HOUSES TO LIVE IN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 195, 19 March 1943, Page 4

HOUSES TO LIVE IN

yN the new world we hope to build after the war we will need new houses-hundreds and thousands of new homes. Are they to be really new or just made-over old ones? House-planning is in the air, and we have tried to find out what the planning is really like. Here are some of the results of our inquiries:

UNIVERSITY LECTURER IRST, I'd say, blow up the whole wagon and start again from the beginning; that’s my sovereign specific," said a university lecturer, to whom we took our questions. "However, if that’s impossible, I think this-that the sooner we get rid of the idea that it’s respectable to have a house of your own, the better. I think the flat habit is a good one, and there could well be more living of the kind that is afforded by well-designed blocks of flats sharing big opén spaces, Once we had people saying ‘Heaven forbid! We will not have flats all over New Zealand.’ They were thinking of the tenement slums, of course, and not of the kind of thing that modern imaginative architects have made possible.

_"No,_ I’ wouldn’t agree at all that a house is-a machine for living in or that if a thing is designed to fulfil its purpose it will be beautiful of its own accord. I regard beauty as an essential part of efficiency. If a thing is offensive, I won’t use it. And if I won’t use it, then it isn’t functioning, so what? "There’s no truth at all in the belief that we New Zealanders haven’t any taste. In the matter of houses we have to take what we can get-the house I’m in has got all sorts of features I’d never incorporate in a house if I were building one, and it’s the same with most people. But yet take things where people have got a choice, such as furnishings, and you find that if there is something decent in a shop one day it'll be gone the next. "And that reminds me, that I think there’s plenty of scope for fabrics to

be designed and woven locally in response to the local taste. We should get people who are capable of designing things-not merely fabrics, but all the things we use in our houses-accord-ing.to local needs, TRAVELLER MAN who had travelled much before the war, said that the Dutch system of twin house-units was the best he had seen both from the point of view of attractive town-planning and from the point of view of the individual householder. The identical -twin- unit consisted of two houses shoulder to shoulder with a sound-proof and fire-

proof wall between them and their garden space in front, behind and at one side. Thus paired neighbours could live self-containedly -for a wall separated the two gardens also. Their neighbours on the other side in each case were, of course, paired similarly, so that each individual had on the one side a shoulder-to-shoulder neighbour, and on the other a neighbour at double arm’s length, FROM A COUNTRY TOWN S| WOULD build homes suitable for average families of five, and suitable for children, with large, airy rooms, large cupboards, long towel-rails, lots of windows, plentiful hot and cold water, and everything as durable and as easily cleaned as possible. I would place all electric points and switches as high as reasonably convenient for an adult to reach, and would enforce guards round the top of electric stoves and closefitting; spark-proof screens for open fires. I would have thermostat control

on every appliance on which it was practical to install. "I would also, if I had authority, decree two half-holidays in the week. The second half-holiday would be mother’s half-day, when it would be an offence for her to do any domestic task other than care for any baby under nine months. I would also instruct architects to make provision for women with prams when they are designing post offices and other public buildings." SIXTY-YEARS-OLD "TT will satisfy me if the world after the war learns how to make a chair, I do not think I exaggerate if I say that in 60 years I have only ‘once or twice sat in a chair that was restful and really comfortable. And although the war is not being fought for old stagers like me, but for those now in the cradle or due to arrive there, it will still be desirable when these real and contemplated children grow up that they should be able to sit comfortably by their own firesides-if houses still have firesides. Otherwise, they will go out as young and old men go now, to see the pictures or the girls, or to drink or gamble or argue or plot, to their own and the social fabric’s injury. Give us homes fit to stay in and chairs comfortable to sit in and our leisure will look after itself." NEW ZEALAND ARCHITECT | THINK it is time we got away from the idea of houses.as holes in which to shut ourselves up to live. Most houses of to-day are prisons-with holes punched in the walls. I conceive of a house as a place of shelter from the elements but as free and open as it is architecturally possible for it to be. I’m all for a feeling of freedom and space. Certain parts of the house, bedrooms and so on, must be private, but the rest should be of glass from ceiling to floor. Houses should give a feeling of space with no clear division between house and garden." "Then you would not like to see a great extension of flats in the post-war world?" (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) "Not as an alternative to houses. These big blocks of flats are entirely different things. They are in general unsuitable for bringing up children, I think that there will be more flats, especially near secondary industries. They can be convenient and pleasing, and in many ways I would prefer them to the wide spread of suburbs. But they need — careful planning and_ space, gardens and so on, "In the last 25 years, there have been so many big changes-radio is here, television will come, there will be more communal living. Don’t you think these will affect our houses and our way of living?" we asked. "It will affect other countries more than New Zealand. The emphasis here is more on sport and gardening. Women are imprisoned partly by long tradition and habit. If men had to do all the domestic jobs that women have to do, every house would be equipped with mechanical devices to make the work easier." YOUNG WIFE A YOUNG woman, a_ research chemist, whose husband is working for the army and waiting for the war to be over to take up a scholarship overseas, explained that she and her husband after the war would be living on the smell of the proverbial oily rag -only she wasn’t sure where the oil would come from-so she would be on the look-out for the cheapest possible living. "I believe in the principle that families should live in houses, each family with its own bit of ground," she said. "But in the meantime, what we want is a very convenient flat with not too much housework involved, In the new order I'd like to see every house and flat equipped with an electric washing-machine, and in every block of flats an arrangement for removing the rubbish daily. Also I think people who live in flats should all have at least six square feet of garden, because then when they do graduate to

