ELECTRIC HOUSE

Taranaki Daily News, 7 November 1935, Page 2

ELECTRIC HOUSE

IDEAL OF LABOUR-SAVING. WOMAN’S POINT OF VIEW. A house specially built by the Electrical Association for Women, for the purpose of showing the world what is meant by “the woman’s point of view” in modern house design, has been opened atSßristol. The association had long felt that it was quite time that some practical demonstration should be given, so it decided to build a house, costing not more than £lOOO, which would incorporate all those innovations and modern appliances in domestic design which were considered by women, and not by men, to be the most essential to the ideal laboursaving home. “This is our practical contribution toward solving the housing problem,” Miss Caroline Haslett, the director of the association, informed a , representative of the London Observer. “We are always being told by architects and designers that if only woman would articulate her needs they would be only too ready to incorporate them in their modern, labour-saving houses, but now we have done one better and actually built a hojuse in which every detail of arrangement has been suggested by women “And what, after all, is meant by ‘the woman’s point of view’ about which we hear so much? Not very much, I think, beyond a very natural desue for a sensible arrangement of all those labour-saving devices which are within everybody’s range to-day, and which make a house easy to run, and reduce fatigue to a minimum. “This house is reasonable in price, and is just the sort of house that can be built anywhere. It is modern, but not ‘ultra-modern,’ because we do not want to risk antagonising those people we are out to help by offending any aesthetic sensibilities'. It modem m that it has a sun-bathing roof, all dustcorners eliminated, and every reasonable labour-saving device installed. “We do not claim that this house is perfect.” added i ••• '>!• “We wnow very well there are gaps—for instance, we have searched the entire civilised world for a satisfactory method of getting rid of household refuse. 1 think we have solved the problem of the person who condemns the electric fire because he cannot burn his letters on ■ it, but not the problem of getting rid of tins and the more solid varieties of rubbish! I will be quite frank and admit that things are not perfect yet in the labour-saving world, but, so far as we have got, this house will make use of all that is available up to date.”