The Art of Building a Home: A collection of lectures and illustrations

by Barry Parker; Sir Raymond Unwin

The influences which our common every-day surroundings have upon our characters, our conceptions, our habits of thought and conduct, are often very much underrated; we do not realise the power they have of either aiding or hindering the development in us of the best or worst of which we are capable.

Of the capacity the mere contour of a moulding has to bear the impression of refinement or vulgarity, we, as architects, are fully aware; but, I think, may not quite as fully realise the harmful influence of imperfect and unspontaneous drawing, or ill-conception in pattern design, or ill-assorted combinations of colour.

The thing of first consideration in designing a house is convenience, workability. The plan is that which should be first thought of; so, in our small middle class house, I will try to suggest one or two of the improvements that seem to be most wanted in planning.

First of all, for the sake of any who may be here who are not architects, I will just point out what is the most comfortable form of room for a sitting room with respect to the relative positions of the door, windows, and fire. If your room must, of necessity, be square or oblong (which should be the case as seldom as possible), the form most conducive to comfort, is of course this: [diagram 1]. The second best arrangement, (when this cannot be got) is to have the door and fire both on the long wall, [diagram 2]. When the door is on the opposite wall to the fire, you never feel to be able to get out of the draught of it; and of course this kind of thing, [diagram 3], is too palpably bad to need that anything should be said regarding it.

One of the first defects we notice in the plans of houses of the class we are speaking of, as usually laid down, is that there are too many rooms & all therefore necessarily too small. In the larger middle class house there are generally drawing room, dining room, library, kitchens, and offices, all tolerably good rooms. Now, when a smaller house is wanted, the general custom seems to be, to put exactly the same number of rooms, only reducing all in size. Would it not be far better to reduce the number of rooms, keeping such rooms as we do retain, large enough to be healthy, comfortable, and habitable?

Are not many of the houses we know only too well, most distressing in this respect, divided up, as they are, into a number of small compartments, we cannot call them rooms, all far too small to be healthy; too small to be really fit for human habitation. And what is gained by this cramping? Only that there shall be one or more of these compartments practically useless. In far the greater number of these houses the third room is never used, or used merely because it happens to be there, and its chief end seems to be to provide a place for the women of the household to spend any spare time they may have, cleaning down, dusting &c.

Now many people have a feeling that there is a certain cosiness in a small room entirely unattainable in a large one; this is a mistake altogether; quite the reverse has been my experience, which is that such a sense of cosiness as can be got in the recesses of a large room, can never be attained in a small one, be it no larger than a sentry box. But if your big room is to be comfortable it must have recesses. There is a great charm in a room broken up in plan, where that slight feeling of mystery is given to it which arises when you cannot see the whole room from any one point in which you are likely to sit; when there is always something round the corner.

And what is made of the hall? Generally one of two things; either it is a passage with a kind of step-ladder for a staircase and a hat stand in it, with not room enough for you to hold the door and let a friend out; or it is a great bare cold comfortless waste space, in the centre of the house: instead of being, as it might, the most comfortable and homely room, the centre of the common life of the household.

Of course a hall of this kind needs some care in planning. In the first place, the staircase must occupy exactly that position in which it can be made an ornament and a pleasing feature in the room, all of which it is quite capable of being, and a position in which it does not detract from the cosiness, or give any unpleasant feeling of draughtiness, or too great openness. In the second place, the doors necessarily opening into a hall must be carefully so grouped that the parts of the room in which anyone would sit, shall be out of the draught of them as far as possible.