a house with a bit of land, their agricultural abilities won’t have atrophied completely. But," she concluded with a vehemence born of long suffering in boarding houses, "the one thing I’m really mad about is hot water. In every house a tap labelled HOT should run HOT. So we’ve all got to have thermostat controlled water heaters as well as washing-machines and a daily garbage service and six square feet of garden... and cheap rents. O, dear!" EUROPEAN ARCHITECT "ONE of the most serious problems of our time is the individual’s relation to mechanisation and standardisation," said an architect from overseas who has made it his chief interest to design houses that will make life fuller. "The Listener doesn’t want to start discussing whether a lorry which serves its purpose is beautiful, I know, but what about the purpose of a house? Is it only a shelter? Surely it is more a framework in which we live our lives? But our lives don’t consist merely of working, eating, and sleeping. They would be very poor if they did, because that sort of life is what we inflict on offenders against the law. : (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) "Many of the houses people live in are impersonal and conventional-they have no faces! Often the house itself doesn’t look as if it belongs to the garden, or the garden, seen from the inside, look as if it belongs to the house: By using longer stretches of glass, we can eliminate that boxlike look. People whose work may be mentally constrictive, will need houses which will help their leisure to be mentally expansive and flexible. And it is the simplest thing in the world for an architect to make a house that will do this — without costing one penny more than a house that actually does the opposite. "You say we have impersonal, conventional houses, but you also say we must accept modern mechanical methods of manufacture?" "You needn’t finish that question," he interrupted. "I know, you are wondering how we can avoid sameness and standardisation. Again, it is simple. Beyond, say, 50 different designs of a chair, it doesn’t much matter how many more you have to choose from. For every different factory you can have one design, produced by mass ‘methods -it is quite wrong to suppose that mass production means restriction of choice in designs. And as long as you can have a choice, your home need not be impersonal," EDUCATIONIST "|F houses are going to change with our way of life," said an educationist, "then I can see that there -may be quite a change in our ideas. We have tended to look upon houses as units in which each individual family lives. Each household is self-contained and complete in itself, When a household was a large unit with a number of people co-operating in its running, this was perhaps all right, but we have in many ways developed away from that stage. Our lives, especially under wartime conditions, are forcing us to do things in gnoups, co-operatively. I think our houses will be less and less pretentious pieces of private property and more and more homes where a minimum number of domestic jobs will be performed. They will be sleeping places, they will be the background of security for the growing child, but I think there will be a movement among women towards co-operation which will relieve them of much of the work that small individual households demand. Think how much more sensible it would be to have one large and convenient and well equipped laundry for every so many houses. This idea may even be applied to other rooms. A community centre might provide a radio room, which would be acoustically good, and where programmes could be heard to the best advantage. Community libraries have advantages over the individual library, and community nurseries and play rooms would be much better equipped than individual ones." *‘ MOTHER OF TWO "| WISH I were optimistic enough to think that our houses would be much changed after the war," said a housewife when questioned. "I am afraid it will be a long time before all of us. housewives are in really convenient houses with labour-saving devices and space and light and all the things which

we are told are necessary to health these days. The changes which are affecting our lives are in some ways contradictory. On the one hand, there are labour-saving devices that will reduce our hard work ta a minimum. These should give us leisure. The war, on the other hand, has given a good many of us the impetus to go to work or to do work of some sort or another that has taken away our leisure. Personally, I think this is quite a good thing. Several of the women I know who have taken jobs have realised for the first time the need to do their housework quickly as Well as efficiently. "This, may seem a far cry from houses and architecture, but it isn’t, So long as we expect to spend all our lives in one house, we will do so, and we will put up with sprawling and inconvenient houses. The war will have taught many of us to be more independent and more demanding, and also to eliminate all those things in a house that make for unnecessary work. We will no longer want drawing rooms for entertaining. We won't want spetial dining rooms, but will eat in alcoves off the kitchen-a great time saver for the housewife. I think, too, that bedrooms may well become bed-sitting rooms, instead of shrines devoted exclusively to slumber. Then all the new ideas on bringing up children should be reflected in our homes. A modern mother will want a really good specially built room for a nursery. Personally, I think that if parents want a quiet life, this should be the largest and best room of the house. Parents can make themselves comfortable with a couple of easy chairs and a fire. Children need yards of floor and tables and shelves and walls for their drawings, and a whole lot of other things, "My own feelings would incline me to a house in which the interior walls could be altered from time to time. I would like to be able to alter the walls so that in winter our living room vidg be smaller and in summer larger; 80 that we could enlarge the nursery if necessary or wall off a spare bedroom if we wished, I resent the rigidity of our houses, and I believe architecturally it is quite possible to have movable interior walls, "If there is anything else that I would like to.see changed it is the general sprawling suburb of to-day. It has neither the advantages of a town nor the joys of the country. It is merely a place where town workers come home to sleep. The inhabitants of a big suburb are neither sociable to their neighbours nor community-minded. I hope that after the war we shall abandon the suburb idea and group our houses more into communities round the natural centre of a community, school, church, library, kindergarten, and I would add eating house or club. We all have in the past, in the suburbs of big towns, anyway, given too much time to our own individual houses and gardens. The new world will, I think, expect a little more of us." FLAT DWELLER N experienced flat-dweller said she had only one demand to make on flats planned for the Better Life: that all radios should be one-mouse-power incapable of being tuned loudly for any subject whatever, especially football and racing commentaries.