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    Banham Home Not House

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    Jo HG

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    Banham, Reyner. "A Home is Not a House", Art in America. 1965, volume 2, NY:70-79. A HOME IS NOT A HOUSE Reyner Banham Allustrated by Francols Dallegret hhen your house contains sueh a ‘complex of piping, fucs, ducts, wins, Tights, inlets, outlets, ovens, sinks, refuse disposers, hifi re- verberators, antennae, eonduits, freezers, heaters—when it contains so many services that the hard> ‘ware could stand up by itself without any assistance from the house, why have a house to hold it up? ‘When the cost of allthis tackle is half of the total outlay (or more, as it often is) what is the house doing except eoncealing your mechanical pudenda from the stares of folks on the sidewalk? Once or thrice recently there have been buildings where the public was genuinely confused about what was me- chanical services, what was structure—many visitors to Philadelphia take quite a time to work out that the floors of Louis Kahn's laboratory towers are not supported by the flanking brick duct boxes, and when they have worked it out, they are inelined to wonder if it was worth all the trouble of giving them fn independent supporting stractare. ‘No doubt about it, a great deal of the attention eaptured by those labs derives from Kahn's attempt to put the drama of mechanical services on show-—and if, inthe end, it fails to do that convineingly, the psychological importance of the gestare remains, at least in the eyes of his fellow architects. Serv= ices are a topic on which architectural practice has alternated eapriciously between the brazen and the ‘oy—there was the grand old Letit-dangle period, when every eeiling was a mess of gaily painted en- trails as in the eouneil ehasabers of the Ux building, and there have been fits of pudicity when even the ‘most innocent anatomical details have been hurriedly veiled with a snspended ceiling. Basically, there are two reasons for all this blowing hot and oold (if you will excuse the air-condi- tioning industry's oldest working pun). The first is that mechanical services are too new to have been absorbed into the proverbial wisdom of the profession none of the great slogans—Form Follows Fune- tion, accuses la structure, Pirmnese Commodity and Delight, Truth to Materials, Wenig ist Melr—is uch use in eoping with the mechanical invasion, The nearest thing, in a significantly negative way, is Le Corbusier's “Pour Ledour, cétait facle—pas de tubes,” which seems to be gaining. proverbial- type currency as the expression of a profoand nostalgia for the golden age before piping set in. ‘The second reason is that the mechanical invasion is a feet, and architests—especally American architeets—sense that it isa cultural threat to their position inthe world, American architects are r= ‘tainly right to feel this, beeause their professional speviality, the art of creating monumental spaces, has never heen securely established on this continent, It remains a transplant from an older enlture and architects in America are constantly barking back to that eulture. The generation of Stanford White ‘and Louis Sullivan were prone to behave like émigrée from France, Frank Lloyd Wright was apt to take cover behind sentimental Teutonicisms like Lieber Meister, the big boys of the Thirties and denna cs / e Ke) ) » Au ‘etcnonappiences Basen i Mon at Sepicunt ANATOMY OF & DWELLING With very tittle exaggeration, this baroque ensemble of domestic gad- ry epito Dlezity of gracious tiving—in other teords, this is the junk that Keepe the puul swinging. ‘The house itself has eon omitted from the drawing, ‘nt if mechanical services continue to accumulate at thie rato it may be possible to omit the house in fact. i a = Teaphone abies = Aeconiione same Dattegret’s 20-20 hindsight and fore sight produced this historical ca (price from the First Machine Age feell before the present article was first mooted. Tn the mode of is time, ‘service are in a separate outhouse insteod of Being @ mechanical clip-on. The present mobile home ie a moss, ‘visually, mechanically, and in ite ro- lationship to the permanent infra structure of civilisation. But if it ‘could be rendered more compact and ‘mobile, and be uprooted from its de- pendency on static wilities, the raster could fulfil its promise to put 4@ nation on wheels. The kind of ‘mobile utility pack suggested here does not exist yet, but st may be no farther over the Bill than itz com- ingeattraction style would suggest. [SUPER-COUPE DE LONG-WEEK-END, 1927 ‘TRAILMASTER GTO TRANSCONTINENTAL “Tralnarnr TO + 2th beni ace and ev ala Fil joint betwnan at and ala home