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Case Study House: Comfort and Convenience

Author(s): Ellen Lupton and Jane Murphy


Source: Assemblage, No. 24, House Rules (Aug., 1994), pp. 86-93
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3171198
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Case Study House: - N

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Comfort and o_
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Convenience 0o
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Ellen Lupton 0 . >-

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Jane Murphy 0-
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Comfort and convenience have been twin principles in If comfort is the rewardfor a day's
the design of middle-class dwcllings since the rise of the workoutside the home, convenience
ninctcenth-centurv cult of domesticity. Physicaland n 0 is the networkof objiects,equipment,
._. ' c-
emotional comfort is enabled 1b an environment free of co o0 o and services through which the
unyieldcingsurfaces, extreme temperatures,lharshor
LO i 4 .I0, , 0 housewife enacts her duties. Comfort
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inadequate lighting, filth and foul air,and a clutter of is linked to leisure,while convenience
disorganized posscssions. The orchestration of this is tied to labor.When the arrange-
soothing environment has been culturallydefined as the - LJ imentof appliances, cleaning supplies,
C
province of women, who are charged with maintaining the 'AC+ cooking tools. linens, and other
homecas a peaceful refuge from the pressuresof paid work. devices for achieving comfort has
The mythic American home is a place of rest to which the E been carefullyconsidered, then the
male breadwinnerreturnsat the end of his commute networkof convenience will disap-
from a distant workplace.In the well-run home, comfort pear.becoming second 1nature.Yet convenience can be
disappears:it is the invisible, enveloping frameworkof inconvenient. Some of the standardphrasesin the modern
fresh air, digestible food, a good night's slecep,and a clean languageof convenience have aimed to conceal evidence
place to miovc the bowcls and bathe the body each of labor in the hliomeor to fetishize it into a rhetorical
morning. The style of comfort is prototypicallymasculine, image of hyperrationality; stimulating rather than
demanding the erastire of fussy formalityand frillydetails eliminating effort. Tlhetechnologies of convenience
in favorof solid furnishings,well-lit rooms, and simple typicallv are designed to comply with a rigidgrammarof
materials.The plainly masculine features of comfort modularityand cannot be adjusted to meet the needs
became part of the modernist canon of design values. of the individual user.

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g The large room on the left can be made to serve the
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U, purpose of several rooms by means of a movable screen.
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By shifting the rolling screen from one part of the room
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to another, two apartments are always available....
One side of the screen fronts what may be used as a
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In bedroom conveniences.
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Catharine Beecher,American Woman's Home, 1869

86
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0 The requirements of an ideal While architecturaltheory
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- room for a man are very much >. E .A' Cu traditionallydwells on weighty
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room: Firstof all, the room
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must look as though it were
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domestic information directed
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used. It must, moreover, be -Q at women often confronts the
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comfortable, restful, quietly o o -0Vt humble networksof
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pleasant or at least negative in C C 0 . convenience and the modest
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to 0 color, with plenty of light. Emily 2 . 0 . 4-. ~0 goals of comfort. Such guides
? t- Post,ThePersonality of a House, C ZI: tend to focus more on the
1930 S.C .
o.?- 0 organizationof objects and
duties than on the permanent
Perhaps a man's room is a workshop, perhaps it is a place hardware
of the house.
for him and his friends to smoke in after dinner, perhaps Theories of convenience are often tactical ratherthan
it is an office, perhaps it is a room where its owner can go strategic,charting new paths through existing floor plans
off by himself to rest or to think. The appeal of its fur- and product lines. Reorganizingthe kitchen around an
nishings depends entirely upon its suitability to use. An economy of "step-saving"has been a central concern for
important item for comfort is a well-planned closet - not domestic writerssince the mid-nineteenth century,from
just a sentry box with a few hangers around the sides ... Catharine Beecher to Christine Frederick.Beecher's phrase
but one that has its space especially fitted for the things "the close packingof conveniences" became a motto for
that its owner wants to keep in it. EmilyPost, 1930 the design of compact, storage-intensivekitchens that

Catharine Beecher's model kitchen design of 1869 includes


a built-in structurecombining a work surface, storage unit,
and sink. While Beecher's kitchen was later heralded by
m 0 scholarsof industrial design as a premonition of
0
modernism, some elements of her design ethos failed to
become part of the rigid grammarof the typical American
home. Her kitchen unit, for example, incorporatesopen
03 m shelving - not everything must be hidden behind a
smooth skin of cabinets and drawers.In an area conven-
ytn5 5" A tionally reservedfor a parlor,Beecher proposed a movable
C ~. . C. partition that would enable the space to serve as a bed-
room by night and a living room by day. Flexibility in the
design of appliances and storage units is an important
value today, as houses need to accommodate a varietyof
5-
r- v &A uses and family structuresover their lifetimes.

