violet as
well. This was an attempt to "widen the gate" —
to let in a broader slice of the spectrum. It was a
good idea. People in homes glazed with Vita Glass
would have had fewer germs to contend with and
might have gotten a coat of tan in the bargain. But

167

WINDOWS

it never got down to a price home builders could
afford.

The windows in your car are not made of single
sheets of glass, but are a sandwich with a trans-
parent plastic sheet as the filler. The virtue of these
windows is that they are shatterproof. It is rarely
that a home builder feels the need to go to extra
expense for this reason, but we ran across a large
house in Pittsburgh a while ago whose playroom
windows were equipped in this manner. A far more
useful filler is air, whose insulating properties are
well known to anyone who has put up a storm
sash. The advantage of the "air-glass sandwich" is
that it removes the need for the extra sash. Double
glass is widely used in modern trains. One such
product available for homes is "Thermopane," a
sealed package consisting of two thicknesses of
glass with a quarter-inch air space. It costs a little
more than twice as much as a single sheet of glass,
but less than a window plus storm sash. The small
air space, by the way, provides quite as good insu-
lation as a much bigger gap would.

WINDOW MECHANICS

Even more important than glass is the kind of
window in which it is installed. There are many
types, some comparatively new and unfamiliar,
others which have been in use for centuries. The
type of window selected for a house has to do with
much more than operating characteristics and
price, for windows, more than any other element
in the house, set its "style." Not many of us realize
this, but the way we identify houses as Colonial,
English, French Provincial, and so on, is pretty
much by the window pattern, which is different in
each case. Similarly, an outstanding characteristic
of the modern house is not a flat roof or some new
material, but the radically different manner in
which the windows are set.

The double-hung window is common in our
country because it is cheap, simple to install, and
168

practically foolproof mechanically, since all it has
are pulleys and sash weights (or balances) and a
handle. It is also a pretty good ventilator, because
it can be opened from the top or bottom or both.

The second important type of window is the
casement. Casements trace their ancestry back to
the great houses of medieval England. This doesn't
mean that the casement was invented in England,
but it does relate to a certain type of medieval
building, just as the double-hung window is a
fundamental design element in the architecture of
our own Colonial period.

The casement, too, has its difficulties. The in-
swinging type gets in the way of curtains and pro-
jects awkwardly into the room. When the window
swings out, it tends to disintegrate if it is wood or
rust if it is steel. The out-swinging type is most
common, because it is easiest to make weather-
tight. Obviously, a window that closes against a
frame from the outside is less likely to let rain in
than one that closes from inside. However, if you
want to use screens— which is something they
never worried about in medieval England — you
have to take the screen down to get at the window
or use a mechanical operator.

The casement has two big advantages. One is
that it can be opened for 100 per cent ventilation.
In fact, with the offset hinges that enable the win-
dow to swing out in front of the face of the build-
ing, casements can give better than 100 per cent
ventilation, as the projecting wings act like sails
that scoop up passing breezes.

The next two types, which are becoming some-
what more common, are nothing more than
double-hung and casement windows laid on their
sides. The horizontally sliding window has the
advantage of fitting into the long, low lines char-
acteristic of the modern house. It needs no pulleys
or weights, and one type on the market can be
removed for easy cleaning.

The awning-type window has a casement hinge
at the top instead of the side. Awning-type win-

WINDOWS

dows look very pretty, indeed, when banked up in
a big wall of glass; they cast pleasant shadows on
the exterior surfaces, and they help keep out the
rain. With these windows, as with casements, there
is a screening problem, because screens can only
work with some type of mechanical operator.

So much for the standard types of windows.
They all have one feature in common : in addition
to providing a view and letting in light, they all
serve as ventilators. This dual function — ventila-
tion plus light — has been taken for granted for so
long that few people think about it. But among the
architects who have been re-examining every part
of the house an interesting question has arisen:
why do windows have to fill this dual function?
The question is worth asking, because if the answer
is that they don't have to, you have a freedom in
handling the outside walls of your house you
would never have believed possible.

Let us say, for example, that you would like to
have the outside wall of one room entirely glass,
and by entirely, we mean from wall to wall and
from floor to ceiling. Now, if this glass screen had
to be made out of windows — windows, that is,
which could be opened and closed — it would be
expensive, complicated to build, and also clumsy-
looking, because the frames required by sash
weights or hinges are thick. If, on the other hand,
you accept the idea that ventilation and lighting
do not necessarily have to be taken care of by the
same unit, you can build a handsome, inexpensive
glass wall composed of one or two big sheets of
plate glass, like a shop window, or a larger number
of panes of sheet glass, which costs less.

Ventilation then becomes a problem to be solved
by itself. It could be done mechanically by turning
on a blower which would push fresh air through
registers into the room and take it out through
other registers. During the winter when heat is re-
quired, this is what happens anyway.

There is another solution, however, which a few
architects have found even more intriguing: the

arrangement of fixed glass to let in the light and
view, and smaller windows or louvers to let in the
air. Combinations of movable and fixed windows
are not new. The louver idea is still unfamiliar,
however. Louvers can be arranged so that they
look like shutters on each side of the window, or
they can be installed as long, narrow slots directly
underneath the sill. It doesn't matter too much
how they are placed as long as they let in a suffi-
cient volume of air to ventilate the room properly.

MORE LIGHT EQUALS LESS GLARE

The great virtue of the divided system of lighting
and ventilation is that it makes possible very large
windows — glass walls, in fact— without undue ex-
pense for construction or weatherproofing. It is,
therefore, a device which contributes toward
greater freedom in design than we have had hith-
erto. Whether the ventilating element is a louver,
window, or door is not important: the freedom is
there. But what about big windows? Have you
ever heard anyone say, "It must be dreadful to
live in one of those modernistic houses ! Think how
all that light must hurt your eyes!"

Maybe you have felt this way, too. But did you
ever hear anyone say, "It must be perfectly dread-
ful out of doors where all that light hurts your
eyes"?

The answer, of course, is not to be found in the
quantity of light, but in the way in which light is
used. A room with just one small window in a solid
wall can be very hard on the eyes, not because
there is too much light, but because the contrast
between the brilliant patch of glass and the dim
surroundings is almost unbearable. In such interi-
ors, to which all of us have been exposed at one
time or another, the light shoots in through the
window as if from the mouth of a cannon, and its
impact can be comparably unpleasant. So, strange
as it may seem on first thought, the more windows
a room has — always assuming that these windows

169

WINDOWS

have been properly distributed by a designer who
knows what he is about — the softer and more
pleasant the lighting will be.

It is the modern architects, and their eternal
curiosity about things everyone else has taken for
granted, that has brought up the whole subject of
daylighting in connection with the home. As in so
many other instances, they have learned what the
problems and solutions are from other types of
buildings, notably factories and schools. In fac-
tories daylighting is a major design factor, as it
has an appreciable effect on worker efficiency,
profit and loss. In schools there have been other
considerations: the well-being of the pupils de-
pends to so great an extent on adequate day-
light that there are state laws which control the
minimum size of windows. These laws also fix the
height of the top of a window, since it has been
found that light which comes in through the top
of a window is far more useful than that which
enters at the bottom. Light from the bottom is
mostly glare while top light is soft, usable illumi-
nation. In house design this fact is important.

At the beginning of this book there were two
chapters devoted almost exclusively to the prob-
lems involved in designing a living-room. Not all
of the problems were dealt with, however, for we
might approach the design of this room on the
basis of daylighting, too.

Let us assume, therefore, that we are continuing
the design of the living-room, and that the instruc-
tions given the architect demand that the lighting
be so worked out that on an average day one could
read or write comfortably anywhere in it. The first
thing he would do would involve the creation of
a window starting from a sill four or five feet from
the floor, going up as close to the ceiling as possi-
ble, and extending from wall to wall. In other
words, the upper half of the wall would be a win-
dow. You wouldn't like this window, and neither
would the architect for that matter, because the
connection between interior and garden would be
170

lost, and the view would be spoiled, since it could
only be seen when one was standing up. In prac-
tice, therefore, the big window extends much far-
ther down towards the floor. But this is done for
considerations other than daylighting.

If the room were built at this stage of the design
with a continuous high window on one side, the
result would not be pleasant, because all the light
would be coming in from the same direction.
Shadows would be cast, and the illumination
would fall off sharply as one moved away from the
window wall. At the opposite wall it would drop
to one-tenth its initial value, which means that the
instructions given the architect would not be car-
ried out. The next step, therefore, is to open this
opposite wall, too. Now the situation is vastly im-
proved: illumination is far more even, and the
room is infinitely pleasanter. But this procedure
has an important effect on the plan. Few houses
have living-rooms with both long walls exposed on
the outside. Usually one side has other rooms up
against it. Here modern architecture can come to
the rescue. The characteristic long, narrow plan
with the living-room at one end can solve the prob-
lem, or, if this doesn't work out conveniently, the
living-room ceiling can be raised and a band of
clerestory windows installed.

A clerestory window is nothing more than a high
window which occurs where roofs of differing
levels come together. The old Gothic cathedrals
are full of such windows in the walls between nave
and aisles, and much of their atmosphere is due to
this lighting device. It can be used in homes in con-
junction with either pitched or flat roofs. The
clerestory has many advantages: for one thing, it
means that the living-room must be higher than
other rooms, something most people like anyway;
for another, it provides the balanced lighting we
are looking for without the need to plan the room
with both long walls exposed. In Taliesen, the
home of Frank Lloyd Wright, there are many
rooms with windows high up under the roof, and

WINDOWS

they are extraordinarily effective decoration. When
the sun gets around to them, shafts of light stream
through, giving the interiors a wonderfully "alive"
quality owing to the changes of lighting as the sun

moves across the sky.

•

DAYLIGHTING IS A SCIENCE

The living-room we have tentatively arrived at,
with large, continuous glass areas on one side and
a clerestory band on the other, is unusual in ap-
pearance compared to ordinary rooms, but it has
one advantage never possessed by a conventional
interior: since the light is good everywhere, furni-
ture can be placed wherever you please. A desk or
favorite easy chair does not have to be jammed up
against a small window to be usable, and mother's
sewing table can be next to the fireplace if she
wants it there. If our living-room has little resem-
blance to conventional interiors, it shows an as-
tonishing similarity to the wonderful classrooms
architects have been installing in schools on the
West Coast.

The problem given our hypothetical architect —
provision of good reading light everywhere in the
room — presents an absolute necessity in the case
of schools, for desks are all over the classroom
area and each child must be able to see properly.
School architects began to approach the problem
in much the same manner as we have discussed the
living-room, and tests with light meters soon
showed that the theory of balanced daylighting
could be a practical reality. This is what happened
in California. To the standard windows on one
wall, a new set on the opposite wall was added.
This new set was a high clerestory band, since
there was always a corridor along one side of the
room. Variations were tried. In one case, the clere-
story, instead of being over an outside wall, was
over the center of the classroom ; this was an im-
provement, for it brought the light in closer to
where it was needed. In another instance, the clere-

story was wrapped around two walls; this helped
even more. The result in these modern schools
was that the standards attained by the new window
arrangements w.ere higher than those established
for the best artificial lighting. Let us note here one
very important point: all these architects were
doing the same thing. They were scrapping the
conventional window pattern in favor of a new
approach based on getting the right amount of
daylight exactly where it was needed. Does this
sound coldly functional and completely unlivable?
Parents who have seen the new California schools,
and visitors to homes such as Taliesen, do not
think so. As a matter of fact, they are invariably
captivated by the warmth and beauty of these new
interiors.

This kind of "daylight engineering" — for that is
what it really amounts to — has much to offer build-
ings of all types, but its benefit to houses is par-
ticularly great. Think of what it would mean, for
example, to have a kitchen in which all of the work
surfaces, even those in the most remote corners of
the room, were bright, easy to work at, and clean.
Imagine what it would be like always to be able
to find things in the closets without putting on a
light, to step out of the house on a bright summer
day without having to squint and shield your eyes
for several minutes while you become accustomed
to the light, to be able to see with equal ease in
any part of the interior.

