A Concrete Slab Floor

Is Warmer: Properly damp-proofed, it traps the natural warmth of the earth by preventing surface evaporation.

Is Draught-Free: No cold damp air under the house and through the floor boards.

Is Rot and Vermin Proof: No timber to deteriorate, no holes for stray animals and bugs.

Allows Variety of Finish: Any flooring at all—cork, asphalte, lino, rubber, all the patent tile sheet and trowelled floors, carpet, and even timber—can be laid over concrete.

Cuts out High Foundations: No steps, no elaborate foundations, the house hugs the ground rather than being propped above it.

Frees the Plan: All the rooms—bedrooms as well as living rooms, dining rooms, playroom, kitchen—can open to garden or lawn without steps, decks or built-up terraces—and no elaborate podium for the front door.

Is Easy on the Feet: You don't walk on bare concrete! A resilient floor covering or underlay makes a concrete floor easier on the feet than timber construction.

Is Cheaper: On a level site, or a site that can be easily bulldozed, a properly designed concrete slab is cheaper as well as better.

Sloping Ceilings

Ever been in a house with a sloping ceiling? No, not The attic bedroom kind that rushes past their ears, but the sort of thing we illustrate here. If you have, you will agree that the house is

Spacious: There is no by-law-minimum-8ft.-stud feeling, the height to the ceiling probably averages 9ft. and seems even more. The whole house seems larger. Often the ceiling sweeps over glass doors to enclose an outdoor terrace as part of the house.

Gracious: Some of the finest houses, both old and new, have a ceiling off the horizontal in one way or another. The changing height and direction seem to correspond to the various activities in the different parts of the house and room, and with skilful design the feeling may be elegant or down-to-earth, intimate or vast, formal or informal. There is an immense variety of finish possible, depending upon the pitch and complexity of the roof, upon whether you expose dressed and oiled or painted rafters or line underneath them, and upon the type of ceiling lining you use (oiled sarking, plywood, chipboard, paint, plaster, and so on).

Costs Less: This sort of roof saves money in two ways: 1. Much less elaborate roof construction—no separate rafters and ceiling joists—no maze of partitions necessary for structural support—you don't have to pay for space in the roof you don't use. 2. Higher average ceiling heights can still mean lower outside walls, consequently less cost.

Above, the living room of a house in Takapuna by Group Architects. The fitting on the left, about half of which is shown, contains bookshelves, built-in radio, and two drop-leaf desks for writing and sewing, and also has games and toy cupboards accessible from the play space (at a lower level) behind. (See also the photograph at top of previous page.) Beyond the playspace are the three bedrooms, and to the right of the fitting just described can be seen high-up sliding doors to a big junk-space (suitcases, old mattresses, etc.), which is above the wardrobe and dressing-space in the main bedroom. On the right a block of kitchen cupboards screens the kitchen from the living room, while the glass in its upper part allows the display of favourite china and glassware. A mural by Anthony L. Treadwell decorates the necessary wall around the bathroom. The plan of this house was printed in the previous issue of “Design Review”, No. 1 on page 65, and was erroneously described as “to be built … on a steep bush section”. A further illustration of this house is on page 63 of that issue.

Cupboards as Walls

Every house requires storage space; kitchen cupboards, bookshelves and other storage in living rooms, storage for games equipment and children's toys, wardrobes in bedrooms, coat cupboards, linen storage, storage for trunks and junk, for fuel, buckets, and bicycles. Most of us know the shortcomings of newly-built houses, and the inconvenient and makeshift ways these problems are later met.

• Storage should be planned with the house.

• Most walls in a house need not be used to hold up the roof—all that the usual heavy framing has to hold up is the wallpaper.

• Well-finished storage units can be built in place by the carpenter, and cost appreciably less than a normal finished wall plus shop-bought furniture (which includes heavy retail profit).

• Built-in storage is a better insulation against sound than a normal wall. It is most economical in space and versatile in use Its possible patterns of doors, shelves, glass, paint, plywood, paper, and so on give a character to the room, and the storage can extend to the ceiling as a full wall, or stop at any appropriate height to divide the space while allowing the continuity of the ceiling to increase the apparent size of the space.