C -h si0 0 t

87
assemblage 24

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People today are no longer The maxim "a place for
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interested in a house as an every.thingand everything
heirloom-type possession, in its place" delmandsa om
0.o
0
0-._ ^ (-E 'A but rather in its ability to regime of storage facilities, ro
service a growing variety their proper functions o.c
of interests and activities, rigorouslyobserved. In a -c o .
0 ''DCA
X 4,M
-0<(CD
0
~ > and its capacity to store culture increasinglypred-
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? - $' r -' - 3 , equipment, whether icated on the accumulation
machinery or sporting of objects, the seamless E o +
goods. George Nelson, merging of appliances and 4-.s

Problems of Design, 1957 cabinets in the modular C


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kitchen has become a
The vacuum cleaner has never eliminated the broom, the paradigmfor storage needs
dustpan, the whisk broom, the mop, the dustcloth, the throughout the home.
pail. Do you begin to see why the modern house contains The modern living space is
o E
so much storage space? ... Almost any purchase now- an elaboratelypartitioned
adays can start a chain reaction that may end in blowing box for storing material J.c : sc
up the house, if not like a bomb then like a balloon. Are goods, from housekeeping
you acquainted with the man who was given a power drill equipment to tools for . 0s ~0o
for Christmasand is now equipping a complete workshop? leisure and relaxation. -" G/ >

George Nelson, Problems of Design, 1957 . os -

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rD 3- In 1919 Christine Frederickrearrangedconventional


= ( O ' l< kitchen furnitureinto a compact series of units; she based
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=D ( her design on the modern factory,with its continuous
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sequence of work stations. Although her diagramsinspired
r+ 0 D 0 modular kitchen designs in the United States and Europe,
rD O she criticized the placement of ovens below eye level and
,D IA
F CD the concealment of kitchen tools behind cabinet doors-
features which became part of the standardmodern kitchen.

88
House Rules
'
.- O A

? 0 E

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You naturally know what you need for your own comfort
better than anyone else can possibly suggest. And yet
habit is so strong that many of us unthinkingly accept mo o
discomforts that we are used to, such as inconveniently
placed furniture and electric-light tortures, without stop- 0. _ O
ping to consider whether they might easily be changed.
c In CJD
EmilyPost, The Personalityof a House, 1930 .0Q @- * _

* S
What about the current mania for hiding everything in closed t. 9../ .?. * *
~"
cabinets? Again it is for the superficial order of the slick, ??,
:: ::a ' . g5iIiI
impetsonal surface, achieved at the expense of reason and
good cheer. Why should
we fumble through cabinets ) , 1
to find an egg-beater or a
small frying pan? Pans and
egg-beaters are as beautiful
as they are useful.
ElizabethB. Mock,If YouWant.
to Builda House,1946 :- 0
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An efficient kitchen The refrigerator is still
OX O S0.ffi
Vw*< X O should be flexible as to handicapped in design by
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fi (n% ,D 34%AS 0. S: S. height. The working the old type of refriger-
o 0. 0 >-
surface should as nearly ator that required ice. It
approximate a correct should be possible to
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80 D
S work place as is possible. make a refrigerator more
In 0 0
This thing has not been nearly meeting the needs
CD7 considered in any kitchen of the individual user. The
cabinet now on the present refrigerator is so
market that I have seen. high that its top cannot be
Dr. LillianM. Gilbreth, 1930 used as a work place.
Dr. LillianM. Gilbreth, 1930