If houses could be built without roofs, and rooms
without ceilings, these qualities would be very easy
to achieve. For our homes would then be lighted
by the most nearly perfect lighting surface we know
anything about — the vault of the sky. This surface,
which would cost hundreds of thousands o£ dollars
to duplicate over the extent of a small factory, is
capable of lighting the top of a desk or work table,
shielded from direct sunlight, to a brightness of 500
to 1500 foot-candles throughout most of the day
most of the year — five to fifty times the intensity
produced by the best artificial lighting installa-

171

WINDOWS

tions. The sky provides even, shadowless illumina-
tion from all directions, and particularly from
above, where it is of the most value for seeing pur-
poses and least objectionable from the standpoint
of glare. It costs nothing to build and nothing to
operate, and is available to all but the most be-
nighted city dwellers in practically unlimited
quantity.

The trouble is that whenever we build we invari-
ably construct a lid that cuts out 80 to 90 per cent
of the sky vault. We do this not only because we
have to have something to keep out the snow and
rain, but also because this is the only practicable
shield against direct sunlight, which is far from
ideal for illuminating purposes.

Fortunately, however, it is not necessary to use
more than a small portion of the sky for thoroughly
satisfactory lighting; as a matter of fact, a good
deal less than 20 per cent will do a perfectly good
job. In England, where daylight is more appreci-
ated because there is less of it, engineers have
figured out that as little as 2 per cent of the sky
vault is capable of producing acceptable illumina-
tion within a room. This quantity is based on a
standard of illumination described quite graph-
ically as the "grumble point." This point is nothing
more nor less than the one at which most people
will get up and turn on the lights because of insuffi-
cient daylight. Obviously, when this happens about
noon on a clear day, when there is every reason to
expect plenty of light from the windows, you have
a condition of less-than-adequate daylighting.

This is a very low standard indeed. For really
good light, suitable for close work, such as sewing,
it is necessary that at least 5 per cent of the whole
area of the sky be visible from the point where the
work is being done. This is enough to produce
about twenty foot-candles of illumination at four
in the afternoon on a dull December day, and
about ninety foot-candles at noon in midsummer.
In the average room it is the kind of light you get
within a few feet of a good-sized window — pro-
172

vided the upper part of the window is not ob-
structed by a shade or curtain.

How, then, do we get this kind of lighting
throughout the house, or at least wherever it is
really needed? First, by raising the tops of the win-
dows until they are flush with the ceiling, which
makes a better looking window and is not hard to
do with modern structural methods. Second, in
large rooms, by raising the height of the ceiling
itself. A good rule is that no part of the room
should be more than one and a half times the
height of the ceiling away from a window wall. To
illustrate: if the ceiling is eight feet high, no part of
the room should be more than twelve feet away
from a window wall. Third, and most important,
by spotting clerestory windows, skylights and other
small, high openings where they are needed to light
the interior portions of the house.

Naturally, good lighting cannot be the only con-
sideration in the design of a house, and such de-
vices must be used with skill and discretion to
avoid an awkward hodgepodge of dormers and
skylights. In the hands of a skilled modern archi-
tect, however, openings of this type can become
real design features, inside as well as out, and fre-
quently offer other advantages as well. A prime
example of this is the type of inside kitchen which
Frank Lloyd Wright has used in many of his
houses, where the ceiling is raised well above the
general roof line and ringed on four sides with
small windows which serve as excellent exhaust
ventilators in addition to letting in large quantities
of diffuse overhead light. Small, high-up dormers
can be used with equally good effect in living-
rooms and over interior hallways; and in flat-
roofed houses, perforations in the ceiling, capped
by inconspicuous stock skylights for weather pro-
tection, offer similar advantages.

A few years before World War II this last device
was used to produce one of the handsomest and
best lighted rooms in the world: the reading-room
of a library designed by Alvar Aalto, Finland's

WINDOWS

greatest architect. The ceiling of this room which
is very large and very high, is perforated with
scores of regularly spaced cylindrical openings
deep enough to exclude the angular rays of the sun
while admitting quantities of light from directly
overhead. This is the only light the room receives,
and it is almost ideal illumination — perfectly even
throughout the whole area, completely diffuse and
almost directionless, and absolutely without glare.
A person lying on his back on one of the work
tables would see at once that this arrangement ob-
serves the first and only rule of good daylighting:
that a large percentage of the sky be visible from
the point where light is needed. The ordinary vis-
itor, however, is conscious only of the soft, all-
pervading quality of the light, and the almost per-
fect working conditions provided.

LIGHT CONTROL

Alvar Aalto's library brings up another impor-
tant daylighting problem — the need for means to
control light at the openings which admit it. In the
Aalto skylights control was provided by the design
of the units themselves, which were ingeniously
shaped to exclude direct sunlight. The same effect
can also be achieved in properly oriented skylights
of the familiar "north light" variety, and in clere-
story and dormer windows facing in the same di-
rection. Most windows, however, must also be used
to provide outlook and let in the winter sun, and
therefore require control devices of the flexible
type. Even where shades or blinds are not needed
to filter direct sunlight, some means must be pro-
vided for covering big areas of glass at night, both
for privacy and for the sake of appearance.

The shades, curtains, and draperies which ob-
scure the meager windows of the conventional
house were originally put up in an unsuccessful and
never-ending effort to overcome the effects of poor
daylighting. The ordinary roller-type shade, for
example, is usually pulled down to cover the up-
per part of the window in order to conceal the sky,

which is too bright to look at with comfort from a
badly lighted room. Since this makes the room
even darker, curtains are added to screen at least
partially that portion of the glass which remains
exposed. After the curtains come draperies, and
after the draperies, over-drapes, and so on, ad
infinitum. These items not only effectively shut out
most of the light, but also reduce the view to a
bull's eye about twelve inches square in the center
of the lower part of the "window."

Modern architecture not only has no sympathy
for clutter of this kind — it has no need for it. From
a really well-lighted room a generous patch of sky
is as comfortable and interesting a part of the view
as it is from under your favorite shade tree. This,
in fact, is one of the things which make such rooms
so much a part of the out-of-doors: the sensation
of sitting in them is so much like that of being out-
side. But modern windows do have a real need for
flexible, easily manipulated coverings of various
kinds, both outside and inside the glass. This need
is best approached on a functional basis.

One of the prime functions of most such con-
trols is to filter or exclude direct sunlight. In the
chapter on solar heating we describe how perma-
nent, external "hoods" or other projections may be
used to keep the summer sun from entering large
windows, but this device is at its best only on south
walls and may not provide all of the control de-
sired in late summer when the sun is low but still
hot. Moreover, such projections do nothing at all
to temper the glare of the winter sun, which enters
at a low angle and, pleasant as it is at certain
times, may be definitely objectionable at others.

In discussing the best means for controlling sun-
light, it is necessary to sort out a number of
threads, all of which begin at a common point but
which lead in opposite directions. Controls for a
south window, protected from the summer sun by
an outside hood or roof overhang, are very differ-
ent from those needed by a west window facing the
full glare of the afternoon sun in hot weather. In

173

WINDOWS

the first instance, the problem is merely to diffuse
and soften the light; in the second, what is needed
is something that will completely exclude sun heat
and at the same time permit the window to func-
tion as a ventilator.

In the case of the protected south window, inside
controls such as curtains and shades (whose true
function is to diffuse and filter sunlight) will do a
good job, as will inside Venetian blinds, which have
the advantage of blocking the direct rays while re-
flecting a great deal of light up against the ceiling
and deep into the room. In the case of the west
window, outside controls such as awnings or ex-
terior Venetian blinds are needed.

In the more recently-built commercial buildings,
where air-conditioning includes cooling as well as
heating, engineers have discovered a very discon-
certing series of facts, which hinge once again on
the terrific potency of solar heat. For example, if
the west side of an office building is mostly win-
dows (and it has to be; otherwise you couldn't rent
space on that side of the building), the "load" on
the cooling system increases tremendously. The
same is true of the south side unless projecting
hoods are used, and to a smaller degree, of the east
side. In other words, the nicest window found it-
self in the position of being the air-conditioning
engineer's worst enemy, and the owner's, too, be-
cause it meant having to get rid of unwanted heat.
Immediately people began wondering what could
be done.

The engineers solved the whole thing very
quickly and easily. "Leave out the windows," they
said. And pretty soon the magazines and Sunday
supplements were full of all sorts of idiotic predic-
tions about the building of the future which would
have no windows and in fact might even be built
underground so that it wouldn't get in people's
way while they were walking around.

In factories, to be sure, the windowless building
became a reality. Many of our biggest war plants
have no windows or skylights in them at all. But
174

here the problem is somewhat different, because in
a big factory which covers dozens of acres, the
workers can't look out because they are too far
from the outside walls. Therefore the question of
view becomes pretty academic.

The more rational solutions proposed trapping
the sun before it could get through the window.
This is why we mentioned exterior Venetian blinds.
You see, if the sun's radiant heat gets through the
window, the damage is done. It doesn't matter
whether there are blinds inside the window or not.
The heat is already in the room and must then be
disposed of by the cooling system. If the sun is
trapped before it passes through the windows, then
it never does get inside the room and therefore
never becomes a problem.

Trapping the sun has made further changes in
what we normally consider to be just a plain, ordi-
nary window. In Brazil, for example, they have
built strange and wonderful skyscrapers which on
the sunny side resemble nothing so much as a huge
egg crate. The north face of the building (south to
us) is built not like a flat wall with windows in it,
but like a waffle-shaped series of horizontal and
vertical baffles. In New York City there is a town
house where the windows are covered with mov-
able horizontal fins, which do a very good job of
giving light and privacy to the interiors without
letting the sun in to disrupt the air-cooling system.

If the exterior blinds are made of aluminum or
some other highly reflective metal, they will work
particularly well, for then they will reflect the sun's
heat the way a mirror reflects light, and no heat at
all will be absorbed. In other words, the blinds
themselves won't become warm and thus warm the
air coming through them into the building.

THE GOLDFISH BOWL

So much for controlling sunlight. What about
some of the other control problems? What, for in-
stance, about controlling the neighbors? How can

WINDOWS

you have big windows and still retain a little
privacy?

The answer to this question is partly a matter of
planning and partly a matter of the sensible use of
curtains and drapes. In the picture section which
accompanies this chapter you will find a number
of examples of houses in built-up areas which have
used enormous glass surfaces with, if anything, even
more privacy than the conventional house usually
gets. There is nothing remarkable about the vari-
ous ways this has been done. In one instance the
architect solved the problem by building a high
fence around the garden — in other words, by mov-
ing the "curtain" out to the lot line. If this seems
extreme, remember that it is rarely necessary to
build a wall all around the garden to accomplish
the purpose. A single wall jutting out from the
house at right angles to the window will usually do
the trick, and at the same time provide a back-
ground for planting. Often planting alone will be
enough. In some cases putting the windows in the
right places (vertically as well as horizontally) will
be all that is needed to avoid a "goldfish bowl"
effect.

Whether or not these things are done, you will
still want curtains and probably drapes to cover
the window glass at night, and to take care of those
times when you would like to feel a little shut in.
As a matter of fact, there is nothing better looking
than a really big window with a handsome, barely
translucent drapery half drawn. Far from proving
the big window a "failure" (as has sometimes been
argued), such a use of draperies to fit the time of
year and the mood of the occupants of the house
serves to demonstrate one of the biggest advan-
tages of the true window- wall: big windows are the
only kind that can be made large and small as you
see fit; small ones have to stay that way unless you
want to call in a carpenter or chop away the wall
yourself with an ax.

Earlier in this chapter we mentioned the use of
double glass to reduce the tendency of heat to leak

through ordinary windows, at a prodigious rate in
comparison with modern insulated walls. Double
glass reduces this heat loss by about one-half, but
still leaves a lot to be desired. Here again is an op-
portunity for window controls to be functional as
well as decorative. A good drapery, lined and in-
terlined with heavy material, is an investment
which any householder who wants large windows
can well afford, since it will pay for itself in reduced
fuel bills long before it wears out. Provision for
draperies of this kind in the original plans of the
house will permit them to be pulled entirely free of
the window in the daytime and to cover all or most
of the window at night, thus admitting quantities
of solar heat in the daytime, and reducing heat
losses substantially when the traffic is all in the
other direction.