Cut Your Bedrooms According to Your Children

A Living Room that Grows up with the Family

page 85

Windows are not just holes in the wall to let in light and air. Above are a few of the many things to consider in designing windows in your new house.

Readers are Invited to Submit to Design Review any problems of design which may be of general interest. Ways of answering such problems will form the basis of a series of feature articles in future issues. The Editors cannot undertake to provide architectural services, but rather to illustrate general principles by particular examples. We are prepared to deal with aspects of design from beach cottages and lamp shades to traffic intersections and harbour bridges! Write to the Editors, DESIGN REVIEW, P.O. Box 2460, Wellington, C.1.

page 86

Know this place? It might have been your new house forty-odd years ago. Look over the trimmed hedge and beyond the flowering shrubs of a thousand suburban lawns, this house is as much part of our landscape as are the gorse and pine.

As frank as a music-hall ballad in its obvious gestures, the old house above is doing its best to be distinguished. The shingle-hung bay window, the tricked-out porch and the structurally pointless gable on the front end are all there to “distinguish” this house from the one next door. The one next door did the same things in a different order, and so it went on down the street.

Well at least people are more sane in their demands upon the external appearance of a new house today. Those mean and woody casements, those coloured leadlights of the old-timer above are largely a thing of the past, even if a tendency to build impassable french doors still lingers. So on the whole one might be tempted to say that today the small house relies entirely on its own merits, with a minimum of gesturing to the passer-by in an effort to distinguish itself. But this is not wholly true. While the area of glass in windows has without doubt increased and the great clutter of extraneous decoration almost disappeared, we often find that the temptation of the “street frontage” has been too great to resist. Against all logic of sunshine or view the ubiquitous “landscape” window, purblind with curtain or holland, peers toward the street in an effort to impress. So, too, the “front door”, protected by an utterly useless porch—a vestige of the ample old verandah—still clings to the street front because that is considered the proper place for it.

Well are these the things which will give character and that sought-after “distinction” to your new house?

Our feeling is that a house should convey primarily the impression that it is a fine and pleasant place to live in. With this aim most people will agree. But if you then try to convey it by using large areas of glass in such a position that it is necessary to draw the blinds for a large part of the day, then we think you have failed. Similarly the presence of a pompous little heap of steps up to a front porch is not so much an invitation as a positive discouragement to enter. Surely the impression of good living we are looking for is conveyed as much by suggestion as by what is openly stated on the front wall. The hint of generous living-room windows or doors opening on to a partly screened lawn or terrace is more attractive than an embarrassing exposure through a front window. A wide eaves, a pergola, or a verandah along the warm side of the house conveys a more ample sense of shelter and invitation than an unnecessary appendage on the street side.

In other words, we feel that there has been achieved a sort of negative virtue in the exterior of most small houses today. Much that was bad has been left off and by its omission the house has become a fairly sensible, uncluttered envelope to the plan. But the vital spark is still missing. What is necessary now is to take these various advances and turn them to more positive benefit in achieving grace and our old friend distinction.

Thus, without pretending to offer anything more than an attitude toward the design of a house we list the following as a set of aims:

• Concentrate your large areas of glass where they will be most use. Shelter them above and screen the area they overlook.

• Try to keep a simple regularity about the remaining “secondary” windows to avoid peppering the house full of holes.

• Accept the low-pitch or flat roof for its positive merits in economy of structure and sheathing and forget about these silly references to shearing sheds.

• Put your low pitch roof to work around the house by projecting it really well out where you need shelter—and don't hesitate to cut off unnecessary overhangs elsewhere.

• Use whatever colour you like for the exterior but where changes of tone or colour are introduced see that the contrast created enlivens rather than flattens. Also observe that against the dark tones of glass in a window, white or something near it on the joinery sharpens the contrast and minimises the bulk of your woodwork.

• Make the most of fences, trellises or walls to anchor the house, visually, to its site. As our houses get smaller and smaller so they need more help in trying to look at home on the ground. Here the use of a concrete slab floor helps to bring the height down and eliminate the slightly surprised air of many new houses.

• For the rest, refinement and precision of structural detailing, grace of proportion and care in selection of materials, these are satisfied. We like to believe, that they are among the reasons for the continued existence of architects.