What makes a home, modern
Definitions, definitions.
This my friends, is a tricky thing from my perspective and from what I have read and other perspectives. I have said I don’t want to be too cerebral in my exploration of this new crush on all things modern homes combined with my longtime love of Dallas, Texas. And I say tricky because it’s as if we as a collective are all staring at something and we all try to define it but our own perceptions, history and knowledge impacts our attempt at definition. Add the fact that architecture is often spiced and influenced with different styles, and that it intentionally is not an exact science. And the minute I say that someone will mention Bauhaus (the design school of thought not the band) which I tend to view as at one extreme of a spectrum versus exact.
This drives us to question what makes a home modern versus a house with funky architecture. Or one filled with arty kitsch or products. For this we have to get a tiny bit scholarly or at least a dictionary smart to unwind this before I can explore modern homes and modern homes in Dallas.
SO, what makes a house or home modern?
I started by looking for a good definition of modern homes. This was harder to come by than one might imagine. I’ll take you on my journey:
PHRASES / TERMS
I found the following phrases / terms associated with modern homes over and over and over again.
- form follows function
- clean, efficient, and conscious
- Space, simplicity and functionality
- more and more, I see eco-friendly (tying in the structure to the land and conserving it)
Also I got this from a discussion on Architectural Styles from About.com (yah, yah I know):
Modern House Styles
1930-present
Modernist houses broke away from conventional forms, while postmodernist houses combined traditional forms in unexpected ways.
CLICK ON EACH LINK FOR A BRIEF DEFINITION and PICTURE
MID CENTURY MODERN
“The clearest definition I’ve heard, is that the term defines houses built between 1930 and 1970 – the middle part of the century, that have clean modernist lines and were built using modern construction methods, particularly the “post-and-beam” engineering affected by Eichler and others of that period. The problem with this definition is that there are many cross-overs or hybrids that fit into this general definition – as well there are issues when the building is built before or after the time span, yet clearly fits the general construction definition – thus the disagreement in usage.”
But he goes on to define other things that get thrown around in that same grouping such as “Post and Beam” and influences on that period.
So for the purposes of this ongoing discusion I’m going to use the following loose definitions;
- Homes built 1930s and onward that fall into the above modern definitions
- Homes that have that aesthetic feel which might fall out of the definition by a “skotch” but we still want to include as it has more characteristics than not
- Furnishings, accoutrement, landscaping and other things that add to this aesthetic
Wakka, wakka, wakka. Enough of the cerebral musings and on to visual feasts of our eyes. I’m going to work on finding pictures of homes in Dallas, some I know of and want to get shots of, others I’ve seen and will explore. I would also like to get a wiki or map of all the homes I come across in Dallas that fall into the Modern genre.
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