Pre-planned draperies are no novelty in modern
house design and are typical of the extra care and
thought which go into this type of house. Provision
of "pockets" where draperies and Venetian blinds
can be furled so that they do not obstruct the
glazed area adds little to the cost of a big window
and much to the satisfaction of using it. In some
cases, particularly in the case of Venetian blinds
which are not very handsome when pulled up over-
head, such pockets are enclosed in the construction
and out of sight. In others — and especially where
the drapery material is a decorative element in the
room — there are recesses in the wall alongside the
window opening big enough to accommodate the
folded material.

This sums up what we have to say about win-
dows. They are infinitely more than a "style" fea-
ture: they can take care of some heating in winter,
they can give furniture placing infinitely more free-
dom, they alone can provide a truly intimate rela-
tionship between garden and house, and they can
combine the enjoyment of view with the enjoyment
of privacy. One of the really great contributions of
the modern house is its bold and generous use of
glass areas.

175

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SOLAR HEATING

THE STORY OF solar heating offers what is probably
the best of these peculiar chains of influence which
are to be seen so often in the development of the
modern house. When architects in this country and
Europe began to experiment with new shapes and
plans and structures for buildings, one of the fea-
tures which became practically universal was the
big window, expanded in many instances to the
point where it became a glass wall. A great many
reasons were advanced for the introduction of these
large glass areas. There was the fact, hard to dis-
pute, that the view when seen through a big win-
dow is nicer than if seen through a small one. But
not many houses had good views. Then there was
the argument, supported by the findings of the
physiologists, that less eye strain was produced in
a room with glass walls than in one with just slots
for windows. It was also the contention, based not
on scientific fact but on an emotion shared by
practically everyone, that a room flooded with sun-
light was far more agreeable than a dark, dingy
interior.

The architects who began building "glass
houses" thirty or forty years ago had other reasons
for their seemingly extravagant procedure, reasons
which stemmed from purely esthetic developments
all through the field of art, notably in painting.
They didn't talk about these esthetic reasons to
their clients because they felt — quite rightly — that
if the typical homeowner were going to be sold on
the idea of installing acres of plate glass in his
176

house, he would have to be given a good practical
reason for doing so.

It was in the Germany of the Weimar Republic
that modern buildings were put up in the greatest
quantities and frequently in the most interesting
forms. The architects of this period, which included
most of the 1920's, had a theory about their glass
buildings which they proceeded to put into effect.
The theory sounded very good. It was that a long
building, running north and south, would have its
longest sides exposed to the east and west. This
meant, according to the theory, that the east rooms
would get sun all morning and the west rooms
would get sun all afternoon.

Once built, the structures themselves punched
the theory full of holes. In the first place, the cost
of heating these buildings was excessive. In the
second place, the cheerful morning sun varied with
the seasons. In midsummer there was plenty of
sunlight coming in from the east, while in mid-
winter, when the sun rose far to the south, there
was only a short time in which these rooms re-
ceived the dubious benefits of their western expo-
sure. In the third place, people living in the west
rooms found that for most of the year this exposure
was practically intolerable. The interiors were blis-
tered in summer by the late afternoon sun, and the
strong light coming in at a very low angle was un-
pleasant and hard to screen out with shades.

The important thing about these early experi-
mental buildings was not that they failed but that

SOLAR HEATING

they were trying something new. They were trying
to bring the house into more intimate contact with
its natural environment through the use of sun-
light. One result was that scientists, not architects,
began to ask questions about what sunlight did do
and how one should go about getting the maximum
benefits from it.

THE SUN AS A HEATER

That the sun throws off a great deal of energy has
been clearly understood for a long time. A phys-
icist can tell you that the amount of solar energy
which heats the earth's atmosphere adds up to
about 430 horsepower per acre. This is a lot of
energy. The first presentation of these facts that
made sense in terms of house design came from a
report published by a committee of the Royal In-
stitute of British Architects in 1932. The British re-
port figured out the number of hours of sunlight
received each day on walls facing the different
points of the compass.

Somewhat later the American Society of Heating
and Ventilating Engineers carried this investiga-
tion one step further by measuring the amount of
heat landing on these different walls. True, the
Society was concerned with the problems of sum-
mer cooling rather than winter heating, but its
work called attention to the fact that sunlight on
outside walls produces substantial quantities of
heat inside the room. At this point designers began
to realize that they had a yardstick ready at hand
by which they could compare solar heat quite ac-
curately with the amount produced by the furnace.

Thus, barely ten years ago, a possible justifica-
tion for the glass wall came into being : if somehow
this solar energy could be converted into heat in-
side the house, there would be a way of reducing
fuel bills.

The main thing revealed by the British architects'
study was the reason that the east and west orien-
tation had not worked. It was because the walls

which got the most sun in winter faced neither east
nor west but south. So architects began to think in
terms of glass walls on the south side, and here
they made a discovery so simple and so obvious
that today we wonder why people didn't do some-
thing about it long before.

The problem of the house in relation to solar
heating is a double one. In winter we want to let
the sun's heat in and in summer we want to keep it
out. Fortunately, the mechanics of the solar system
make this very easy. In winter the midday sun is
very low and in summer it is very high. Thus it was
possible to install a permanent sun shade which
projected out over a south window so that in the
summertime no direct sunlight got inside the
rooms. In winter the same window, with the same
sun shade, was flooded with light. This solved the
problem of how to admit the heat in the winter
when you wanted it and how to keep it out in the
summer when it only made trouble. Let us note at
this point that it also changed the appearance of
the house because previously it had not been nor-
mal practice to build sun shades over windows.

But new questions popped up as fast as the old
ones were settled. To get the full benefit of sun on
the south, this wall had to be made almost entirely
of glass. In the typical Colonial house, one-sixth of
the wall area, or less, contained windows. The rest
was solid, and, if it was insulated to boot, this solid
wall was very effective in keeping the heat in. Once
the glass wall was accepted, however, it was clear
enough that the system would function admirably
so long as the sun was shining, for the amount of
heat that got in through the glass would be much
greater than that which leaked out. But what about
night time and cloudy days? Here it was perfectly
clear that there would be no gain and all loss, and
the question to be answered was: would the bal-
ance sheet at the end of an average winter show a
bigger fuel bill or a saving?

A few years ago a student at Columbia Univer-

177

SOLAR HEATING

sity, Henry Fagin, took precisely this theme for
his graduate thesis. He considered a solid brick
wall with plaster and a wall made of a single thick-
ness of glass. He compared these walls, not to see
which was the better looking or more durable or
anything like that; but to find out which kind of
wall would make a building cheaper to heat. Some
people, when learning of this study, must have
thought that he was absolutely crazy, for anyone
knows that you lose less heat through a brick wall
than through a single sheet of glass, which has
practically no insulation value whatever.

Fagin knew this, too. But he also knew that the
transmission of heat in a building is a kind of two-
way street. When the sun beats on the outside
walls, heat goes into the building. And when it
isn't heating an outside wall, then heat leaks out.
The problem Fagin set himself was to find out in
which direction the traffic, so to speak, was the
heaviest. Because* if a glass wall let in more heat
during the day than it could possibly let out during
the night, there would be a net gain of heat which
would be reflected in the fuel bills. Then the argu-
ment of brick versus glass would be settled.

Fagin found out that if any zone having a
winter climate similar to that of New York one
built a house whose south wall was entirely of
glass, that house would be cheaper to heat (on a
ten-year average, let us say, since some winters
have more sun than others) than if there were no
windows at all on the south wall, with solid brick
and plaster used to keep the heat in. There are
parts of the United States where this would not
be true because of climatic conditions, but these
parts are few and cover a surprisingly small area.
One is the section which runs from the shore
of Lake Erie 200 to 300 miles to the southeast. The
other is the seaboard of Oregon and Washington,
notorious for its persistent winter fogs. In virtually
every other part of the country windows on south
walls are likely to pay off.
178

The modern architects tried a new tack. "Why,"
they asked, "should we calculate only the heat lost
through this wall of glass on the south side? Why
not figure out what would happen if the plan of the
whole house were modified to take full advantage
of solar heating?" Here the facts of life — or rather
of nature — came to the rescue. Few home builders
wished to put rooms on the north side of the house
if they could help it, for they knew from experience
that such rooms were the least comfortable. So a
shift was made in the plan : the house was stretched
out so that most of the rooms would face south,
and for the north side the architect reserved clos-
ets, bathrooms, stairs, and hallways — spaces which
require no windows at all or fairly small ones.
Thus the first step was achieved. Window sizes on
the most exposed of the four walls were cut down,
but without detriment to the livability of the house.
On the east side windows were left at about aver-
age size, since the morning sun is pleasant all year
round, but on the west side, where summer sun
heat is the source of extreme discomfort, there
grew up a tendency to eliminate most of the win-
dows, or at least to shade them from the sun. The
sum total of this procedure was that the house be-
gan to look like a glass house only if it were seen
from one or two sides at the most, and this is why
in so many of the more recent modern houses some
of the views show great expanses of wall undis-
turbed by any windows whatever. As a final refine-
ment in the evolution of what people have begun
to call the solar house, its axis was shifted slightly
to the west. By this shift the east wall gets a little
more sun than it used to and so does the north wall
in the summertime. When World War II broke
out, there were only a few solar houses in existence
that demonstrated all of these refinements. Never-
theless, a workable procedure had been established.
The solar house began to receive national public-
ity. But it still posed many an unanswered ques-
tion.

SOLAR HEATING

PROBLEMS AND POSSIBILITIES
Any housewife knows what the sun does to fab-
rics. She knows that it will make almost any color
fade, that it raises the very devil with curtains,
lampshades, rugs, upholstery fabrics, pictures, and
even the paint on the walls. For this problem a
solution has yet to be found. Part of it involves the
utmost care in selecting materials whose colors are
closest to being sunproof. Some of it is still waiting
for the chemists, who will have to develop colors
more permanent than any found hitherto. The
glass companies also have a part to play in the de-
velopment of special materials which will let in the
sun's heat but screen out those light waves which
do the most damage to synthetic and natural dyes.
Some such glasses are already on the market. They
have a disadvantage in that they are slightly tinted.
They are usable, however, if they are placed care-
fully. The simplest solution, however, is probably
to be found in the dyes themselves, and injudicious
use of such items as Venetian blinds, which will let
the sun's heat get through the window while keep-
ing the direct rays off paint and fabric.

The most interesting, perhaps, of all the possi-
bilities of solar heating involves what we might call
the reservoir principle. This can be illustrated by
an example. People who live in all-wood houses of
the solar type have found that they tend to become
overheated while the sun is shining and to cool off
almost instantly when the sun goes behind a cloud.
In houses with concrete floors the reverse happens.
The floors absorb much of the solar energy while
the sun is shining, and it may be hours, or even all
night, before the floor cools down to the point
where it is no longer giving off a certain amount of

heat. This happens because the massive concrete
has a greater capacity than wood for absorbing and
storing heat. The old tireless cooker was nothing
more than a practical utilization of this simple
principle.

Here, as in the case of the sun shade, we find
that the sun is again influencing the design of the
house in quite an unexpected way. A floor which
can store the sun's heat during the day and give it
off during the evening will have an effect, and a
pretty important one, on the total fuel bill. But use
of a concrete slab modifies the whole house plan,
for it tends to force the design to one story rather
than two and, incidentally, to bring the house into
much closer contact with the surrounding land-
scape than it was before.

