ARCHITECTURAL RECORD January – June 1934. Volume 75, Nos. 1 – 6. Space House: Frederick J. Kiesler, Architect.

THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD
Volume 75, Nos. 1 – 6, January – June 1934

M. A. Mikkelsen [Editor], A. Lawrence Kocher
[Managing Editor], Theodore Larsen [Technical News Editor]

New York: F . W. Dodge Corporation, Volume 75, Nos. 1 – 6, January – June 1934. Quarto. Single volume bound in evergreen fabricoid with gilt titles. 788 pp. Illustrated articles with superior to exceptional graphic design throughout. Non-circulating Reference Collection Ex-Libris edition with all covers and advertising material present. Wrappers designed by Ernest Born. Light institutional stamps throughout. Inked volume notation to textblock fore edge. An excellent reference copy.

[6] 8.5 x 11.5 magazines fully illustrated with articles directed towards the practicing professionals of Depression-era America. An exceptional document of the early 1930s American Shelter movement led by A. Lawrence Kocher, Knud Lönberg-Holm, Theodore Larsen and R. Buckminster Fuller. After Fuller’s “Shelter” magazine folded in 1931, the proponents of the movement devoted to “achieving an adequate public housing program for the American people” found refuge and employment at The Architectural Record. Here they presented the newest progressive ideas in public and private dwellings and represented the Public Works Administration’s agenda in both form and content. This january issue featured a tremendous 34-page profile of prefabricated and assembled experimental housing as well as the debut of Frederick J. Kiesler’s Space House. Next stop: Utopia.

Contents include:

• Space House: Frederick J. Kiesler, Architect. Eighteen page article with gorgeous full page photographs by F. S. Lincoln of the full-scale model of a single-family dwelling for the Modernage Furniture Company in New York, the culmination of "seven years of waiting, seven years of search and research." Space House had an elastic interior with varying floor levels and movable partitions. Other innovative techniques and materials were used, such as indirect lighting, brushed aluminum fixtures, rubberized flooring, fishnet curtains, and built-in modernistic furniture. In Space House, "the streamlining becomes an organic force as it relates to the dynamic equilibrium of body motion within encompassed space."[Lisa Phillips]
• Frontispiece: The Vinylite House In Gorgeous Color
• New Housing And Construction Systems: Dymaxion Houses—An Atitude: Buckminster Fuller.
• Technical News And Research: Complied By Theodore Larsen
• Experimental Houses: 34 well-illustrated pages of designs by Bemis Industries, Buell Fabricated House System, Stran-Steel House, Columbian Homes, National Steel Homes, American Houses, Inc., General Houses Inc., Cellular Steel Unit Construction, Wheeling Steel House, Rostone Houses, Ferro-Enamel House, Negro Housing In Richmond Virginia, House Of Tomorrow By George Fred Keck, Low-Cost Farmhouse By A. Lawrence Kocher & Albert Frey, Barry Byrne Concrete Unit System, Diatom Houses By Richard Neutra, And The Universal House Corporation Of Zanesville, Ohio.
• Modernization: Case Studies By Morris Sanders, Frank Rooke, etc.
• Aetna Life Insurance Company Building At Hartford, Ct: James Gamble Rogers
• Radio City Broadcasting Studios Of The National Broadcasting Company, Rockefeller Center: Reinhold & Hofmeister; Corbett, Harrison, & Macmurray; Hood & Fouilhoux.
• Sound Control And Air Conditioning In The NBC Radio City Broadcasting Studios
• Lighting In The National Broadcasting Studios
• Panel Heating: Alfred Roth, Translated By Alfred Frey
• Leisure as a Factor in ArchitectureSpecial section
• Special Insert: Code Of Fair Competition For The Construction Industry
• Replacing Old Areas For New Housing: Joseph Platzker
• Cleveland Hosuing: Low Cost Apartments. Walter R. Mckornack, Joseph Weinberg, Conrad & Teare, Associated Architects, Frederick Bigger, Consulting Architect.
• Hill Creek Homes, Philadelphia. Thomas & Martin, Architects.
• Carl Mackley Houses, Philadelphia. Kastner & Stonorov, W. Pope Barney, Architects.
• Knickerbocker Village Housing Project. Fred V. French Companies, Builders.
• What Happened To 386 Families Who Vacated A Slum To Make Way For A Housing Project? Study By Fred. L. Lavenburg Foundation And Hamilton House.
• Portfolio Of Small Houses. Small House designs by Harry Koerner, Allan McDowell, John D. Atchison, Walter Bradnee Kirby, Evans Moore & Woodbridge, Theodore Vischer & James Burley, Charles M. Rasque, Delano & Aldrich, J. Blair Muller, Barber & McMurry, Gordon B. Kaufmann, Polhemus & Coffin, Julius Gregory, and Philip L. Goodwin.
• YMCA Building, New York City: James Clinton Mackenzie, Jr., Architect.
• Alteration Of Small Shops Moderate In Cost. Work by Gordon S. Grundling, Holabird & Root, Herbert Sobel & J. Robert Drielsma.
• Store Buildings And Neighborhood Shopping Centers: Clarence S. Stein & Catherine Bauer. Features a Los Angeles Drive-In Market photographed by Albert Frey.
• Special Building Types:Japanese work by Antonin Raymond; Alfred Roth; Thomas W. Lamb; Gordon B. Kaufmann; etc.
• Better Homes as an Aid to RecoverySpecial section on Farm Conditions, Farm Structures, Farmstead Planning, Planning the Farmhouse for Family Needs, Desirable Requirements for the Farmhouse, and a Portfolio of Farmhouses.
• Subsistence Farmsteadsby A. Lawrence Kocher and Alfred Frey.
• Portfolio of Foreign Architectureby Marcel Breuer, Sigfried Geidion, Howe & Lescaze, Alfred Roth, Le Corbusier & P. Jeanneret, Werner M. Moser, Antonin Raymond, Juan O’Gorman, and many others.
• Portfolio of Modernization and Alterationby William Muschenheim, Eugene Schoen & Sons, Donald Deskey, J. R. Davidson, Gordon Gundling, and many others.
• And much more.

