The decorative designer certainly depends largely for freshness of inspiration and suggestion in design and colour upon growing plants and flowers, upon the sight of birds and animals, of the ever-changing sea and sky, and the colours of the landscape. If the sense from which is produced the very elements of decoration thus requires to be kept alive and in health, surely the sense which appreciates the product, which selects and uses, needs also similar access to nature to preserve a healthy tone. But having provided small brick boxes with slate lids as homes for our people, and packed them together in straight rows all alike on the eligible building land of our towns, we next proceed to economize space (and secure more unearned increment to the square foot) by packing such boxes one on the top of the other and calling them “mansions” or “residential flats.”
Sketch for Collective Dwelling containing Sixteen Cottages with Common Dining-hall, Kitchen, etc. 1/32″ Scale
By Lionel F. Crane
Sketch for Collective Dwelling containing Sixteen Cottages with Common Dining-hall, Kitchen, etc. 1/32″ Scale
On the other hand the collective dwelling, of which perhaps we see the germ in the better type of modern flats, with a common kitchen and dining-hall, may have an important future, and there is no reason why, given favourable conditions, good sites, and ample ground and careful planning with due regard to light, air, and aspect, dwellings on the plan of collective living, or collective homes, should not have dignity and beauty, as well as the comforts of a home combining provision for the necessity of privacy, with the social advantages of a common room, and the economic and continuous advantages of a common kitchen.
It should mean that the administration, the housework, and the cooking would be done by trained hands, and one would suppose that the load of care to devise the recurring scheme of the daily dinner, etc., now so generally pressing on the poor housewife, might thus be lifted, and a great waste of individual effort saved.
The old plan of the quadrangle would be an excellent one for a co-operative dwelling: one side of the square or wing opposite the entrance gate might be occupied by the dining-hall and public rooms, the other sides might contain the private rooms or be divided into separate dwellings with separate private entrances on the outer sides: on the inner side connected by a cloister which would enable the occupants of the private rooms or separate dwellings to pass to the public rooms at the head of the quad. A formal garden might occupy the centre of the quadrangle with a fountain in the centre. Such a scheme has, I believe, already been proposed to be tried in one of the London suburbs.
Frescoes by
Ford Madox Brown