This, in the sketchiest possible form, is the story
of solar heating. It is typical of the very best devel-
opments in modern house design because it works
with nature instead of fighting it with gadgets. In
the process the whole design of the house is modi-
fied. With the sun shades or overhanging eaves the
house grows eyebrows, so to speak. Through the
heavy concrete slab, laid directly on the ground,
the outdoors and indoors are brought into closer
contact with each other. Highlighting the impor-
tance of varying the amount of window area on each
side of the house, gives each wall its own individual
character and modifies the plan of the rooms inside
for the better. From here on in, anyone who plans
a house without giving serious consideration to the
operation of the solar house principle is missing
a wonderful chance to get a better house, a more
interesting house, and a house that is cheaper to
run.

179

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

PUTTING THE PIECES

TOGETHER

So FAR WE have approached the problems of house
design through specific problems, such as planning
for storage, meals, relaxation, and so on. In actual-
ity, when a house is being designed, study of the
details and the plan as a whole proceed almost
simultaneously. Whatever is done to an individual
space, such as a bedroom, has an effect on the
spaces related to it. Until all the small ideas have
been merged in a smoothly working over-all plan,
there can be no house.

The plan of a house as opposed to the separate
plans of its individual parts is the result of a com-
plex process of give and take. It is rare indeed to
find a house where no compromise has been made
at any point along the line. Involved as this process
of fitting and patching may be, however, essentially
it is not particularly mysterious. Just as the design
of a closet depends on how much clothing you have
to put in it, so the working out of the house plan is
also the result of the operation of equally compre-
hensible factors.

First of these is the lot itself, which may be flat
or steep, regular or irregular. The successful plan
will treat the house and the lot as a single unit. The
lot provides the immediate view and space for out-
door living. Both must be related intimately to the
house itself. Sunlight, as we have already seen, is
180

rapidly becoming an almost equally potent factor.
An understanding of the benefits of solar radiation
has had a tremendous influence on planning con-
cepts, and it has begun to turn the house from a
squarish box into a long and narrow one so that a
maximum number of rooms can get the benefits of
midday sunlight. Almost as important a factor is
the direction from which the prevailing breezes
come in summer and in winter.

Zoning has become a common word in our
cities. To date, however, few people have tried to
apply it to the house. In connection with the house,
all it means is that certain major types of activities
are grouped for maximum convenience and for
privacy. A "zoned" house will have one or two
sleeping areas, isolated as much as possible from
the noisier rooms. It will have a work center, which
may also be a part-time living area. It will have a
service group, including heater, laundry, and pos-
sibly a portion of the kitchen; and finally it will
have the general living section, which may include
outside as well as inside space.

Still another factor which often forces further
compromises is the point of access. At some loca-
tion on the perimeter of the lot there has to be a
sidewalk to the front door and a drive to the ga-
rage. Too many home builders persist in consider-

PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER

ing these separately. In today's house — and this
will be even more true in tomorrow's — the entrance
most frequently used is the automobile drive and
not the pedestrian path. If the two can be merged
and a service entrance included, planning will be
immensely simplified, landscape costs will be
somewhat reduced, and convenience will be en-
hanced.

A few decades ago the main rooms of a house
were invariably placed on the street side. For this
there were good reasons. Streets were relatively
safe and quiet. Today the street can offer nothing
more than noise, gasoline fumes, and danger, and
there has been a steadily growing tendency, there-
fore, to reverse the old approach and put the
living-rooms at the back where they could be tied
in with the family's private garden.

PERIMETER VERSUS BUDGET

The most inexpensive type of medium-sized house
that can be built is a cube with living-rooms down-
stairs and sleeping-rooms upstairs. Whenever the
perimeter of this familiar plan is made larger, costs
go up. It happens to be an unfortunate fact that all
of the modern tendencies in house planning, such
as those listed immediately above, operate to pro-
duce a house with maximum perimeter. Zoning,
for example, operates more conveniently with a
one-story house. So does the intimate relationship
between rooms and garden, which people are com-
ing to prefer. The long, narrow plan designed to
get the most out of solar radiation also increases
the perimeter of the house.

At this point there is only one thing for the home
builder and his architect to do. Maximum economy
must be balanced with maximum livability. You
can't have both. Where cost is no consideration,
there is no problem. Most of us, however, have to
consider cost, and carefully. Here again you will
find that compromise is probably the solution.
Maybe some of the desirable features of zoning

will have to go by the boards. Maybe only two bed-
rooms can face south instead of all four. But every
item making for greater livability should be fought
for until it is obvious that the budget is nearing the
breaking point.

The minimum dogma with which so many plan-
ners were infected had a short life but a hectic one.
The results, however, were by no means all bad.
For one thing, the open plan, with its many vir-
tues, received a great impetus. For another, archi-
tects and builders who had been notoriously
wasteful in the way they spent their customers'
money began to be somewhat more practical and
considerate. Nevertheless, the tendency to squeeze
down the size of the house should be resisted as
much as the budget will permit.

A bedroom the size of a third-class steamer
cabin can be a satisfactory sleeping compartment,
but a bedroom big enough to be used as a sitting-
room is nice, too. A large living-room has greater
flexibility and use potentialities than a small one.
A separate dining-room, if you can swing it, has
advantages. Small kitchens can be efficient, but we
will take a large one any time we are given the
choice. Small bathrooms, on the other hand, are
good for very little unless they are used by one per-
son, and there are few families which can afford
the extreme luxury of one bath for each member.
An adequate family bath takes a space of more
than a hundred square feet, the size of a small
bedroom. This is good space and it costs good
money. Once again, convenience will have to be
balanced against the budget.

The "space versus money" problem does not
solve itself with a series of simple rules. The inge-
nuity of the designer can work wonders here. Take
one example, a living-room. Let us say that the
living-room is going to be eleven by sixteen feet.
This is a small room, but perhaps no more space
can be afforded. If there just happened to be a
screened porch alongside the living-room and some

181

PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER

sliding doors in the walls between, the living-room
would still be eleven by sixteen but for five or more
months of the year it might expand easily and
cheaply to become an enclosed area of twenty by
sixteen. Where space is at a premium big windows
can work wonders, for these, used in conjunction
with low garden walls, trellises, and other cheap
exterior features, can create the impression that the
space available is much larger than is actually the
fact. Right here is where the topnotch architect is
more than worth his fee, because he can create the
illusion of additional space without making you
spend the money to build it.

HOW WILL IT LOOK?

At some point in the planning process, this ques-
tion arises. Rooms have been efficiently planned
and carefully related to one another. The entrance
is in the right place, the quiet rooms are off by
themselves, the view and sunlight have been taken
care of— but what is it going to look like? The con-
ventional design approach can completely wreck a
good house plan at this stage, if you let it. And pre-
conceived notions of the proper appearance of the
house seen from the outside have very little to do
with a plan worked out to meet the requirements of
modern living. Up to this point we have advocated
compromise as a desirable, even necessary expedi-
ent. Now our advice is the reverse. Do anything
but compromise. Let the house look the way it
really is. If your lot is a hillside and common sense
demands that you put the garage in the attic and
the bedrooms two floors below, don't fret because
this is a violent departure from grandmother's Co-
lonial farmhouse. Of course it is, but you aren't
grandmother. If everyone who comes to visit you
arrives by car, don't make the architect shove in a
front door in the center of the house just because
that is the way all the other houses in the neighbor-
hood are equipped.

Preconceived ideas are poison. It is a pretty safe
rule that if a planning solution is thoroughly work-
able it is not going to be difficult to design an ex-
terior which will be agreeable in appearance. It
may be unconventional. Maybe the bathrooms
will have big windows instead of little ones. Maybe
the kitchen will be next to the front door instead
of the back door. Maybe it won't even look like a
house at all to those who are accustomed to sym-
metrical fronts with two shutters on every window.
Nevertheless, in its personal, modern way, it will
be a good-looking house.

For the modern architect who knows his trade,
planning and design, building and site, house and
family, all form a single package. The product he
creates is a live thing. It fits the people for whom
it was designed, it expresses the time they live in
and, above all, it works, psychologically as well as
physically. It does all of these things because it was
conceived in a creative manner and not taken out
of a copybook. Behind the finished product is a
flexible, inquiring attitude. Everything in such a
house makes sense. It may have walls of stainless
steel or plywood, or they may be of the rough-
hewn masonry used in the neighborhood for hun-
dreds of years. For the modern architect these
choices are incidental and not basic. For him there
are rules but they are fundamental rules: the fam-
ily and its ways of living dictate the plan, the plan
determines the exterior, and the exterior responds
at the same time to the latest developments of in-
dustrial technology and the most ancient of local
traditions. The modern house is a good house be-
cause it is a "natural" house. Its outstanding virtue
is that it is a genuine response to real needs, and
its appearance has the authentic quality common
to all genuine articles. If it still looks strange to
you, it is only because it is still unfamiliar. But fa-
miliarity, in this case, you will find, breeds anything
but contempt.

182

193

EXTERIORS

The outside of any house inevitably expresses the
interior — even when strenuous efforts are made to
avoid it. Thus conventional exteriors are expressive
not only of the tight little plans that go with con-
ventional design; they also reveal the tortured com-
promises this approach necessitates. And, since
modern plans are freer and more imaginative, mod-
ern exteriors are freer and more imaginative in
consequence. A bold conception— like the cantilev-
ered living room projecting over the water in
pictures 193 and 194 — may be a determining fac-
tor; if your tastes run to less dramatic things you
can expect a quieter looking result. But whatever
your tastes don't expect a truly modern house to
look like anything but what it is.

194

197

Back in the early Thirties, when modern archi-
tecture first began to be used in this country, the
belief was general that a building couldn't really
be modern unless it had white stucco walls and
at least one corner window. This fashion— known
to architects as the International Style— is what
most people think of when they hear the word
Modern, or "modernistic." But the modern ap-
proach has become considerably more catholic
since the days of its importationfrom Europe — and
incidentally, more to the liking of most people.
International Style houses are still being built,
however. Those shown here range in time from
one of the first modern houses built in the U. S.
(195) to two of the latest (199 and 200). And
for those who ask, "What would that sort of
house look like in the New England landscape?"
we have included one: 198.

198

200

199

202

203

204

One factor which has relieved the severity of mod-
ern architecture has been the desire to achieve a
more intimate relationship with the landscape-
functionally as well as aesthetically. The International
Style house was frequently too detached from its
surroundings: chaste and a little disdainful. In con-
trast, some of the more recent work is almost
bawdy in the way it snuggles among the trees and
against the ground. Views 201, 205 and 206 are
expressive of this trend. People who hate picnics
because ants get in the food may prefer a canti-
levered balcony, but most of us will probably like
modern better in its homier mood. And, since even
the best modern house is something you will want
to get out of on occasion, doing so ought to be made
as easy as possible.

2 OS

206

207

rr

^-

209

210

21 I

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose masterpiece.
Falling Water, is shown on the preceding two
pages, went on designing contemporary houses in
the years when most architects were jumping about
between Cotswold, Tudor and Colonial. One of his
most recent small houses is shown in 209, and a
Wright-influenced design by another architect in
2 1 0. The houses on this page are examples of a dis-
tinctly different trend: a blend of American wood
frame construction with the ribbon windows and
structural-expressionism of European modern. The
studied unconcern for outside appearance which
houses 21 I and 212 evidence— useful as it was in
establishing an honest, experimental approach to
house design— has never found acceptance outside
of a limited circle of modern architects and their
disciples, and is on the wane.

212

Outside appearance depends as much on the funda-
mental character of the house as on architectural
treatment. A closely-knit, two-story house will
have a solid, substantial look regardless of whether
the walls are light or dark, the roof flat or pitched
(2 I 6 and 2 1 7). Broad porches and spreading wings
have hospitable connotations in any design idiom
(214 and 215). And if you decide that a modest,
story-and-a-half rectangle meets your needs you will
get something that looks pretty much like an early
American farmhouse. The one in 218 and 2 I 9 is
actually an old farmhouse brought up to date by an
architect who understood that the excellence of
this building type lies not in the moldings and win-
dow muntins, but in its unpretentious approach to
the problem of enclosing space.