tD
Catharine Beecher and Harriet Dr. Lillian M. Gilbreth, A Processof Elimination Emily Post, The Personality
CD Beecher Stowe, American "EfficiencyMethods Applied to (Cambridge,Mass.: MIT List of a House (New York:Funk &
i> Woman'sHome (Hartford:Stowe- Kitchen Design," Architectural VisualArts Center, 1992). Wagnalls, 1930).
tD
Day Foundation, 1985). Record67 (March 1930): 291-93. Elizabeth B. Mock, If YouWant Edith Wharton and Ogden
i/!
Christine Frederick,Household Hints from Heloise (Englewood to Build a House (New York: Codman, Jr.,On the Decorationof
Engineering:Scientific Manage- Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962). Museum of Modern Art, 1946). Houses (New York:W. W Norton,
ment in the Home (Chicago: Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott George Nelson, Problemsof 1978).
American School of Home Miller,The Bathroom,the Kitchen, Design (New York:Whitney
Economics, 1919). and the Aesthetics of Waste: Museum of Art, 1957).

89
assemblage 24

Interiorperspective

Floor plan

Recognition of the pairing, and


,B 0 'J CD R v 3 gendering, of convenience and comfort
have led in this project to an examina-
0 r?^<? ^2. 0
0>
S o
S 50
tion of the possibilities for display and
storage. The visual presence of belong-
ings and mementos may bolster some
residents, while the hidden organiza-
i^i||?|~~~~m I-I3 tion of goods placed according to
^S^ll^l^~~~V frequency and location of use may
Hli^ll^tir~C Section looking west
rxsD i ^ comfort others. Although shown here
3 rp in a fixed form, this house offers both
i 0 1111 stability and flexibility. Factory-built
t II
tQ
o ^1^^~a
b The south side of the house opens to the components are assembled on site
with the possibility of repeated revi-
?S?3'?-???N outdoor rooms of the garden. Louvered
3- S^ .iS--O
windows and overhanging roofs act to sion. Production methods found in
1 ipl^ii~~~~~C~ mediate the heat and light entering the commercial and institutional architec-
I llir house. The north clerestory provides ture are transferredto the domestic
cross ventilation. environment.

90
House Rules

Exploded axonometric

/
/

Interior Components Exterior Components


A. Raised access floor. B. Interior partition system: visu- D. Solid structural insulated wall and roof panels: high
ally and acoustically transparent, translucent, or solid. insulating value combined with structure and sheathing.
Cabinets and shelving components can be easily added E. Transparent, translucent, or internally louvered stan-
and changed. All plumbing, electrical, and mechanical dard window units ganged together in factory to be
services use the accessible floor and interior partition installed on site.
systems for distribution. C. Compact storage units for
items accessed seasonally or annually.

91
assemblage 24

-.-,7t fT -, ^i^ -1.

East (street) elevation

I ...... ? ...........

Roof plan

South elevation 1
> 0 . .. 3' The design of the single house considers the lot as a piece of the neighborhood fabric,
where issues of privacyand community determine guidelines for zoning. Here, the
D x -
-C ranch house and the trailer house have been reexamined in terms of both their inte-
rior space and their relationship to the lot. By layering private (dense) and public (less
dense) areas of the house from north to south at the center of the site, and by main-
QD
(toQ
3rD r taining a single story, each house is assured a maximum level of privacy.This single-
CD, nc5 D
o
story model might serve the needs of the wheelchair bound, the aging , and those
with young children. Heat and light provide physical comfort, as icons of domesticity
and security, from the front porch to the fireplace, provide psychological comfort.
3s it IIsrDc^ ill~~~~r
. -

ZD DD q

92
House Rules

I t 1 , ti
I -?I l ' I, 11,:
i I I i I

_L n-.- i North elevation

a zD Q.
C>>3 -D Q D c: A decrease in the size of the lot allows a service alley and tree belt to become part of
the public space of the community. The layering of the neighborhood from parkto
house to service lane is mimicked on the lot, with a potentially continuous drive on its
north side. The linear nature of the house and siting and the flexible nature of the
construction allow the possibility of conversion to more than one dwelling. Zoning
considerations include the restriction that no house cast a shadow onto another house.

D D
Cr D 8 O - _

References
t- l? ^3il f-
Dolores Hayden, Redesigning the American
iD .s^^o
^i|l^ lC. D Dream (New York:Norton, 1984).
|l?~~'~
cb
l^j^
I I Project Credits
Ellen Lupton, writer
1
5fD Jane Murphy, architect
Neighborhood plan, 3 p.m. Assisted by Lisa Barnes, Diana Boos, Donald
21 December Gibson, Jon Guldenzopf, Jim McCool

93

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