Conservative Moderns

For some 25 years, critics have approved "modern" houses designed as efficient "machines for living"--but most home-buyers have not. Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art lists only 149 acceptably "modern" houses in all the northeastern states.

Last week a layman undertook to tell architects what is wrong. His diagnosis: modern architects are actually too conservative in their insistence on functionalism at any cost. The layman, Russell Lynes, one of the editors of Harper's magazine (and a former art student) believes that most Americans will continue to prefer traditional houses to the barefaced, wide-windowed, functional kind. His points, in the October Harper's:

P: Functionalism is all right in the factory, in offices and in work-saving kitchens, but after work hours people want cozy retreats; and most modern quarters are too coldly efficient to be relaxing.

P: Modern floor-plans, for a few big rooms instead of a lot of little ones, sacrifice privacy to create an illusion of space. Most people would rather have privacy.

P: Glass walls (for maximum sunlight) are ". . . an appealing idea. . . . But to have the outdoors always peering at us . . . is a little embarrassing."

P: Modern houses need modern chairs, etc., which are "delightful so long as you give yourself to them utterly; but try to shift your position--to sit eagerly forward in a relaxing chair, or to lounge simply in a brisk working chair. . . . Their designers insist that whenever it is our whim to cease sprawling and take an active interest, we should celebrate by moving to another chair."

P: Functional architecture often substitutes storage closets and "utility rooms" (to house the furnace) for cellars, which are expensive. It also eliminates attics in favor of flat roofs which can double as porches. Yet cellars and attics, although admittedly inefficient, are dear to the American soul as places to store old junk, or places to putter in.

Lynes sums up: "The false front of the Midwestern town, the Dutch Colonial suburban cottage, the Renaissance apartment house cannot be defended in practical terms but neither are they to be dismissed as mere aberrations of taste. . . ."

Modern architects, who have heard most of this before, will probably agree more readily with another Lynes thesis: the few who would like a modern house seldom get much encouragement from their bankers. Says Lynes: "[Usually] the man who wants to build [a modern house] has to put up all the money himself, because the mortgage is not a good risk. . . . Its resale value is not comparable to that of a semi-traditional house."

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