219

III

220

221

Eli

•a*'

223

224

Even a poor architect has a hard time making a
spreading, one-story house unattractive. The
best designers, working in the free style which
the overthrow of traditionalism has engendered,
are producing houses of well-nigh universal ap-
peal. Depending on choice of materials and type
of roof, the effect can be varied from the trim,
tailored look of house 220-221 to the pleasant
romanticism of 222, but both types represent a
fuller exploitation of present day building tech-
niques. Views 223 and 224, which show stand-
ardized houses from a Federal housing project,
demonstrate the applicability of this approach
to even the most modest sort of dwelling, pro-
vided that the details are handled with sufficient
sensitivity, and view 225 shows the same ver-
nacular carried over to a larger, two-story design.

225

K-

230

The earliest modern houses all had flat roofs; any-
thing else was considered an unpardonable conces-
sion to traditionalism. There was no compelling
reason for this, however, and in later designs the
gable roof reappeared, and with it a new type (new,
at least, in its application to houses) known as the
"shed" or "monopitch" roof. The shed roof, use of
which has reached the proportions of a fad among
modern designers, has much to recommend it. It is
simple, easy to build, readily ventilated to keep out
summer sun-heat, and good looking; moreover, it
makes possible a high, open wall to the south, ad-
mitting a maximum of winter sunshine while present-
ing minimum wall surface to the cold winds from
the north. Three of the houses shown here illustrate
this design principle, 226-227, 228-229 and 23 I.
The latter is an example of an old house remodeled
along "solar" lines. View 230 shows the application
of the shed roof to a small, one-room-deep design.

231

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' - I •

232

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

HOW TO

GET YOUR HOUSE

(OR REMODEL THE ONE YOU HAVE)

FOR YEARS THE presses have been grinding out
books and articles on how to get yourself the house
you want. There are acres of printed admonitions
on sound construction, how to save, where to go
for a building loan, what grade of lumber to buy,
and so on. We propose to deal rather lightly with
these matters, partly because they have been cov-
ered so many times elsewhere, but mainly because
there is a lot of hocus-pocus involved which
merely serves to confuse the buyer.

Today FHA-insured mortgages and their vari-
ous equivalents have been so standardized as far as
technical requirements are concerned that the
chances of getting a jerry-built house are fairly
slim. Also, the methods of obtaining loans have
been fairly well publicized, and if by any chance
you have not run into this kind of information, you
can get it without any difficulty from any com-
petent architect, builder, local bank, savings & loan
association, or from the local FHA office itself.

Our problem is not primarily a matter of build-
ing or financing technique. The house whose vari-

ous parts and characteristics have been discussed
at length is a pretty unconventional one. The ap-
proach to its planning also is not typical. Unfor-
tunately, even if you are now convinced that this
way of designing a house makes sense, there is
going to be trouble.

HEADACHES FOR THE HOME BUILDER
The building industry as of this moment — or , if
you like, five years from this moment — is not an
industry. It is the clumsiest aggregation of build-
ers, big and small, manufacturers, handicraftsmen,
architects, and retail merchandisers one could pos-
sibly imagine. Even the conventional Cape Cod
cottage, with its inevitable pair of evergreens flank-
ing the front door and its turquoise-blue shutters
with half moons cut into them, is hard to get if the
house is to be a custom-built job. With the kind of
house described in this book, these difficulties mul-
tiply. For one thing, a run-of-the-mill architect is
not going to produce it for you. He is too en-
meshed in old-fashioned drafting-room methods

199

HOW TO GET YOUR HOUSE

and prejudices to be capable of working out your
problems with you on a constructive, forward-
looking basis. The architects whose work appears
in this book have, to be sure, already demonstrated
their ability to create a superior background for
modern living. But these men constitute a small
group, and if all the architects in the country like
them were added to the list at the back of the book,
it would still be a fairly small one.

Possibly there -is some young architect in your
community who has ideas and can carry them out.
If so, fine. Near the big cities, of course, this prob-
lem is less serious. It might be added here that
there is no reason to be afraid of going to see a
firm of architects simply because it has a first-class
reputation. Architects as a rule have fee scales
which do not vary tremendously, and many people
find to their surprise that the fee charged by the
best available firm is frequently no greater than
that asked by its less talented competitors.

Among the better offices it is fairly standard
practice to charge at least 10 per cent of the cost
of a house for architectural design services and
supervision. A few offices go above this figure, and
some will go below. There are architects — many of
them — who will set their fees at 6 per cent or even
lower. These, however, do not fit into the group
whose work appears here.

Perhaps you would like to know why architects
have to charge a 10 per cent fee to do a decent job
on a modern house. A little arithmetic should make
this fairly clear. Let us assume that a house is going
to cost around $12,000. This puts the architect's
fee somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,200. Of
this amount he will be able to recapture $300 to
$400, if he is lucky, as payment for his time, which
may run from three to six months or more. The
remainder — say $850 — has got to pay his over-
head, salaries to draftsmen, and the other expenses
of his business. In return for this he will camp on
your doorstep, practically psychoanalyze the fam-
200

ily, try to distinguish what you want from what you
say you want, produce a series of drawings from
which the house can be satisfactorily constructed
and equipped, negotiate with bidders to get the
house within the budget, and arrange for changes
in the plans and details. And, into the bargain, he
will probably give advice on furniture, color
schemes, fabrics, and landscaping, in the event
that specialists in these fields are not engaged.
That is why a conscientious architect cannot un-
dertake to do a reasonably good job on a custom-
built house for less than 10 per cent. Probably, if
he were as good a business-man as he is a techni-
cian and artist, he would charge considerably
more.

Finding a really topnotch architect, however, is
only the first of the headaches, and they multiply
from this point on. Whenever old-line builders are
confronted with anything that deviates a hair's
breadth from the way their grandfathers used to do
things, they let out mighty squawks and proceed
to jack up the price. They also have a disturbing
habit of predicting (1) that the house will fall down ;
(2) that it will leak; (3) that the neighbors will
lynch you; and (4) that the house could never be
rented or sold.

There is another situation that has to be met.
Rather early in the game your architect will find
that existing home equipment, whether for light-
ing, storage, or some other purpose, is not prop-
erly designed, and he will suggest, frequently with
good reason, that a certain amount of special work
be done. This involves dealing with a miscellane-
ous assortment of electrical supply people, metal
workers, hardware firms, and others, in an effort
to concoct something superior to the stock article.
Some people find that this part of the process of
designing a modern house is great fun. But even
so, it is a lot of work, too.

Up to this point we have been talking about
some of the problems of getting the house designed

HOW TO GET YOUR HOUSE

and built. As it happens, there are other just as im-
portant hurdles to be surmounted. The first of
these is money.

MONEY

Let us have it understood once and for all that a
custom-designed and custom-built house costs
more than a ready-made dwelling. There is the
matter of the architect's fee, which, as we have
seen, may be reasonable but is also substantial.
And the architect is a "must," because there is
nowhere one can write for a set of stock plans, en-
closing a check for two or ten dollars. Tomorrow's
house just isn't produced that way. The special
equipment and fittings just mentioned will do a
better job than their ready-made counterparts, but
they also cost money. If you agree that a one-story
house has great advantages in many instances over
a two-story house, it will be found that this, too,
increases the price, in spite of the fact that some
savings can be made. Moreover, since the modern
architect designs so that house and lot form an
integral unit for indoor and outdoor living, the lot
has to be reasonably generous — more so, of course,
in the case of a one-story house than a dwelling
with two floors.

If your budget will not permit the expenditure of
extra money for extra amenities, it would be most
unwise to embark on the venture of having a house
designed to meet your requirements. It would be
far better to buy a house ready-made because the
value for a limited amount of money is greater.

YOU

The pet peeve of almost every house architect is
that his client walks in and states his requirements
as follows: "I want four bedrooms, two baths, a
guest lavatory, maid's room, and two-car garage,
and the living-room should be at least thirty-two
feet long. My budget, including your fee, is $8,500.
This, obviously, is absurd. Yet everyone does it.

If one walked into an automobile showroom and
said, "I am looking for a car. I must have 180
horsepower, five headlights, and a stainless steel
body. My budget is $850," he would be laughed
out of the place. Nobody tries this procedure with
automobiles, because the product is a package at
a fixed price. Today's house — and even tomorrow's
house, for that matter — is not a package: it is a
crazy quilt, and nobody will really know the price
down to the last penny until the last bill has been
paid.

The contradictory requirements of budget on
the one hand and space need on the other have
wrecked more potentially good houses than any
other single factor. The architect, who is perennially
an optimist, tries to please his client by producing
a minor miracle. But this miracle, like most others,
rarely comes off, and the result is a botched job
with which no one is satisfied and for which every-
one is blamed.

When the architect is selected and given the job,
he must be given one set of limitations or another
—but never both. If your budget is $8,500, say so,
and he will tell you pretty quickly what you can
reasonably expect to get for that amount of money
at current prices. If, on the other hand, you can't
live without six bedrooms and seven baths, tell
him so, but don't fall into the trap of believing that
you are competent to attach a price tag at the same
time, because it takes even the experts a little while
to figure out what the bill will probably be.

This is not an attempt to shield the architect. It
is the home builder who will suffer if he refuses to
take a reasonable attitude towards this all-impor-
tant matter of budget procedure.

THE NEIGHBORS

Some years ago one of us designed a modern house
for a Westchester suburb. Before the ground had
been broken, the neighbors were up in arms. And
very soon we were called to account. "What do

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HOW TO GET YOUR HOUSE

you mean," they demanded, "by putting a modern
house in our community?" (They called it modern-
istic.) "Don't you realize that you are destroying
the homogeneity of the entire neighborhood? All
of these beautiful homes will be seriously depre-
ciated if you and your clients persist in this insane
venture."

The reply to this was not very polite, but it was
true. It was pointed out that the neighborhood as
far as the houses were concerned was anything but
homogeneous; there was an imitation French
farmhouse next to a pseudo-Mediterranean villa;
there were houses cribbed from work of the Geor-
gian period in England, and there were peculiar
half-timber jobs that were probably supposed to be
Elizabethan.

It was also pointed out even more sharply that
there was nothing that we as architects could do
to the neighborhood from the architectural point
of view that would make it much more chaotic
than it was already. This argument was greeted
with shocked silence, and by the time the irate
householders could think of a reply the house was
built. They thronged in for the housewarming and
left a little envious, because they could see that the
house was amazingly easy to live in and take care
of, and that the windows were big enough to see
out of and to let the sun in.

Most people who have built modern houses in
the past ten years have had similar experiences, and
generally the stories have ended equally happily,
because whatever one's preconceived notions about
the external appearance of a house, it is hard to
resist the insidious charm of a well-designed mod-
ern interior.

Today the problem is not as great as it used to
be. The shift in public taste in just the past few
years has been phenomenal, and it is probable that
in almost any community the building of a modern
house would be greeted with more pleased and ex-
cited interest than with fearful disapproval. Never-
202

theless, this is no argument for flaunting one's ec-
centricities or an architect's screwball notions if the
same result can be achieved in a reasonably incon-
spicuous way. In other words, why go out of one's
way to offend the people with whom one has to
live? If a house is built in a middle-western com-
munity where brick is one of the favorite materials,
there is no particular reason at this stage of our
technical development for not using brick. If wood
is in the local tradition, or stucco or adobe or
whatnot, the same holds true, because the modern
house is not a rigid package to be produced only
in one way and no other, but merely a reasonable
and attractive framework for a family's activities.
It is particularly important to hang on to this
last idea, because frequently the temptation to fol-
low some current fad is well-nigh irresistible. It
was once believed that a house was not really mod-
ern unless it was a white cube with a flat roof. Or
perhaps it had to have round instead of square cor-
ners. Or maybe the "thing to do" was chromium
trim smeared all over the main entrance. All this is
foolishness. Modern design, it is true, does have
certain characteristics which are peculiar to it. But
the ones that have lasted have managed to justify
themselves on a very practical basis.

