"My partner and I are of equal education and contributions to the firm"
August 29, 2018 12:54 PM Subscribe
Meet the Hunters, Vermont’s modernist-house pioneers
Are you Mad for Mid-Century Modern?
The Houses of Edgar Hayes Hunter and Margaret King Hunter, whose papers are archived at NCSU
THE INDOOR GARDEN: DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION AND FURNISHING [PDF]
Edgar Hayes Hunter and Margaret King Hunter in Norwich, VT.
The Hunter's personal residence, (Hunter House, Hemlock House [Architectural Record, NOV 1953, PDF]) has since had an interior remodel.
From Architectural Record:
A Site Fully Exploited
Are you Mad for Mid-Century Modern?
The Houses of Edgar Hayes Hunter and Margaret King Hunter, whose papers are archived at NCSU
THE INDOOR GARDEN: DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION AND FURNISHING [PDF]
Edgar Hayes Hunter and Margaret King Hunter in Norwich, VT.
The Hunter's personal residence, (Hunter House, Hemlock House [Architectural Record, NOV 1953, PDF]) has since had an interior remodel.
From Architectural Record:
A Site Fully Exploited
Houses are built to be lived in, so in a car-centric world it's only sensible that the front door would be near the garage. Anything else would be less functional, meaning that you'd have to be getting something else back in turn for it to be a reasonable choice.
Trad "colonial" — maybe better called "fauxlonial" — houses trade away functionality for aesthetics; their form was at one point dictated by function, but no longer fits. People build them, charitably, because they want a house to have a sense of place, I suppose. (Less charitably, builders build them because they see them as inoffensive and easy to sell, because they are pathologically averse to risk and ultraconservative when it comes to design.)
You don't need to be ignorant of the negative impacts of the car to design a house with its entrance facing the garage. One can think that cars are a net negative, but still understand realistically that they are likely to be the dominant form of transportation in a given community, for the lifespan of the house that's being constructed, and build it accordingly.
Trying to build in anticipation of what's to come in the future is very hard; it's much harder, even, than building for current needs — and most houses being built barely even try for that. Building a house for a post-car-centric future seems like a pretty high bar, since we don't know exactly what that future would look like. My guess is that if you tried, what you'd end up with would be "retro futuristic" when viewed in retrospect.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:02 AM on August 30, 2018
Trad "colonial" — maybe better called "fauxlonial" — houses trade away functionality for aesthetics; their form was at one point dictated by function, but no longer fits. People build them, charitably, because they want a house to have a sense of place, I suppose. (Less charitably, builders build them because they see them as inoffensive and easy to sell, because they are pathologically averse to risk and ultraconservative when it comes to design.)
You don't need to be ignorant of the negative impacts of the car to design a house with its entrance facing the garage. One can think that cars are a net negative, but still understand realistically that they are likely to be the dominant form of transportation in a given community, for the lifespan of the house that's being constructed, and build it accordingly.
Trying to build in anticipation of what's to come in the future is very hard; it's much harder, even, than building for current needs — and most houses being built barely even try for that. Building a house for a post-car-centric future seems like a pretty high bar, since we don't know exactly what that future would look like. My guess is that if you tried, what you'd end up with would be "retro futuristic" when viewed in retrospect.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:02 AM on August 30, 2018
The Housewife's House picture in the first link is futuristic-retro, IME, because it's trying to maintain the differentiated spaces of a life that valued formality and probably required servants while allowing the actual social and work patterns of a cottage: One woman looks after all her own children and does as much market work as can be fit in around the edges. Hall-and-parlor (one chimney or two?), or Quaker plan, in the US, originally.
posted by clew at 1:11 PM on August 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by clew at 1:11 PM on August 30, 2018 [1 favorite]
« Older Zachary Taylor: Drank milk, ate cherries, died... | Co-living the neoliberal way Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
It really bothers me that architects never saw the problem with a design like this, or more generally that a couple so in-tune with the old features of the land in a good way["local stone for walls and fireplaces, drawing straight lines across the spiky glacial formations."] would be so enamored with the new technology of the car and road asphalt. It's like an occupational blindness. It's why I actually agree with everyone who is freaking out about the internet of things and about Elon Musk's craziness even while I occasionally defend them.
The changes they recommend for the door, like the IOT, are incredibly useful when looking only inward but insanely destructive if you even take a peak outwards.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:11 PM on August 29, 2018