The Modern Home
The Real Thing
By G. M. BourallinRir.
I FEEL that in describing and commenting upon the house pictured below I shall be expected by many to adopt a denunciatory or at least a defensive attitude. I shall do neither—unless explanation be construed as defence but, first, let me rouse what tolerance I may by stating that this house has been built, not for some young vorticist with more money than taste, but for a distinguished professor of classical archaeology, late Director of the British School at Rome. The architect, too, Mr. A. D. Connell, as a Rome scholar, may be presumed to know the elasaical orders. Yet these two have elected to build a house like this. I think we may at least accord them the courtesy of really careful consideration.
Best of all, perhaps, is the second floor. Here the hexagonal space forms a nursery—such a nursery as I wish I could say I had dreamed of. Three sides of it are of glass, looking for miles down the broad Buckinghamshire valleys—for the house stands high up the hillside. Two of the wings are also nursery, but in the open air, with concrete canopies to give some measure of shade or protection from rain. The third wing, above the kitchen, is night nurseries, nurse's room and stairs down. Need I say that there is a service lift for nursery meals ?
The predominating features of the house are centrality and privacy. In each wing one feels secluded and remote from the household ; - yet, a few steps, and one is at the very hub. The economy of movement effected is remarkable ; there are no long passages to be traversed : everything seems to be just where it is needed. Once the plan has been grasped, it appears inevitable. Consider the problems set the architect and see how well they have been solved. He was to provide a house of such-and-such accommodation, a house in the country, to take the very fullest advantage of the sun, to make the most of the wonderful outlook, and yet to provide shelter from the winds that are bound to play round such a lofty site. His answer to the first we have seen. As to the rest, the whole house seems filled with light : the main staircase floods the hall and landing : each room has a richly generous supply of window space and yet a proper amount of shade. Whichever way the wind may blow there is always shelter to be found out of doors. Only a personal inspection can show how well the plan fits the contours : how a depression in the side of the hill below the pergola (soon to contain a bathing-pool) is cupped by the two wings of the house -below -the -terrace, -But-it-is-the elevation -that-may
RIGH AND 0
(Photo : " The Architect and Building News."
vas," AMERMAM.
shock. The plans were passed only -" with extreme reluc- tance " by a Town Planning Committee which seems well able to stomach a good deal of formlesspess_elsewhere... And why the concrete ? The answer to this should be evident; only cavity walls could make a house with so great an expanse of outside wall habitable in cold weather without a prodigal expenditure on heating ; and no structure of brick or done could afford to be so lavish of window-space as this. And how else provide the upper storey which surely justifies' itself ?
As to the beauty of the interior, there will be less question. The entrance hall is paved with dark grey marble inset with rough glass in a simple, geometrical pattern. In the centre is a circular fountain, the pool of which is surrounded by a rim of glass, illuminated at night. In hot weather the jet can be made to play right up through the eirculfir well of the first floor, thus cooling the house. The doors are of glass, eellulosed lightly on the back and mounted on plated steel frames. The general effect of this hall with its glass and chromium plate and cool, cellulose colours gave me much the sensations that Aladdin must have felt when the djinn led him in to admire his night's work—though I doubt if the taste there shown was quite so restrained. The floors of the three ground-floor rooms are of maple, and much of the furniture, of maple, walnut or oak, is built in. The living-room possesses the only open fire in the house—with a hopper at the back down which ashes can be shot straight into the boiler-house. Otherwise the house depends on electric fires and central heating from hot-water radiators mostly built into the walls. Much of the lighting, too, is through sheets of ground glass let into the ceilings and framed in metal. The general colour scheme is worked out in soft greens and blues, often flecked with silver or gold, and forms a harmonious whole.
It is hopeless to try to enumerate the many details of this house where everything appears to have been thought of to save work and promote comfort—even to a hatch from the bathroom to the linen-cupboard ; but I must make special mention of the handles on the first-floor doors—by far the best I have seen—needing only a push or a pull to unlatch (according to which side of the door you are standing), and extremely neat in design. There is, of course, a refrigerator
l and cooking is by electricity. Hot water for radiators and taps is from separate, coke-fired boilers—and each bedroom has a basin built in. The garage is down a ramp under the terrace and living-room.
There is no doubt that the sight of this house will arumy many people a great deal ; but I think it good that we should have an opportunity of seeing and judging such things —especially if we judge them without prejudice. Un- Rnglish ? But so were the classical orders until we anglicized them. Whatever our final verdict may be, we must admit that this house bears the stamp of careful thought and so le to be commended- above the hotch-potch of undisciplined building that rasps our senses from every side. A hoot of the future ? Say rather—an uncommon-sense house 01 to-day. -
Previous page