THE BANKER

Your banker may not agree to this. As a trustee
of other people's funds, his normally conservative
tendencies have been intensified a hundredfold.
Like his friend the builder, he is frequently shocked
by the newfangled ideas people are getting about
their houses. Colonial was good enough for his
father, and it is going to be good enough for him
and his son, if he has anything to say about it.
This attitude is a real obstacle to surmount. It has
been so great a hindrance, in fact, that most of the
outstanding early modern houses were built by

HOW TO GET YOUR HOUSE

wealthy men who could pay for their houses with-
out applying for a mortgage.

If your banker is recalcitrant and refuses to make
a loan on the house designed for you; or, what is
more likely, if he arbitrarily discounts the value of
the finished house to something below its actual
cost so that the mortgage is inadequate, remember
that he, too, may be open to reason. And remember
also that he may have competitors who are some-
what more open-minded. When World War II
broke out there were already a number of lending
institutions that had convinced themselves that
these new types of houses were here to stay, and
actually constituted a sounder investment than the
conventional types, because they were less likely to
get completely out of date before the mortgage had
been paid off.

With existing financing arrangements for home
builders, the banker is no longer quite the free
agent he used to be. Most mortgages are now
FHA-insured, which means that not only must the
banker be convinced that the proposed house is a
good investment, but so also must the regional
FHA representative, who is all too often, alas, a
frightened, petty-minded little bureaucrat whose
only effective method for handling a difficult situa-
tion is to say "no."

In spite of these manifold difficulties, however, a
lot of modern houses have been built.

THE HOUSE YOU OWN

There are almost 35,000,000 dwellings in the
United States. Maybe you own one of them. If you
are not entirely happy with it, ownership can be as
great a hurdle between you and a new house as an
overconservative banker.

To the homeowner who is intrigued by the pros-
pects of better living offered by tomorrow's house,
several possibilities are open besides the obvious
one of selling the roof over his head. He can mod-

ernize its services, such as lighting, plumbing, and
heating. He can add space, such as a garage storage
shed or a family room. Or he can do a complete
remodeling job.

Which of these alternatives to choose is one of
the most perplexing problems an owner and archi-
tect can face. Costs are difficult to figure accurately,
since old things must be ripped out as well as new
ones installed. There is a delicate balance to be
struck between the value of the house after remod-
eling and that of a new house which uses the pro-
ceeds of the sale of the old one. Unfortunately,
there is no way in which a book can give advice to
an owner confronted with a choice of this kind,
because each case is specfiic and must be solved on
its own. This much, however, we can say. You
should not go ahead without the help of the kind
of architect you would choose for a new house, and
it would be wise to include a builder in the planning
team. Tell them what you want, listen to the archi-
tect's suggestions, and get the builder to give his
best guess on the cost.

There is another way in which this book can help
anyone thinking of remodeling. The approach that
has been followed throughout is one of considering
living problems and workable solutions. These
problems are the same in any kind of house, and
most of the solutions apply equally to old and new
houses. A storage wall, for example, is just as use-
ful in a remodeled house as a new one; so are im-
proved lighting, acoustical treatment, insulation,
built-in furniture, and the other items with which
we have dealt. This book, therefore, has been de-
signed to serve as a guide to remodeling as well as
planning a new home. It would be absurd to sug-
gest that tomorrow's house could be created from
a relic of the 1870's — it can't. But there is a great
deal of unsuspected livability in millions of old
houses that could be brought out by applying the
techniques of modern planning and design.

While we are pointing out the disadvantages of

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HOW TO GET YOUR HOUSE

remodeling, it might be well to look at its major
advantage. Designing a new house is inevitably
mixed with a lot of guesswork, and no layman can
possibly visualize his completed house from the
lines on blueprints. As a result, seeing the house
enclosed for the first time is always a surprise.
Rooms are bigger or smaller than imagined. De-
tails that had seemed very important don't count
one way or the other. Almost always something has
been left out or put in the wrong place. None of
these things happen in a remodeling job, because
you start with a complete house.

The mere process of living in a house, coupled
with a reasonable amount of critical observation,
produces an exceedingly intimate knowledge of its
good and bad points. Planning for remodeling,
therefore, is begun on a very solid and realistic
basis, and for this reason, the results can be most
satisfactory. There is little likelihood of wasting
space or money. The owner knows which features
are most objectionable, and he can insist on cor-
recting them first. Because he knows so well those
things that work badly, he will recognize proposals
for improvement and understand their value. And
remodeling carries a great deal of pleasure with it,
not only because of the marked improvement in
the house, but also because it is the one kind of
building job where the layman can function on a
par with the architect.

THE FUN

The difference between building an old-fashioned
house and tomorrow's house is that the latter is a
genuinely exciting and truly creative activity. The
architect, instead of functioning as an arbiter of
elegance — refusing to let you put the bathroom
where it belongs because it would interfere with his
symmetrical window arrangement, for instance —

becomes the leading member of a team whose sole
objective is to get a house that does everything a
house could possibly do. With a conventional
house, planning is done within a strait-jacket.
Wherever one turns there are rules which, while
meaningless, are all-powerful. Windows have to
have certain sizes and proportions. Materials are
dictated by conditions that ceased to be important
a hundred years ago. The planning is never free
and the result could have been predicted in ad-
vance. With the modern house, no holds are
barred. Do you want a living-room with a wall that
can be slid out of the way in the summertime? You
can have it. Would you prefer a screened porch
without a roof on it? Your architect can make it
look very handsome. Would you like to use ramps
instead of stairs? Would you like to put part of the
house up on stilts so that some of the garden is
under cover? It has been done.

The reason that the small group of modern archi-
tects has persisted in its efforts is because they have
had so much fun. They have watched their clients,
skeptical at first, become wildly enthusiastic. They
have seen in the completed houses how old ways of
living were scrapped in favor of new and better
ones. This for the conscientious professional is the
highest reward he can be given.

Modern houses have been increasing in number
because they sell themselves. People like the easier
maintenance and the greater livability. They like
the lack of clutter and the feeling of space. They
like having the garden where they can enjoy it and
live with it. And they tell their friends about it.

Getting tomorrow's house is a lot of trouble. We
haven't pulled any punches in pointing out just how
much trouble it is. But if you ever go through the
headaches of building it and come out at the other
end fairly unscathed, you will agree that it was
worth every one of the headaches, and more.

204

PROJECTIONS

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

UNTIL NOW we have carefully refrained from men-
tioning methods, techniques, and materials which
are not immediately realizable in terms of today.
Most houses are so far behind their potentialities
that a mere listing of what has been done in a few
outstanding cases can make pretty exciting reading
— and these few houses have provided even more
exciting living. Despite this emphasis on the prac-
tical, the temptation to indulge in crystal gazing is
practically irresistible. Before embarking on our
own particular dreams it might be a good idea to
put a few nicks in the crystal.

A great deal of what has been written about the
home of the future is hogwash. The helicopter, for
instance, is a strange and wonderful thing, but at
least it exists. Cars with rear engines also exist.
Where the house is concerned, any overworked
imagination seems to have no difficulty in getting
its nonexistent products into print. The screwier
the idea, the more publicity it receives.

Let us consider a few examples. We read that
with the help of television mother can keep right on
with the dishes while carrying on a face to face con-
versation with the Fuller brush man, who never
gets past the front door. Any manufacturer of tele-
vision equipment could undoubtedly produce this
gadget, but for much less money the house can be
planned with the kitchen window right next to the
front door.

Consider, dear reader, the hullaballoo about the
revolving house, that wondrous contraption which

will turn on its foundation like a sunflower, keep-
ing everybody tanned and happy all year long with-
out even the trouble of pushing a button. This, too,
could be built, but we have already seen that the
house that doesn't revolve can be pretty well de-
signed to take care of the sun in the southern quad-
rant, which is the only time it is much good
anyway.

Then there is the mobile house, that wonderful
package which can be unhooked from the lot when
you have a quarrel with your neighbor, put on
wheels, and trundled to a happier neighborhood.
Mobile houses can be built, too. In fact, they have
been. But' what is the worth to you in dollars and
cents of something you would not use more than
once in twenty years?

The list of idiocies brought forth by the pseudo-
scientific writers is legion. Apparently they believe
that the American public will swallow anything as
long as the label of novelty is attached to it. Right
at the moment there is a good bit of talk about
window glass being replaced by sheets of clear
plastic, a little rumor that has driven a number of
reputable manufacturers practically out of their
minds. The facts are (1) that glass is a plastic (and
has been for generations) ; (2) it makes very good
windows and is relatively inexpensive; (3) there is
no other known plastic at any price that has the
unique resistance of glass to abrasion. Bomber
noses are made out of plastics, to be sure, but they
cost a small fortune and have to be reconditioned

205

PROJECTIONS

every few flights. Plastics are used on planes be-
cause they are light and easily formed, but no
house has ever presented air-combat requirements.
There are enough wonderful things coming along
to satisfy any of us. If we must indulge in day-
dreaming— and we all like to — let's approach to-
morrow's house on a more reasonable basis.

A pretty good beginning is with equipment. If
one takes the trouble to look into the history of ap-
paratus for the home, one or two facts stick out
prominently. Most significant is a steady reduction
in bulk. In your grandfather's house the furnace
was a sheet metal octopus, a huge belly with fat tin
tentacles reaching all through the cellar, poking
their way up through the floors into the walls. To-
day's warm air furnace is a quarter of its size and
does twice as good a job. The same is true of the
stove, and of the refrigerator, half of which used to
be an ice compartment. This trend can and will
continue. With radiant heating, for example, radi-
ators and registers have been reduced to the van-
ishing point. But radiant heating still uses a lot of
pipes. When electricity gets to be our most common
fuel, the pipes may well disappear along with the
furnace. Before this really revolutionary develop-
ment takes place, however, heating equipment now
being designed promises to reduce the furnace to
the size of a steamer trunk or a suitcase.

Reduction of bulk is important because it saves
space and makes maintenance easier. Closets are a
good example. In our own time we have shifted
from separate wardrobes and other pieces of mov-
able storage furniture to compact built-in closets
and storage walls. In the future storage will un-
questionably be almost 100 per cent integrated
with the house. Furniture manufacturers may not
like this prospect but we suspect housewives will.

As important as reduction of bulk is flexibility
of control. To go back to heating for a moment,
the old hot air furnace pumped a lot of heat into a
lot of rooms. Some were too hot, others were too
206

cold; all were drafty. Equipment already on the
market has eliminated most of these annoyances
and we can count on further refinements. If you
wanted an air-conditioning system for your home
which would give individual temperature control
for every room in the house, you could have it, but
it would cost a lot of money. Our guess is that in
the not too distant future you will be able to have
it, and it won't cost a lot of money.

One of the questions we are asked most fre-
quently by starry-eyed prospective home builders
is, "What about those wonderful new materials
that are being developed? When will we be able to
get them for our house?" There are two answers to
this. One is that there are a lot of wonderful old
materials. Take that middle-western favorite, for
example, a wood frame wall with an exterior finish
of brick. It is a phenomenally good wall. The out-
side keeps its trim appearance indefinitely. The
inside can be thoroughly insulated. Anybody can
build it. Does it disillusion you to have the house
of tomorrow discussed in such terms . Let us say
that a manufacturer is trying to develop new ex-
terior facing material. Here is what he has to pro-
duce : a material that will retain its initial good ap-
pearance indefinitely; requires no maintenance;
keeps out the weather; does not shrink or warp
noticeably; is strong enough to resist mechanical
injury — that is, it can't fall apart if some over-
enthusiastic youngster bangs it with a baseball bat ;
and is relatively inexpensive. If it satisfies these con-
ditions and offers into the bargain the advantages
of light weight and quick installation, we have a
new material that will compete effectively with the
old. Anybody who produces this material has a
rich and wonderful market waiting for him. Un-
questionably it will be produced and ultimately ac-
cepted— but no one knows how soon. To do our
own crystal gazing, let us take a look at the house
as it is and as it might become.