Among the many projects Frederick J. Kiesler undertook during the Depression that never progressed beyond the blueprint stage were mass- produced, modular homes designed for Sears, Roebuck and Co. (1931); The Universal, a theater complex for Woodstock, New York (1931), planned as a flexible structure, adaptable for a variety of uses; and furniture and lighting designs. Kiesler had hopes of realizing his egg-shaped Endless Theater, but the time was not ripe.

Recalling this period in his life thirty years later, he wrote: "I was terribly poor, on a salary of $1,000 a year. I designed many projects for friends — all in vain. Many people made propositions without offers to pay.. ..Here were plans for a building that looked like an egg, not like the customary box. It wasn't square, it wasn't in steel, it wasn't in glass, it wasn't in aluminum. It was absolutely outside the mode of the International Style."

Finally, in 1933, Kiesler was given a chance to realize this new kind of building in a full-scale model of a single-family dwelling for the Modernage Furniture Company in New York. This project was the culmination of "seven years of waiting, seven years of search and research." 26 Space House, as it was called, had an organic, streamlined shell based on the principle of continuous tension, using the eggshell as a model. Influential in this design was the engineering construction of grain elevators, bridges, aqueducts, and planetariums — structures that also had curving, continuous exterior surfaces. This continuous-shell construction allowed for a flowing of interior space between floors, walls, and ceilings free of vertical supports. Though the full-scale model at Modernage was not technically a shell construction, it made allusions to it through the rounded facade. Space House had an elastic interior with varying floor levels and movable partitions. Other innovative techniques and materials were used, such as indirect lighting, brushed aluminum fixtures, rubberized flooring, fishnet curtains, and built-in modernistic furniture. 27 In Space House, "the streamlining becomes an organic force as it relates to the dynamic equilibrium of body motion within encompassed space."[Lisa Phillips]

Space House was also the first articulation of Kiesler's guiding principles of "correalism and biotechnique." Correalism, as he described it, is "an investigation into the laws of the inter-relationships of natural and man-made organisms," and biotechnique is "the application of such knowledge to the specific field of housing man adequately (an applied science)." It was an approach that involved defining man in relation to various forces in the environment — "natural, technological and human" — to seek the proper equilibrium among them. This approach was distinctly different from the Bauhaus ideal of form follows function: "Form does not follow function," said Kiesler, "function follows vision. Vision follows reality." "Instead of functional designs which try to satisfy the demands of the present, bio-technical designs develop the demands of the future."