Pores eame from Aachen and Berlin anyhow, the pacemakers of fhePilties and Sixties are men of international eulture like Charles Hanes and Philip Jobuson, an so too, in many ways, are the eoming fof today, like Myron Gi Lat tothe own devices, Amevieans do not monumental Inhitectare, From the Cape Cod cottage, through the balloon frame Iothe perfection of permanently pleated aluminum sii Jnsed wood-graining, they have tended to build brick chimney and les cllecton of shacks against it. When Groff Conklin wrote (in “The Weather-Conditoned Howse") that “A house is nothing but a Bolle sell... shell alla house or any strueture in whieh human eines ive and work, rally is, And most shells in nature are extraor- urlyineticent barriers to cold and heat « Icsttenely American view, backed by a long-established grass- “istration. And since that tradition agrees with him that the American hollow Allis such an inefficient heat barrier, Americans have always Jen prepared to pump mote heat, light and power into their shelters Tas have other peoples. Ameries's monumental space is, T suppose, Bie grat outdoors—the poreh, the terrace, Whitman's ral-traced Pls, Keroutc's infinite road, and now, the Great Up There. Even ihn the honse, Americans rapidly learned to dispense with the furtions that Enropeans need to keep space architectural and within Sounds, and long before Wright began blundering through the walls fiat subdivided polite architecture fax oom, gon room et dsmith 1 was expressing o living room, games room, humbler Americans had been sipping into Hager Banham, British architectural lds fellowship from the Graham Foundation to investigate the ‘of mechanical services in the rise of modern architecture. “A Is Not « Howse” is a direct product of this research, and the jgner and car bug is Dallegret ada a footnote whose importance, Banham says torian and oriic, currently rations. by Moroecan-borm architect Dayond their quality as graphice-—they demonstrate the hollow “of the fear of many architects that acceptance of the domi- of environmental machinery will be ‘the end of creativity.” mally planned interiors that were, ef fectvely, large single spaces, have to be Now, lange sing! lighted and heated in a manner quite different and more generous than the eubiewlar interiors of the European tradition around whieh the volumes wrapped in slimsy’ shell concept of domestic architecture first crystallized. Right from the start, from the Franklin stove and the kerosene lamp, the Ameriean interior has had to be better served if it was to support a civilize culture and this is one of the reasons thatthe U.S. has been the fore: ing ground of mechan tobe fel “The plumber is the quartermaster of Ameriesn culture, Adolf Loos father of all European platitudes about the superiority ‘of US. plumbing. Te knew what he was talking about; his brie? visit to the States in the Nineties eonvineed him that the outstanding vir tues of the Ameriean way of life were its informality (no need to weer f top hat to call ou local officals) and its leanliness—whieh was bound to be noticed by a Viennese with as highly developed a set of Freudian compulsions as he had. That obsession with clean (whieh x absurdities of America’s Iysol-reathing nother pyehologieal motive that drove the jews in buildings—to if serves are anywhere asa thivat to architecture it should bein America ‘wrote ‘ean beeome one of the hig Kleenex-cultue) was nation toward mechani conditioning were not just that people had to breathe: Konrad Meier (Reflections on Heating and Ventilating,” 1901) wrote fastdiously services, The early justifications of air- cof “... excessive amounts of water vapor, sickly odors from res- piratory organs, unelean teeth, perspiration, untidy clothing, the ‘presence of mierobes due to various condition, stufly air from dusty cause greater discomfort and greater ill ‘carpets and draperies Death.” (Have a wash, and come back for the next paragraph.) Most pioneer air-conditioning men seam to have been nose-obsessed ld just about force themselves to a1 B.0.