The house is the only important consumer prod-

PROJECTIONS

uct which is still assembled by craftsmen. Practi-
cally every dwelling in the United States consists of
sticks of various lengths called studs, floor joists,
and roof rafters, put together out in the open in all
kinds of weather by people who use tools going
straight back to Neolithic times. This is going to
change — and drastically. It is going to change be-
cause the home market is too big for industry to
pass up. Once production engineers start figuring
out ways to give more product for less money,
things are going to happen. You don't have to be
a minor prophet to guess what these things are.
Even the least technical-minded among us has a
fairly clear idea of how the process works.

HOW INDUSTRY FUNCTIONS
The manufacturer's dream is an operation that is
automatic from beginning to end. The raw metal
comes in at one end and the finished product comes
out at the other. In the middle are a lot of machines
which cut, press, squeeze, stretch, turn, or punch.
The machines are very big and very expensive.
They can be afforded only if what they turn out is
produced in quantity and without flaws. To be
sure, there are all kinds of manufacturers. Some
make wrist watches with movements the size of a
dime, and others make locomotives. It seems rea-
sonable to assume that industries making large as-
semblies give us the best clue as to what will hap-
pen to the house, which must be a series of large
assemblies. Three such are the automotive, avia-
tion, and ship-building industries, and all offer in-
teresting examples. When a car manufacturer
wants to make a roof, he doesn't put up a lot of
rafters, cover them with sheeting, and lay a lot of
shingles on top. He has a series of big presses
which squeeze out each roof in one operation. He
can eliminate the rafters because he is playing on
one of the most significant characteristics of sheet
metals. Sheet metals left flat are weak. Curved,
crimped, or corrugated, they are tremendously

strong. You can prove this to your own satisfaction
with a cardboard shirt stiffener. Stood on edge, this
piece of heavy paper can't even hold itself up.
Twist it into a tube and it could probably support
a set of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica plus a couple
of telephone books. A car fender is far more com-
plicated than a cardboard tube, and it is much
stronger, because the simple curve has been formed
into a compound curve. Houses built of sticks and
stones are the carpenter's and mason's delight, but
once they start coming out of factories it will be a
different story.

We can count on the following: (1) More and
more houses in the years to come are going to be
factory-produced; (2) they will be built of sheet
materials, used not only for finish inside and out
but for their structural qualities as well; (3) be-
cause sheet materials function most effectively in
curved rather than flat forms, the house of the
future may look very strange. Do you like the idea
of a corrugated kitchen or a circular bedroom or
rooms without square corners anywhere in them?
Most of us would have to get rid of a lot of pre-
conceived notions before we accepted anything but
our favorite rectangular shapes, but it might not be
so hard. The pride of many a Colonial mansion is
an elliptical stair hall. During the late years of the
French Renaissance there were circular boudoirs
and anterooms. The Eskimo, too, would probably
consider it strange if he had suddenly to go and
live in a house that was all square corners. Nobody
kicked when cars went from square corners to
curves. Tastes can be very deep-rooted, but tastes
can change.

THE INDUSTRIALLY PRODUCED HOUSE
The machine-produced house we label "prefab-
ricated" has caused a considerable amount of argu-
ment. People like to believe that their homes are
individual, even if the facts of life show that they
very rarely are. Mrs. A and Mrs. Z have already

207

PROJECTIONS

gone on record against prefabrication because they
fear that the monotony would be intolerable and a
mass-produced house would lack the charms of
home. What gives a home its charm is not neces-
sarily special tailoring, but the process of living in
it. We have all seen apartments and third-hand
houses which are full of charm and individuality —
the result of what their occupants did to them. In
other words, almost any personality can be im-
printed on any dwelling. There is also this point:
mass production, oddly enough, makes for less
monotony rather than more. When nails were made
by the local blacksmith, each nail was slightly dif-
ferent from all the others — but there were few
types. Today there are hundreds more kinds of
nails, although their production is highly stand-
ardized. If this is true of so completely simple an
item, it must certainly hold for the house.

Prefabrication today is anything but an estab-
lished industry. Yet already there are types and
methods which promise a tremendous variety of
finished products. Some houses are being built in
panels, others are constructed in chunks, like trail-
ers. Materials include wood, plywood, asbestos,
reinforced concrete, insulating board, and sheet
steel. New ideas on design and construction appear
almost daily. The facts strongly suggest that what-
ever industrial production does to the house, it will
not destroy the variety everyone demands.

DESIGN FOR TOMORROW'S LIVING
Within our own lifetime we have watched servants
disappear and mechanical aids come in. We have
seen women go first into offices and then into fac-
tories. We have gradually watched a general shift-
ing of the center of gravity from the home to the
community. These are broad social and economic
trends which will continue. Houses are going to re-
flect them. Anything that pays out in the way of
labor-saving design has a good chance of accept-
ance. Survivals, no matter how much we are at-
208

tached to them, will go by the boards. Take the
case of carpets. A good carpet costs more than a
good floor. Even in a home of modest means, car-
pets and rugs may represent an investment of a
good many hundred dollars over a period of
twenty or thirty years. Why do we have carpets?
We started having carpets because our feudal an-
cestors found life on cold stone floors intolerable
without some insulating material laid over them.
This is no problem any more. We also have rugs
because a room without them sounds queer. In
other words, it is our practice to put acoustical
material on the floor in the home rather than on the
ceiling as in offices. This could be changed. To
date, there is no single material which combines
the advantages of a rug — that is, its softness, sound-
deadening and decorative qualities — with the ad-
vantages of a structural floor. Such a material,
however, is not too far off. It has to be resilient,
easily cleaned, warm in appearance, and not more
expensive than the carpets it will replace. Are you
appalled by the idea of a house without rugs? The
chances are about five to one that your grandchil-
dren will be appalled to learn that you ever had
such unsanitary contraptions in your house.

HORSEPOWER

One of the interesting by-products of World War
II is the tremendous number and variety of frac-
tional horsepower motors that have been turned
out in a great hurry. The B-29, for example, uses
well over a hundred of these little gadgets. The
house of the future may not use a hundred, but it
will probably use quite a few. Walls that open to
the out-of-doors, such as the huge sliding windows
seen in many modern living-rooms, might as well
be motorized as not. The same goes for partitions,
whether between children's bedrooms, the living-
room and dining-room, or dining-room and kit-
chen. A push of the button and the wall isn't there
any more. Portions of roofs could be operated in

PROJECTIONS

the same manner. Awnings or outside blinds could
be operated by motor, using photo-electric cells
activated by the sun so that you would not even
have to push a button. All of these amenities are
technically feasible now.

If you counted the number of motors in your
house right now, you would probably be very im-
pressed. There are the fans, the refrigerator, wash-
ing machine, ironer, sewing machine, oil burner,
maybe the garage doors, and probably five or six
others. Horsepower has already invaded the home.
All we are suggesting is that the front may pres-
ently be widened.

MORE MATERIALS

World War II produced more than fractional
horsepower motors. It developed the paper-
laminated plastics, which are as strong, weight for
weight, as aluminum. It produced wood that
doesn't swell or shrink. It created plywoods which
have extraordinary strength and water-proof qual-
ities. It took aluminum out of the class of an al-
most rare metal and made it, with magnesium, one
of the most common. It expanded stainless steel
production to the point where at least one manu-
facturer has been talking about using stainless steel
for roofing. This, incidentally, would be an exceed-
ingly good idea because the reflecting qualities of
stainless steel would do a lot toward keeping the
house comfortable in the summertime. Its mirror-
like surface would reflect solar radiation in much
the same manner as aluminum foil insulation, but
it would have the additional advantage of consid-
erable strength.

One company developed cases for shells, using
a sandwich of plywood and metal. Precut at the
factory, these cases could be shipped flat, assem-
bled by merely folding the pieces into boxes. The
metal covering served as a hinge, a principle that
might well be taken over for closets, cupboards,
and other storage units. Another type of plywood
has a strong paper surface, which can be furnished

in any color or pattern. Glass has moved out of the
kitchen to serve for piping, insulation, and fabrics,
and it is being combined with rayon and plastics to
create new materials. Water pipes of flexible plas-
tics may be standard in homes tomorrow, and
lights without wired connections have already been
demonstrated. There is a process by which soft
woods are made as hard as ebony and maple. Old
and new materials are emerging in a bewildering
variety of forms and combinations.

Lest our enthusiasm for these novel materials
run away with us, let's try to remember this : to the
householder it doesn't make a great deal of differ-
ence whether his water comes out of pipes of
plastic or of brass. He will never know the differ-
ence if his walls are insulated with glass or with
some older type of material. These developments,
while technically interesting, only mean something
when they have a direct relationship to better
living.

THE CRYSTAL BALL

Using industrial techniques in other fields as a
basis, we think tomorrow's house will be built in
pieces in factories and assembled at the site. It may
be full of all sorts of queer curves, strange slanting
walls, and odd materials that absorb sound but
can be cleaned off with a hose. Its windows will not
be single sheets of glass but insulated sandwiches
with two or even three panes in a single frame,
whose surfaces may be treated, as photographic
lenses are now treated, so that reflections are en-
tirely eliminated. This could be very pleasant.
Imagine being able to look out of the living-room
window at night without seeing reflections of
lamps and furniture. Under such conditions a view
might really become something to be enjoyed.

Tomorrow's house will be highly mechanized.
Its present supply of fractional horsepower motors
will be multiplied by two or three, and all sorts of
things will happen at the push of a button instead
of the heave of a back. Electricity may become the

209

PROJECTIONS

prime fuel as well as source of power. Bathrooms
will probably be prefabricated and may have their
own instantaneous electric hot water heaters. In-
dividual room air-conditioning is certainly in the
picture, but instead of bulky ducts to the separate
rooms there may be small pipes through which the
air will pass at a high velocity.

Many things will completely disappear from
view in the house that is now shaping up. Bureaus
and chests will give way to built-in cupboards.
Radios will move from pretentious oversized cab-
inets into the walls. A good deal of furniture for
sitting will tend to become an integral part of the
walls. This creates the prospect of a series of flex-
ible, uncluttered interiors where there is room to
swing a cat and where there may be less need to
swing a mop. Possibly you like cluttered interiors.
This is all right, too, because our little crystal ball
tells us that there will be no law in 194X compelling
you to give up your Duncan Phyfe highboy and
chintz curtains.

Most of us react to change in a pretty standard
way. When the tractor replaced the horse, roman-
tics pined because they liked the picture of a team
of horses on the brow of a hill at sunset, a stalwart
farmer urging on his tired steeds. But every time a
farmer got money enough for a down payment on
a tractor he bought one. Maybe farmers don't have
fun any more. In the absence of proof we are in-
clined to doubt it.

A home in the days of our childhood was loaded
to the brim with all kinds of strange and wonderful
junk. There were whatnots full of sea shells, attics
loaded with musty trunks, glass chimes on the
front porch, stuffed animals on the mantelpiece,
and all the rest of it. Maybe the youngsters are
going to miss a lot of fun in tomorrow's house.
But maybe that is what was said about yesterday's
house, too. Deep inside Africa and Australia there
are tribes that have never even seen a house, and,
if the anthropologists are to be believed, even these
210

people have had some good times in their quiet
way. It is unlikely that tomorrow's house is going
to be so devoid of enrichment and interest that the
youngest generation will be in the same spot as its
contemporaries in darkest Africa. It is unlikely,
too, that as long as people are people their houses
will fail to give them whatever it is they demand.
For our part we can see a pretty good time in
this newfangled piece of industrial shelter which is
already beginning to appear. If it is quieter, easier
to take care of, better to live in than its predecessor,
it is doing just about everything a family can de-
mand of a house.

TOMORROW'S HOUSE IS HERE

The reason we indulged in the pleasant game of
projecting trends was to prove that the potential-
ities of tomorrow's house are very much with us
today. There are materials yet to be made, and
machines to be made simpler and less expensive,
and production techniques to produce more space
for less money. There will undoubtedly be revolu-
tionary developments in lighting, heating, and the
other services of the home. Tomorrow's house in
this sense will never come all in one neat cellophane
package. It will grow, item by item, year by year.
With what we now know about planning and ma-
terials, and what architects have learned from the
industrial and commercial fields, the house that
can be built right now is a pretty wonderful thing.
Every age has produced the amenities it wanted
the most. This was as true in the days of Queen
Victoria as it will be fifty years from now. Today
is no exception.

