'Moderne' Houses

Modernist Houses On A Crittall Poster.

'Moderne' houses arrived in Britain after the First World War bringing with them a revolution in house design. The government-sponsored drive to mass produce 'Homes For Heroes', for returning soldiers, led to a desire to industrialise the process of housebuilding. Britain looked to Europe, and the new International Modern Movement for inspiration. For the UK homeowner, Moderne houses (and some amazing Poirot episodes) were the result. Moderne houses in the UK tend to fall into one of three kinds Moderne, Restrained Moderne and Hollywood Moderne.

International Moderne

The 1925 'Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes' Paris.

In 1925 there was an exhibition in Paris that was the 'Ideal Home' of its day. Called the 'Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes', its name gave the world the phrase 'Art Deco'. More importantly, it introduced a new architectural style - 'International Moderne' that would sweep the world, and arrive in the suburbs of British Cities. This style rejected excessive decoration and ornamentation. It was characterised by straight lines, geometrical forms and cantilevered structures. The most important element was the extensive use of glass to 'capture the sun', a feature pioneered by the influential design schools in Europe like the Bauhaus and architects like Le Corbusier.

While many in the UK were thrilled, there were doubts. The Daily Mail remarked “...unquestionably every Englishman who visits the pavilions will ask himself whether he would care to live among such impeccable surroundings from which cosiness is markedly absent… our Englishman, mindful of fireside joys, of capacious easy chairs, will, perhaps, admire, then turn aside and leave the exhibition and its excesses to the French”. They were proved wrong as 'Moderne' houses soon arrived in Britain.

'Moderne' Houses

Osbert Lancaster's Parody of 'International Moderne' Houses - '20th Century Functional'

When 'Moderne' houses arrived in the UK they were as shocking as they were revolutionary. The stark lines, white stuccoed walls, Crittall Windows and flat roofs of the houses that were produced reflected the new international aesthetic, but to British sensibilities, they were divisive.

Often wrongly referred to as Art Deco houses (See 'Is My House 'Art Deco'?), or lumped into the catch-all description of '1930s Houses', these buildings appeared in the UK in the early 1920s and were still being built by the late 1940s. At the Ideal Home Exhibition of 1934, the 'Village of Tomorrow' was comprised of houses built exclusively in the Moderne style, with their flat roofs described as ‘a whole floor of extra space, and delightful means to revel in the out-of-doors... to take your meals in the open, and... sleep al fresco’<ref>Ideal Home Catalogue (1934), p. 127 </ref>. Diagrams were produced showing how hipped roofs blocked light from your neighbours across the road.

The new style was not universally accepted in the UK and there were concerns that our weather made flat roofs and sun decks an impractical solution. Sometimes called 'sun-trap' houses, they were very popular on the English south coast Riviera. Moderne houses were satirised as '20th Century Functional' by the great Osbert Lancaster in his 1938 book Pillar To Post,<ref>Pillar To Post, Osbert Lancaster, 1938</ref> which poked affectionate fun at the various building styles emerging in the UK after the war.

However, as well as wonderful estates of modest family houses such as Silver End in Braintree, the period also produced renowned modernist houses by architects such as Gropius, Lubetkin and Wells Coates. Now beautifully restored, houses like 'High & Over in Bucks, and High Cross in Devon regularly appear in films and TV dramas depicting the period such as ITV's Poirot and Agatha Christie.

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  Semi-detached Moderne house in Nuneaton, Warwickshire.

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  A striking detached Moderne house.

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  Killowat House, Bath by Mollie Taylor

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  A 'Moderne' Suntrap house

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  High Cross House, Devon. One of the classic 'Moderne' houses.

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  The exquisite 'High & Over' in Amersham, Bucks.

The 'Moderne' style is still influential for today's housebuilders, and you can see echoes of it in many houses being built today. However, in the 1930s it didn't take long for the mood to change. At the 1935 Ideal Home Exhibition, the following year, there was only one house in the pure 'Moderne style'.

Restrained Moderne

A More 'Restrained' Moderne Arrives in Britain

It became clear that the public was held back by the kind of nostalgia the Daily Mail had described in its review of the Paris show. British housebuilders responded and a new 'restrained' hybrid style emerged. It was a style assembled for people who were still seduced by the clean lines of the Moderne movement but who were slightly put off by the brutal nature of the flat-roofs.

The curved windows and horizontal lines remained but with hipped roofs, bricks and tiles. Restrained Moderne was a uniquely British fudge with the lower lines and horizontal mullioned windows offset by a nice safe roof 'like your mother had'. By the end of the 1930s consumers had also begun to reject the aesthetic simplicity of the Moderne movement. They began to ask for decoration around doors and windows. Leaded lights with art deco 'sunburst' patterns appeared, doorways and gates got style, and a safe suburban style returned.

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  Semi-detached Restrained Moderne houses in Richmond, Surrey.

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  A detached Restrained Moderne house, showing clean lines, but tiled roof.

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  Restrained Moderne in Enfield

Hollywood Moderne

There is some debate about whether a style called Hollywood Moderne exists for houses in the UK. There was clearly a phenomenon of larger Restrained Moderne houses built in the late 1930s that adopted the styling of Hollywood Boulevard - sweeping driveways, green or blue pantiles on the roof, and balconies with ArtDeco flourishes. Hollywood Moderne was a style that lent itself to larger, detached houses with a nouveau-riche pretension to movie grandeur.

Streamline Moderne

In the US Hollywood Moderne evolved as a more formulaic architectural style that chose cars, trains and boats as its inspiration. The building styles were meant to capture the speed and exhilaration of 1930s travel and its highpoint was skyscrapers like the Chrysler Building in New York. In the UK, the theatricality of Streamline was frowned upon for houses but it did lend itself to blocks of flats. Its main use here was for factories with US owners like the Hoover Building and the Firestone Building.

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  Flats in South London

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  The Ship Apartments in Paris

See Also

TumblaWiki Is My House 'Art Deco'?

FlickrGroup: Modernist Houses Of The 1930s

Wikipedia: Streamline Moderne

Docomomo - Dedicated to The Moderne Movement

RIBA Library 'Art Deco Triumphant'

References

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