The "true functionalist" (read "visionary") designer would begin by defining functions and examining their value based on reality, not theoretical worth. (This was largely the project of Kiesler's Laboratory for Design-Correlation at Columbia.) Kiesler formulated this idea in a much-quoted statement: "Form does not follow function. Function follows vision. Vision follows reality." In this way, the designer constantly should do away with obsolete functions and respond to new ones, creating new ideas and new conditions. "Function" is not a standard or a goal, but an ongoing process of identifying and responding to ever changing conditions and needs. Modern architects, to Kiesler, were avoiding their "full moral responsibility" in building without a vision based on observation and new ideas. Clearly the "moral responsibility" of the designer was of great concern to Kiesler, since the designer was responsible for guiding civilization. It was a principle Kiesler had long shared with fellow artists and architects, particularly with the members of the De Stijl group.

Alfred Lawrence Kocher (American, 1885 – 1969) taught at Penn State from 1912 to 1926, where he was instrumental in the establishment of the School of Architecture. In 1926 he was appointed Director of the McIntire School of Art and Architecture at the University of Virginia. Kocher’s contribution to architecture in the United States was both as a pioneering advocate for modern architecture and as an advocate for the preservation of architectural landmarks.

When Kocher was appointed Managing Editor of The Architectural Record in 1927, the magazine issued a “Delphic utterance” that it was embarking on a new chapter in its history which would probably include “something about ferro-concrete, about architectural polychromy, about a more effective direction and use of the allied arts and crafts. Possibly the impulse originated by Sullivan, developed by Frank Lloyd Wright and amplified abroad will bring repercussions from Europe. No doubt standardized shapes and machine-made surfaces will find their logical place in design. That there will be movement, enterprise, new feeling is clear....” (Architectural Record, January 1928, p. 2) Under Kocher’s direction the magazine was transformed from a beaux-arts periodical into one espousing a broad concept of modern architecture encompassing education, social responsibility and concerns, modern design, and contemporary materials and methods of construction.

Although his early writings were about traditional architecture -- The Art of Lancaster County (1919), Fireplaces in England (1926), and Early Architecture of Pennsylvania -- fifteen articles in Eighteenth Century architecture published in The Architectural Record (1920-22) – he was equally committed to the use of modern materials and construction methods and to contemporary design in new buildings. This was reflected in his private practice. Of special interest to Kocher was the design of small, affordable houses. Three houses – one of aluminum and glass, one of canvas, and a third constructed of plywood (except for the sheathing for the roof) – attracted national attention. Ideas which he proposed in the 1920s such as well-designed, prefabricated interior components for storage and utilities have become commonplace. A design for Sunlight Towers, an apartment tower, placed the towers at forty-five degree angles to the street. The saw-tooth shaped facade provided for light and for cross-ventilation.

Kocher had been interested in Black Mountain College from its beginnings. He included Black Mountain in a series of articles on the education of the architect in the September 1936 issue of Architectural Record, and soon after the college purchased the Lake Eden buildings, he proposed that the campus should be modern. He suggested a collaboration between the Black Mountain’s Bauhaus contingent – Josef Albers, Anni Albers, and Xanti Schawinsky – and Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, who had only recently arrived at in the United States to teach at Harvard University.

In the summer of 1940 when Black Mountain realized it could not construct the buildings designed by Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer for the Lake Eden campus, the college turned to Kocher to design simpler buildings that could be constructed largely by faculty and students working with a contractor. At the time Kocher was visiting professor at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. In the fall of 1940, he was appointed Professor of Architecture at Black Mountain, and he moved to the college with his wife Margaret Taylor Kocher and their two small children Sandra and Lawrence. For the first two years his salary was paid by the Carnegie Foundation in New York, and for the third year, by a gift of $1,000 from Philip L. Goodwin, architect for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Over a two year period, several buildings designed by Kocher were constructed at the college. The main building which Kocher designed had four wings providing for administration, a library and exhibition hall, student studies, faculty apartments, and rooms for social gathering. One wing, the Studies Building, was constructed in 1940-41. The studies themselves were finished by students in the fall of 1941. Although the faculty considered construction of the additional three wings after the war, Kocher was not able to return to the college to supervise the construction, and the project was dropped.