The real fun of building tomorrow's house today
comes from the time lag. Almost all of our dwell-
ings, even the new ones, are ten to fifty years be-
hind what they could be. If you want individuality,
and that means if you really want it and just don't
give lip service to the idea, this is the way to get it,
and the time to start planning is right now.

ARCHITECTS AND DESIGNERS
WHOSE WORK APPEARS IN THIS BOOK

CALIFORNIA

Clark & Frey, 869 North Palm Canyon Drive,
Palm Springs: 199

Hervey Parke Clark, 210 Post Street, San Fran-
cisco: 188, 189,204,215

Frederick L. R. Confer, R. F. D. #1, Box 41 5A,
Martinez: 176, 203

Mario Corbett, 210 Post Street, San Francisco: 27,
225

Robert Trask Cox, 1570 Poppy Peak Drive, Pasa-
dena: 205

Gardner A. Dailey, 210 Post Street, San Fran-
cisco: 20, 158,212,222

J. R. Davidson, 1417 Comstock Avenue, Los
Angeles: 161

John Ekin Dinwiddie, Architect; Albert Henry
Hill, Associate, 233 Sansome Street, San Fran-
cisco: 14,38, 138

Joseph Esherick, Jr., Ross: 121

Willard Hall Francis, 1539 Bentley Avenue, West
Los Angeles : 57

John Funk, 21 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco:
172

Michael Goodman, 2422 Cedar Street, Berkeley:
90,91,211

Harwell Hamilton Harris, 2311 Fellowship Park-
way, Los Angeles: 58, 59, 61, 80, 101, 115, 120,
126, 131, 155, 165, 166, 175, 210

Philip Joseph, San Francisco: 38, 138

George Kosmak, Ruth Gerth & Associates, 1226
Sutter Street, San Francisco: 110, 114, 134, 137,
226, 227

Paul Laszlo, 362 North Rodeo Drive, Beverly
Hills: 31, 32, 35, 73, 157, 174

Francis E. Lloyd, 210 Post Street, San Francisco:
13, 149, 153

Clarence W. W. Mayhew, 330 Hampton Road,
Piedmont: 71, 164

Richard J. Neutra, 2300 Silverlake Boulevard, Los
Angeles: 62, 103, 140, 169, 170, 197

Emrich Nicholson & Douglas Maier, Los Angeles:
201

W. L. Pereira, 519 North Crescent Drive, Beverly
Hills: 216

Raphael S. Soriano, 6731 Leland Way, Los An-
geles: 102

Lloyd Wright, 858 North Doheny Drive, Los An-
geles: 19, 206

William Wilson Wurster, Wurster & Bernardi, 402
Jackson Street, San Francisco: 68, 69, 159, 160,
162, 163, 220, 221

COLORADO

Burnham Hoyt, 400 Colorado National Bank
Building, Denver: 127

CONNECTICUT

Richard M. Bennett, School of Fine Arts, Yale

University, New Haven: 21, 190
Thome Sherwood, Mayapple Road, Stamford: 30,

218, 219

DELAWARE

Victorine and Samuel Homsey, Hockessin: 152

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

George Howe, Supervising Architect, Public Build-
ings Administration, Federal Works Agency,
Washington: 39, 40, 193, 194

211

FLORIDA

Robert Law Weed, 444 N. E. 102nd St., Miami: 41

ILLINOIS

James Auer, 1505— 28th Street, Rock Island: 64

William F. Deknatel, 840 North Michigan Avenue,
Chicago: 33, 34, 51

Robert Sydney Dickens, 840 North Michigan
Avenue, Chicago: 183

Dubin & Dubin, 127 North Dearborn Street,
Chicago: 42

James F. Eppenstein, 35 East Wacker Drive, Chi-
cago: 49, 74

Bertrand Goldberg, Chicago: 133

G. McStay Jackson, Inc., 840 North Michigan
Avenue, Chicago: 122, 132, 143, 148

George Fred Keck, 152 East Ontario Street, Chi-
cago: 70, 88, 92, 128, 184, 185, 191

Samuel A. Marx, Architect; N. L. Flint and C. W.
Schonne, Associates, 333 North Michigan Ave-
nue, Chicago: 22

Arthur Purdy, Chicago: 183

Paul Schweikher, Roselle, Illinois, and Theodore
Lamb, deceased: 3, 17, 52, 117

MASSACHUSETTS

Walter F. Bogner, Hunt Hall, Harvard University,
Cambridge: 29, 53

Marcel Breuer, 1430 Massachusetts Ave., Cam-
bridge: 36, 37, 106, 107, 200

Samuel Glaser, Architect; L. L. Rado, Associate,
162 Newbury Street, Boston: 66

Walter Gropius, 1430 Massachusetts Avenue,
Cambridge: 36, 37, 106, 107, 198, 200

Carl Koch, Snake Hill, Belmont: 1, 15, 26, 28, 48,
79, 142, 179, 180, 232

G. Holmes Perkins, Department of Regional Plan-
ning, Graduate School of Design, Harvard Uni-
versity, Cambridge: 2

Hugh A. Stubbins, Jr., 83 Snake Hill Road, Bel-
mont: 63

Royal Barry Wills: 3 Joy Street, Boston: 63

MICHIGAN

Alden B. Dow, Inc., Midland: 5, 25
212

MISSOURI

Huson Jackson, 9737 Litzsinger Road, St. Louis:

139
Isadore Shank, 4 Graybridge Lane, Ladue, St.

Louis County: 64

NEW JERSEY

Allmon Fordyce, Glen Gardner: 4, 83, 84, 85, 8

87
Kenneth Kassler, 221 Elm Road, Princeton: 7, 46,

214
Vincent Kling, East Orange: 23, 24, 213

NEW YORK

John Breck, New York: 54, 55, 116

Alan Burnham, New York: 8, 9

John Callender, 396 Bleecker Street, New York:

76,77

Alice Morgan Carson, New York: 135, 136
Robert L. Davison, 299 Madison Avenue, New

York: 76, 77

Donald Deskey, 630 Fifth Avenue, New York : 195
Malcolm Graeme Duncan, 299 Madison Avenue,

New York: 181, 182
Guyon C. Earle, 6 Burns Street, Forest Hills, L. I. :

95

Livingstone Elder, New York: 60, 217
Philip L. Goodwin, 32 East 57th Street, New York:

147

Robert A. Green, Tappan Landing, Tarrytown: 11
Julius Gregory, 74 Macdougal Street, New York:

111
Paul Grotz, 7 St. Luke's Place, New York: 167,

168, 228, 229
William Hamby, New York: 4, 6, 16, 43, 50, 65,

78, 104, 105, 109, 230
Michael M. Hare, 110 East 42nd Street, New

York: 60, 217

Albert Lee Hawes, New York: 8, 9
Holden, McLaughlin & Associates, 570 Lexington

Avenue, New York : 96, 97
Caleb Hornbostel, 80 West 40th Street, New York:

21, 190
S. Clements Horsley, 205 East 42nd Street, New

York: 171, 173
Clement Kurd, New York: 60, 217

A. Musgrave Hyde, New York: 130
Philip Johnson, New York: 171, 173
Morris Ketchum, Jr., 5 East 57th Street, New

York: 113
William Lescaze, 21 1 East 48th Street, New York:

123, 145

John Manzer, 220 East 41st Street, New York: 60,

217
Moore & Hutchins, 11 East 44th Street, New

York: 56, 67
George Nelson, 4 East 95th Street, New York: 4,

6, 16, 43, 50, 78, 104, 105, 150, 151
Pomerance & Breines, 18 East 48th Street, New

York: 47, 202
Antonin Raymond, 101 Park Avenue, New York:

10, 141
Jedd Stow Reisner, 26 East 55th Street, New

York: 113

George Sakier, 9 East 57th Street, New York: 98
Morris B. Sanders, 219 East 49th Street, New

York: 18

Walter Sanders, New York: 54, 55, 116
Willard B. Smith, 1929 E. Genesee Street, Syra-
cuse: 99, 146
Theodore Smith-Miller, 235 East 72nd Street, New

York: 54, 55, 116
Eldredge Snyder, New York: 207
Edward D. Stone, New York: 48, 89, 108, 112,

124, 129, 177, 178, 179, 180, 187, 195, 196,
223, 224

van der Gracht & Kilham, 101 Park Avenue, New

York: 135, 136
Paul Lester Wiener (formerly Contempora, Inc.),

33 West 42nd Street, New York: 118

Virginia Williams, New York: 145

Henry Wright, 48-13 39th Avenue, Long Island

City: 21, 72, 150, 151, 167, 168, 190, 192, 228,

229, 231

NORTH CAROLINA

Allen J. Maxwell, Borden Building, Goldsboro:

223, 224
John J. Rowland, 330 North Queen Street,

Kinston: 223, 224

OHIO

H. Creston Doner, Director of Department of
Design, Libbey-Owens-Ford Glass Company,
Toledo: 93, 94

Ernst Payer of Rideout & Payer, Chagrin Falls:
226, 227

PENNSYLVANIA

Robert M. Brown, Philadelphia: 119

George Daub, 2123 Delancey Place, Philadelphia:

125
Kenneth Day, Miquon: 12, 100, 154

TEXAS

Alden B. Dow, Inc., Houston: 5, 25

WASHINGTON

Paul Thiry, 468 Stuart Building, Seattle: 81, 82,
144, 156

WISCONSIN

Frank Lloyd Wright, Taliesin, Spring Green: 44,
45, 75, 186, 208, 209

213

PHOTOGRAPHERS WHOSE
PICTURES APPEAR IN THIS BOOK

William H. Allen, 99, 146

Elmer L. Astleford, 5, 25

Esther Born, 204

Chicago Architectural Photographing Company,

122, 132, 143, 148
Robert M. Damora, 4, 6, 7, 11, 12, 16, 23, 24, 46,

76, 77, 78, 98, 100, 104, 105, 109, 152, 154, 213,

214, 217
Fred R. Dapprich, 32, 58, 59, 80, 101, 120, 126,

131, 155, 165, 166, 175, 205, 210
Paul Davis, George H. Davis Studio, 26, 36, 37
P. A. Dearborn, 181, 182
Richard T. Dooner, 125
Philip Fein, 13, 27, 149, 153, 225
Richard Garrison, 8, 9, 18, 65, 81, 82, 110, 134,

137, 156, 226, 227, 230
John Gass, 195

Samuel H. Gottscho, 21, 41, 56, 135, 136, 196
Gottscho-Schleisner, 67, 96, 97
Arthur C. Haskell, 63
Hedrich-Blessing Studio, 3, 17, 22, 33, 34, 49, 51,

52, 70, 74, 75, 88, 92, 117, 127, 128, 133, 183,

184, 185, 191, 208, 209, 216
Steven Reiser, 42

C. V. D. Hubbard, 10, 141

Robert Humphreys, 201

LIFE photo, Herbert Gehr, 113, 150, 151

LIFE photo, William C. Shrout, 1 14

F. S. Lincoln, 95, 118, 119, 207

Luckhaus Studio, 103, 197

Rodney McCay Morgan, 130

P. A. Nyholm, 145

Maynard L. Parker, 111

Ben Schnall, 39, 40, 43, 54, 55, 72, 116, 192, 193,

194, 231
Juluis Shulman, 35, 62, 73, 102, 140, 157, 161, 169,

170, 174

Richard Averill Smith, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87
Ezra Stoller, 1, 2, 15, 28, 29, 47, 48, 53, 79, 89,

106, 107, 108, 112, 124, 129, 142, 171, 173, 177,

178, 187, 198, 200, 202, 232
Roger Sturtevant, 14, 20, 38, 61, 68, 69, 71, 115,

121, 138, 158, 159, 164, 172, 212, 220, 221, 222
Mary Thiry, 144
Bennett S. Tucker, 64
George H. Van Anda, 30, 218, 219
W. P. Woodcock, 199

214

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