HOUSES OF THE FUTURE

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LX, Issue 88, 7 November 1939, Page 6

HOUSES OF THE FUTURE

MANY CHANGES PREDICTED INFLUENCE OF WAR CONDITIONS (From The Guardian's London Correspondent) LONDON, September 30. An air-raid shelter will be included in every house in the future, just as inevitably as a bathroom,, according to Mr Howard Morley Robertson, vice-president of the Royal Institute of British Architects. "It will be planned", he said this week "as carefully as, say, the lounge, so that in peace time it can be used as a play room." No more white houses will be the main feature of Britain's new architecture, he thinks. White-walled houses, especially when isolated in the country, are more easily distinguishable from the air than redbrick or dark walled houses. Instead homes will be sombre-coloured and fitted with anti-gas air-conditioning. Roofs will be of concrete and steel to resist falling shrapnel. "Old-fashioned wooden shutters,"

Mr Robertson said, "will come back again. They are useful for both black outs and keeping out broken glass. Similarly, the old-fashioned leaded diamond window panes will become fashionable. They do not allow so much light through and a bursting bomb would only cause them to billow in like balloons, not shatter as an ordinary window pane. Coal fires will almost certainly cease to be. People will have gas or electric fires or central heating. The outsides of houses will be much more individual. Apart from windows being smaller— for obvious reasons—each house will differ as much as possible from its neighbour in style and colour." i