Thursday, September 23, 2021

1970s Home Style Nostalgia

During my teen days of many public library visits, one type of book I borrowed obsessively was related to house design. This was the early and mid-1970s, so you can imagine the style of the houses these books showed: mid-century modern. There were house plans, photos of houses, and artist and architect renderings. (And lots of house plants.)

To this day I feel a thrill when I see an A-frame house, or even a drawing of one, so when I saw a few images of that genre shared by Cory Doctorow on Twitter, I had a little swoon.

These images are from a 1980 book called the Popular Science Leisure Home Book. More images from it can be seen on this English website.

I don't know what this style means to me. I do know I wouldn't want to live my daily life in it, but it lives inside my head, regardless.


4 comments:

Michael Leddy said...

And now in other people’s heads too.

The leather and chrome chairs in the first picture look familiar — can you put a name to them? I thought Herman Miller, but search results don’t seem to agree.

Daughter Number Three said...

They look a bit like the Knoll Barcelona chair, but what's shown as the back in the illustration looks like the Barcelona chair's front.

Daughter Number Three said...

And the Barcelona chair doesn't have a headrest like that.

Michael Leddy said...

Thanks — that must be what I’m thinking of. Maybe the artist didn’t want to suggest a trademarked item.

I just realized that the first picture is a super-large version of the “all-in-one-room” (1950s), or what’s now called an “open concept kitchen/dining/living area.” And the second is something like the Vandamm house in North by Northwest.