The House in the Twentieth Century - Houses of the Past - Book Review

Architectural Review, The, Sept, 2002 by Alan Brookes

THE HOUSE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

By Richard Weston. London: Laurence King. 2002. [pounds sterling]40

With modern methods of printing it's easy to salivate over icons of modern architecture but for a book to avoid relegation to the coffee table it must have a further meaning. In this respect Richard Weston's method of analysis using a range of examples of innovative domestic architecture around major themes, rather than presenting them chronologically, has some limitations. Almost inevitably there are omissions and overlaps between the various entries in each chapter.

At first sight the book is well produced and balanced neatly into seven sections. Each chapter or theme contains seminal examples of twentieth-century private houses and links between the key architects involved. It's hard not to be impressed by so many beautiful photographs with magnificent double-page full-colour illustrations in most chapters, but occasionally I was left somewhat puzzled and frustrated by the intellectual links chosen by the author.

In the chapter 'Machines for Living in' the narrative leads from Le Corbusier via Buckminster Fuller to Jean Prouve with Richard Horden's Yacht House in between. I'm sure that Horden will be pleased to find himself in such distinguished company, but the brief mention of technology transfer denies the importance of Konrad Wachsrnann and Gropius who, along with their dream of the factory-built house, are not included.

Similarly the naturalistic forms of Bruce Goff, which might have been compared to Ian Athfield's Porteus house, cannot be made because the latter, living in New Zealand, was not part of 'the American dream'. Nor can the obvious links between Eames' and Hopkins' own houses be made in that chapter.

With a curious start using Torre de la Creu by Josep Maria Jujol, which the author admits had no impact on mainstream development, the section on 'the modern house' proceeds happily through Loos, Rietveld, Le Corbusier, Mies Van der Robe to Pierre Chareau and on to Richard Neutra, who of course comes up later in the American dream. When the dialogue moves back to Europe Melnikov's house arrives, even though as the author admits, 'Such houses refuse to conform to convenient classification Clearly there was nowhere else to put him. However Brinkman and Van de Vlugt's Sonneveld house gets no mention at all even though this is perhaps the best preserved example of Dutch functionalist domestic architecture.

The largest mixed bag of architects is left for the last chapter, with the relaxed title 'continuity and transformations'. Here we can find minimalists such as Pawson, Holl and Van Berkel. But only Mies Van der Robe, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright are allowed to hop from chapter to chapter. As masters of the Modern Movement perhaps they are entitled to this, although poor Aalto might be aggrieved at being restrained essentially to one theme.

I enjoyed reading the book and refreshing my knowledge of these seminal works and the gossip surrounding some of the architects and clients involved. But I failed to see how the book shows how houses reflect and influence changing life styles, as the publisher's fly suggests, particularly when Weston remarks finally that, 'The gulf between the ideals they represent and the general culture of housing hardly needs stating'. Maybe the lesson is that architecture, unlike apples and pears, cannot always be put into separate baskets.