Tomorrow's house: : Solar housing in 1940s America

• Autores: Daniel A. Barber
• Localización: Technology and Culture, ISSN-e 1097-3729, Vol. 55, Nº. 1, 2014, págs. 1-39
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In the tumultuous decade between 1939 and 1949, solar house heating was seen by many American architects, journal editors, and policymakers as a necessary component of the expansion into suburbia. As the technological and financial aspects of homeownership began to take on new implications for economic growth and social stability, design strategies of architectural modernism--including the expansive use of glass, the open plan and facade, and the flexible roof line--were seen as a means to construct a suburbia that was sensitive to emerging concerns over materials allocations, energy resource scarcity, and the economic challenges to postwar growth. Experimentation in passive solar house design came to be a prominent means for seeing suburbia as an opportunity for new kinds of building and new ways of living. Here, Barber details the activities of some lesser-known architects into the postwar narrative and examines recent analyses, inflected by the histories of technology and of the environment, that regard the war as a period of transformation in architectural practices and ideas.