—and then, compulsive salesmen to in this way: best friends co tell America of her natio a man, promptly prescribed their own patent improved penacea for 1 the hell out of her. Somewhere among these clustering concepts—eleanliness, the Lightweight shell, the mechanical servi ‘Nvcontioner and dete the informality and indifference to monumental arehitectal values, the passion forthe outdoors—there alway seemed to me to lurk some clusive master concept that would never quite come into foous. Tt finally came elear and legible to me in Jane 1964, in the most highly appropriate and symptomatic ciremmstances, Twas standing up to my ehest-hair in water, making home movies (Koget that NASA kiek from taking expensive hardware into hostile environments) at the campus beaeh at Southern Ilinis. This beaeh combines the outdoor and the elean in a highly Ameriean manner— scenically it is the ole swimmin’ hole of Huekleberry Finn tradition, bout itis properly policed (by sophomore lifeguards sitting on Eames clirs on poles in the water) and it's chlorinated too, From where I stood, I eould see not only immensely elaborate Lamily barbeeues and pienies in progress on the sterilized sand, but aso, through and above the trees, the hasketry interlaces of one of Buckminster Fuller's ex- perimental domes. And it hit me then, that i dirty old Nature could be kept under the proper degree of eontrol (sex left in, streptovoee taken out) by other means, the United States would be happy to dis- ‘pense with architecture and buildings altogether: Bucky Faller of course, is very big on this proposition: nnon-rhetorieal question, “Madam, do you know what your house ‘weigh ?” articulates a subversive suspicion of the monumental. This suspicion is inarlieulately shared by the untold thousands of Amer- jeans who have already shed the deadweight of domestic architecture and live in mobile homes whieh, though they may never actually be ‘moved, still deliver rather better performance as shelter than do ‘erounilanchored structures costing at least three times as muel and ‘weighing ten times more, LE someone could devise a package that would effeotively disconnect the mobile home from the dangling wires of the town eleetrivty supply, the bottled gas containers insecarely pperehed on a packing ease and the semicunspeakable sanitary ar- i famous ‘TRANSPORTABLE STANDARD-OF-LIVING PACKAGE nant, Pan vien Landscape toolange schanguble pore pacts andlactnic conto ‘Stereo pears Weer OOL_) all lan tps playock and pre-e ita or amvonmatl onl ‘Jab FM and TV reiveramettion ments that stem from not being connected to the main sewer— eu ve should really see some ehanges. It may not be so far away defense cuthacks may send aerospace spin-off spinning in new directions quite soon, and that kind of miniaturization- applied to a genuinely selfeontained and regenerative stan- Lofiving package that could be towed behind a trailer home oF stoi, could produce a sort of U-haul unit that might be picked dropped off at depots across the face of the nation, Avis aeame the frst in U-Tilty, even if they have to go on being a og second in ear hire of tht might come a domestic revolution beside which modern tecture would look like Kiddibrix, beesuse you might be able to ose with the trailer home as well. A standard-of-living package ‘phrase and the concept are both Bucky Fuller's) that really ‘might, like s0 many sophisticated inventions, return 3Lan toa natural state in spite of his complex eulture (much as ession of the Morse telegraph by the Bell Telephone ree dhs power of speech nationwide), Man started with two basic m of controlling environment: one by avoiding the issue and ander a rock, tre, tent or roof (this led ultimately to archi- as we know it) and the other by actually interfering with the zy, usually by means of a eamplire, whieh, in a more form, might lead to the kind of situation now under discus the living space trapped with our forebears under a rock ft space around a campfire has many unique qualities which ‘eannot hope to equal, above all, its freedom and varin- disestion and strength of the wind will decide the main shape of that space stretehing the area of tolerable warmth Jong oval, but the output of light will not be affected by the nd the area of tolerable illumination will be a eirele overlap- ‘ping the oval of warmth. There will thus bea variety of environmental ‘hoicesbulaneing light against warmth according to need and interest. If you want to do close work, like shrinking a human head, you sit {none place, but if you want to sleep you eurl up somewhere diferent the floating kauckle-hones game would eome to rest somewhere quite different to the environment that suited the mecoting of the initiation- rites steering committee... and all this wonld be jim dandy if eamp- fires were not 0 perishing inefivient, unreliable, smoky and the reat of it, But a properly set-up standard-of-living packaxe, breathing out warm air along the ground (instead of sucking in cold along the ground like a campfire), radiating soft light and Dionne Warwick in heart-warming stereo, with well-aged protein turning in an infra su glow in the rotisserie, and the ice-maker discreetly eonghing cubes into glasses on the swing-out bar—this could do something for a ‘woodland glade or ereek-side rock that Playboy could never do for its penthouse, But how are you going to manhandle this bunk of technology down to the ereek? Tt doesn't have to bo that