Modern Architecture Rejects Privacy – But Isn’t That The Point?
The author asserts that modernist values include openness, flexibility, and a classless society where feelings of warmth and security are provided by social interactions, not your home. She states that modern glass houses eliminate privacy and intimacy, and that the interiors are too austere to be comfortable, or to give the inhabitant a sense of identity. And she connects these values to the design choices, framing modernism – and minimalism – as a movement undertaken by people aiming towards these values. I’m not certain I agree; the expense of materials and the process of creating walls of windows, frameless corner windows, a house with a steel frame, were all very new and not readily accessible to the average working-class homeowner. I think that the consumer of these architectural products would have likely been wealthy, not necessarily interested in a classless society, but someone who might make the fact that they had a house built by Mies van der Rohe their entire personality. On this I concur: glass houses do a great job of bringing the outside landscape in, but they do not allow for much privacy, and this can impact the way the user lives.
In October 1931 there was an article in House Beautiful called “Two Houses in the International Style”, featuring two houses designed by Clauss and Daub, Architects, from a show entitled ‘Show of Rejected Architects’, which unveiled designs that the Architectural League had refused. These include a house designed for “Colonel Lindbergh” which I assume is Charles Lindbergh who completed the first solo transatlantic flight; it includes an aircraft hangar. Sadly, the Lindbergh house was never built, but the models and drawings portray long horizontal stretches of windows, which, the magazine notes “was not possible in the last century”. The author mentions Walter Groupius and Mies van der Rohe, and also that Alfred Clauss of Clauss & Daub had studied with van der Rohe in Berlin.
Fig 1. The first page of an article about new American designs for houses in the “International Style”, 1931
Fig 2. Plans for the “Lindbergh House”, including an aircraft hangar, International Style (not built)
The author – whose mother was the recipient of the other International design and at the time of the article was building the house – was right to be excited about the style, it has persisted in the US for almost a hundred years.
I found the following two examples of contemporary houses in an International/Modernist style. Appropriately, both are in ads for window companies.
Fig. 3 This Utah residence designed by Michael Upwall and built by Gary Hill is clearly inspired by the modernist movement and FLW. It also happens to be featured in this ad for windows.
Fig. 4 This “resort-style family home” in Minnesota was designed by Everson Architects, is reminiscent of a Modernist/International style, and is featured in a window ad.
