A MODEL NURSERY

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 11, 12 July 1930, Page 19

A MODEL NURSERY

THE CHILD OF 1960

Lucky the small. person who is destined to come into the world 30 years hence and inhabit one of Mrs. St. Aubyn's ' ultra-modern nurseries, says a London writer. This noted child expert , created a p tremendous amount of interest recently with the 1960 model'nursery,'which, in collaboration with Mr.. Claude Atkinson, she exhibited at the Ideal Homes Exhibition at Olympia. It would be as different, .she said, as the present nursery is from the late nineteenth century edition of one. She foresaw , a speeding-up of life in general ' and-a' decrease in, playing space, so put licr thinking cap on accordingly. : -First necessity in' a town' nursery, said this visionary, will be a sliding roof. With the aggravation of the servant problem, fewer mothers will be able to take .the children into the parks, so the nursery—a top-floor room—must let in God's good air and sunlight., ■ , ._. And then, if you jplease, attached to this model' nursery will be a small gymnasium and bathroom; Mrs. St. Aubyn says this will be a natural logical outcome of tho emphasis laid at present on/tooth-brush drill, hygiene, and physical culture. Next, for labour-saving, the rooms will be circular and without corners and kept, scrupulously clean by suction floor-cleaners concealed in the skirting boards. ■ Artistically designed sun-day .lamps will keep the room at an even temperature, and there will be heaps more fresh air in. the form of special wall ventilators. . '"• ' . ; Fantastic and extravagantly impossible this may. sound, she points out, but no more so than a bathroom or so 'Per house would have'3o years ago. It will probably be taken just as a matter of course. ■ ■ ' No crude or jarring colour note must offend the child's taste in this nursery. Colours will all bo soft and shaded. Chairs will be specially designed and adapted in height as the children grow. There will probably, too, be a special television chair, where the child may sit back and watch and listen to the doings- of small .people in other parts of .the world. i Perhaps Mrs; St. Aubyn's piece de resistance will be the "administrative chair," designed to save mother's and Nannie's energy. Every nursery will be incomplete without it. Large and well upholstered, it .will have tucked away in the arm, and. at one side, drawers for ■ books or: needlework, and so on, and at the other, electric buttons controlling the sliding roof, tho suction floor sweeper, and other working gadgets. ' A leg slide will slip in and out so that the administrator may rest. Was ever tho consideration of tho elder's energy brought to smih :i lino art? ■ , And the food problem! Listen to this! No more lost vitamins. The edibles—perfectly . cooked —will be propelled on. a beautiful circular, shining, olectrieally-hcated food trolley, and to the dishes will be attached thermometers by which, the nurse will be able to tell the exact temperature and amount of nourishment in tho food. So increasingly important is becoming the study of the child's needs, reasons Mrs. St. Aubyu, that all the scientific, aesthetic, psychological, and educational knowledge of the day will be used thirty years hence to create children's furniture and rooms as I visualised by her.