So you think *your* house is perfect
Of course Indy House is perfect (ahem) but, OMG, peeps, looks like it's got some competition -- the dream homes of the 1930s and '40s. Check it out.
From Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future, a fab book that I swiped from Mr. IG's library:
1943-44. The Kitchen of the Day After Tomorrow [was] designed by H. Creston Doner. The kitchen had glass-fronted storage cabinets and a completely glassed-in oven. Appliances included a waffle iron and an electric mixer that were built in. Countertops were lower than usual, since women in the future would prepare dinner from a seated position. The stove and sink had hinged tops that could be closed to disguise the room's kitchen functions and prepare it for parties or recreational use.
In the same book but originally from "Miracles You'll See in the Next Fifty Years," in Popular Mechanics, 1950 - every woman's fantasy, the insta-clean wonder house:
By the early 1950s, various "miracle" materials were making their way into middle-class homes, and popular press was filled with promises of ever more remarkable plastic things to come, such as furniture one could clean with a garden hose.
In case you can't see it, the original caption reads: Because everything in her home is waterproof, the housewife of 2000 can do her daily cleaning with a hose.
Friends, Art Deco wizards dreamed up all this streamlined fabulousness 70 years ago! I can't believe I'm still scrubbing kitchen grout with a scouring sponge -- or I would be, if I ever cleaned anything around here. Well, it's the principle of the thing. Easy-clean houses were designed for never-clean women like me, right? Where's my spray-clean living room?
Comments
I want a house like Bruce Willis' apartment in The Fifth Element! That would be awesome!!! And a car, too. That would be even awesomer!
Me too. The baked-on crud in the oven just isn't scraping off anymore, not that I ever try -- that's the real reason we decided to buy a house. :-D
Have you seen Mon Oncle? One of the most wonderful, whimsical films ever. (I love all of Tati). His sister owns this supremely modern, fantastically uncomfortable house moderne. Tati takes his nephew on afternoon jaunts with packs of dogs and other things. Conversation is almost gratuitous. It's all about humans moving through their contrived environments. Here's another clip you'll enjoy.
I guess I have to find Mon Oncle...I hope it's on Netflix. That house is redonk.
Hot? ;)
*faints*