HOUSE PLANNING. House planning as an art has achieved its highest development in America. It is no disparage ment to the great contributions of the Germans, the Dutch, and the French to say that the Americans, both in the United States and in Latin America, have been able to profit by European ad vances and to utilize these advances as the stimulus to greater originality and mastery of the technique of design.
To appreciate the recent advances in the art of house planning, it is necessary to recall that the industrial revolution of the i9th century had reduced the art of design to a state of chaos. Power machinery plus a great demand for additional living quarters caused a great building movement in which tradition was thrown to the winds. Understanding of the meaning of the technical relationship of mass, line, and spacial arrangement was lost. To France belongs the credit for the return of understanding and the renaissance of architectural competence. The Beaux Arts Institute welcomed and trained architects from foreign lands. Conscious effort to recover lost traditions in building and design dates from the return of the French trained architects to their native country. For their influence upon house design two Ameri can firms, McKim, Mead, and White and Carrere and Hastings, are to be remembered. The American millionaire was the first to benefit from the restored competence among architects. The great houses of the first quarter of the century became an outstanding example of what this new competence in the art of design might contribute to the amenities of living.
The second quarter of the century has been characterized by two movements. The first has been to put at the command of the man of small means the advantages of technical competence developed under the patronage of the millionaire. In this the ex ample of the British and the Dutch has been an incentive to progress. The second, although its results appeared to be stylistic, has been the movement to re-establish "purity" in design through the elimination of meaningless embellishment. Here the Germans and the French have been leaders. This movement has pro duced what has come to be known as "modern" or "functional" architecture as distinguished from "traditional" or "stylistic" architecture. Although the public is accustomed to distinguish types of architecture by its outward aspect or style, there is a growing recognition that style is the result of technique employed and not an aspect which may be purposely assumed. The first consideration in house planning is not style but how best to obtain the facilities desired in combination with the natural ad vantages of the site. A house is an enclosure of space and com bination of sub-divisions of space so as to make them useful for living.
The facilities to be incorporated in the house must first be con sidered and assigned a position of relative importance, next these must be considered in relation to themselves and to the outdoors; sunlight, prevailing breeze, view and shade.
In the great majority of cases the economic limitations of the narrow town lot dictate a narrow house. If that house is to be made detached, and considered only as an individual house, the problem is one to which there is practically no solution aestheti cally satisfactory. If there are two storeys and the roof ridge runs the length of the house with a gable at each end the effect will be of an unpleasant high-waisted box. If the gable is placed on the long side of the house it will bring the roof down lower at front and back as desired but it will make it necessary to put on two sets of dormer windows in order to get light at front and rear on the second storey. Of course in the case of houses on narrow lots these will be the most important windows of all, hence will have to be made disproportion ately large. As a result, the rafters of the main roof will be cut to pieces and the roof itself then degenerates into little more than a fringe around the house. A single de tached house on a lot narrower than 50 'f t. is almost certain to be an architectural and economic monstrosity. When the shape of the rectangular plan comes nearer to square, there are limitless possi bilities of design. If the house is very small, it will be out of proportion unless the rafters start from below the ceiling height on the second floor.
Very little variation is possible in storey height, for this dimen sion is set by the height of a man, whereas length and breadth are dependent only upon the number and size of rooms. As a two storey house is made smaller, it is impossible to reduce the height dimension in the same proportion as the dimensions of length and breadth. It is no wonder, therefore, that the appearance of most small houses is so unattractive. Their design is a far more diffi cult problem than the design of a larger house.
It must be remembered that there are many different solutions to a problem. What we know as style is nothing more than a method employed for solving the problems of design. In different localities of the Old World different races confronted with different climatic and natural conditions reached different solutions. The flat roof is characteristic where there is little snow or rainfall. The sloping roof increases in steepness where snowfall is heavy. In a hot climate window openings are larger and ceilings are higher. In a damp climate houses are built farther off the ground. Where wood is abundant it is likely to be used as a building material. Where clay abounds it is pressed into brick; elsewhere stone may be the prevailing material.
Habits, manners of life and contacts with other peoples also influence design. In all the great migrations peoples have carried their customs in building with them, though they have frequently developed new characteristics under the influence of their new environment. The Roman influence was carried far and wide over Europe and into eastern Asia and northern Africa. But the Roman influence would have meant little to domestic architecture had not the Italian gentlemen of a later day, wishing to give grandeur to their houses, borrowed the arches, the columns and the decorative elements which they found about them in the ruins of Roman civilization. In imitating Roman models the Italian stone cutter became skilled above all others. He was sent for from France, distant England and even Spain, and he put his stamp upon the architecture of the world, for this was the period of the Spanish conquest of the New World and of the English coloniza tions. When the carpenters of New England sought to give dis tinction to their houses they used the classic motives that the Italian stone cutters had introduced into England. These motives, which they had known at home as Georgian, they copied in wood, which, excepting brick, was the only material easily available in the colonies. The style that grew out of it is to-day known as Colonial, though it is often confused with the classic revival of the early American republic and its greater use of the column, a movement in which the research of Thomas Jefferson played an important part.
Through the colonial carpenter builders, the traditional domes tic cottage of England took on in the United States some of the outward embellishments of the Italian nobleman. But other in fluences, both racial and economic, have caused interesting devel opments in America. In New York and New Jersey the Dutch influence was very active ; as a result witness the gambrel roof and the upward curve of the roof at the wide eaves. In Virginia, where large estates predominated and brick was the usual material, great formal houses were built with outlying wings. Farther south, in Florida, Mexico and South America, the Spanish influence was dominant ; it has taken firm root and it is flourishing to-day in those regions that are exempt from snow fall and where protection is needed against bright summer suns. (See MODERN TECTURE : "8th and 19th Centuries;