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