HOME OF FUTURE

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 171, 15 April 1932, Page 5

HOME OF FUTURE

New, Attractive Ideas in House Design FLAT ROOF POSSIBLE Structurally, the houses in which we live to-day have changed but little since the days of Queen Elizabeth. The styles of the past were excellent in their day; but this, most emphatically, is not their day, writes Norman Bel Geddes in the “Ladies’ Home Journal.’’ For hundreds of years it has been considered impossible, in temperate climates, to build houses with flat 1 roofs, because the weight of accumulated snow during winter was too great for them to bear. With steel construction it is perfectly possible to have a flat roof and so provide our house with enormously greater space. Land in U.S.A, is becoming increasingly expensive, particularly near great cities; people are building their houses with less and less garden space around them. Here the flat roof comes in conveniently. Instead of having a tiny garden which is overshadowed by the building around it, we can put our garden on the roof. Reversing the Order. It has always been the custom to place the living rooms facing the street, in the most overlooked and least private position, and the service quarters at the back. In the 20th-century house we'reverse the order and have our living room secluded from the street and facing such little garden as we may have. This has a double advantage. There is no reason for placing the garage at the back in a separate building. It means that there must be a driveway, whicHof necessity cuts down on valuable space, and involves serious problems of heating in winter. How much more sensible, surely, to place the garage on the street side of the house and make it part of the house itself. If the kitchen is also at the front, there is no necessity for a service alley. New Materials Available. In considering new materials available to-day, one is struck and inspired by their variety. The natural materials, such as wood and stone, are rapidly giving why to the products of the laboratory. From an architectural point of view these synthetic materials will be vastly superior; steel can never crack or warp; stone can crack, but not properly prepared concrete. In addition to these, however, there are all the various varieties of stain-less-steel alloys, which are so decorative and so hard wearing. There is, for example, a certain alloy of chromium nickel and iron, which is stronger than carbon steel. When polished, which it may be to a.mirrorlike brilliance, it will resist for years the corrosive action of water, atmosphere and acid. When people are building a house, and the architect proposes something a little original and different from the usual, they are apt to take fright. Gradually, however, they are beginning to realize that if their houses are to be improved, they must be prepared to jettison some of the old ideas and accept the new.