massive; aerospace needs, for instanee, have dono wild things to solid-state ‘wehnology, producing even tiny refrigerating transistors, They don't as yet mop up any great quantity of heat, but what are you going to doin this glade anyhow; puta whole steer in deep-freeze? Nor do you have to manhandle it—it could ride on a cushion of air (its own air- conditioning output, for instanee) like a hovereraft or domestic ‘vacuum eleaner. ‘All this will eat up quite «lot of power, transistors notwithstand- ing. But one should remember that few Amerieans are ever far from ‘asouree of between 100 and 400 horsepower—the automobile. Beefed- ‘up ear batteries and a self-reeling eable drum could probably get this ‘package breathing warm bourbon fumes o'er Eden Tong before micro- ‘wave power transmission or miniaturized atomie power plants come o the man who has everything els, ‘a standard-of icing package such as this eoutd offer tho ultimate goody— the power to impose hie will on any environment 10 which the package ond bo delivered; to enjoy the spatial freedom of the nomadic Campfire without the smell, smoke, ‘ashes and mess; and the luzusies of. “appliance-land without those en= cuimbrances of a permanent dwelting. ‘The ear is already one of the strongest arms in Amerie’s rental weaponry, and an essential eomponent in one non-architee- tural anti-boilding that is already Zamiliae to most of the nation—the Arive-in movie house. Only, the word lowe is a manifest misnomer— Justa flat picee of gro visual images and piped sound, and the rest of the situation eomes on ‘wheels, You bring your own seat, heat and shelter as part of the ear. ‘You also bring Coke, cookies, Kleenex, Chesterfield, spare clothes, shoes, the Pill and god.wot ele they don't provide at Radio City. ‘The car, in short, is already doing quite a lot of the standard-of- living package's job—the smonchy couple dancing to the musie of the radio in their parked convertible have ereated a ballroom in the wilderness (dance floor by courtesy of the Highway Dept. of course) ‘and all this is paradisal (lit starts to rain. Bven then, you're not Tiekedd—it takes very little sir pressure to inflate a transparent Mylar tirdome, the conditioned-air output of your mobile package might bbe able todo it, with or withont a little boosting, and the dome itself, folded into a parachute pack, might be part of the package. From within your thisty-foot hemisphere of warm dry lebonsranm you could have spectacular ringside views of the wind felling trees, snow swirling through the glade, the forest fire coming over the hill or Constanee Chatterley running swiftly to you know whom through the downpour, But... surely this is not a home, you can’t bring up a family in ‘a polythene bag? This can never replace the time-honored ranchstyle trilevel standing proudly in a landseape of five defeated shrubs, flanked on one side by # raneh-style trilevel with six shrubs and on ‘the other by a raneh-styletri-level with four small boys and a private dust bowl. If the countless Americans who are successfully raising nee children in trailers will exeuse me for a moment, T have n few where the operating company provides suggestions to make tothe even more countless Amerieans who are 80 inseeure that they have to hide inside fake monn and instant roofing. There are, aduittedly, very sound day-to-day advantages to havin rather than pine needles and poison ivy. America's pioneer house ‘builders reeognined this by commonly building their brick chimneys fon a brick floor slab. A transparent sirdome eould be anchored to such a slab just a easly as could balloon frame, and the standard of-living-package could hover busily in a sort of glorified barbeene pit in the middle of the slab, But an airdome is not the sort of thing that the kids, or a distracted Pampkin-cater could run in and out of ‘when the fit took them—believe me, fighting your way out of an air- dome can be worse than trying to get out of collapsed rain-soaked tent if you make the wrong frst move, ‘But the relationship of the services-kit to the floor slab could be rearranged to get over this difficulty; all the standard-of-tiving tackle (or most of it) eould be redeployed on the upper side of sheltering membrane floating above the floor, radiating heat, light and what-not downwards and leaving the whole perimeter wide-open for random egress—and equally easual ingress, too, I guess. That erazy modern-movement dream of the interpenetration of indoors ts of Permastone ‘warm broadloom on a firm floor underfoot, 76 ‘and outdoors eould become teal at lest bya italy, of our, it would be jon about posible to eth tnembeane iteraly float, hovererat tye, Anson wi i standin the ground-

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