I vaguely remember an article, might have been in Dwell, in which they showcased a modern house that had been purchased and refurbished by a couple, the woman of which had grown up in the hosue as a young child. She recalled when she was a kid she was actually embarassed by the hosue, and wished she had a "normal" house like her friends did. They asked her things like "Why do the cars just park under a roof, why don't you have an actual garage?" She said as an adult that she definitely felt the home's geometry affected the way she views the world.

Like I said I only vaguely recall the article. Somewhat parallel, I do remember as a kid growing up in the pseudo-adobe suburbs of Phoenix that there was one uber-modern solar home in our neighborhood, and the kid who lived there was scary-smart, his parents were intellectuals of some type. I always thought the house was cool and they were a really interesting family (though I was a little embarassed for them being so "out of step").

personally i think daylight and windows are overrated. but it might be because i have sensitive eyes. i think i'd have been just fine growing up in a mckim mead and white house though...

i saw one in chicago. dark and windows were small and covered. wood ate rest of the light. it was belong to a railroad man if i remember correct. kind of a place that a lot of servants worked and by pulling a rope the owners were served. it could be a h h richardson house too.

and, of course some of the case study houses were occupied by communist party members who raised their children liberally and let them have drinks with them when julius shulman came to take their pictures.

yea, the pullman residence...

I think it was actually Eisenmen's daughter. They did a piece kind of inspired by "My Architect" where they talked to a couple of children of well known architects. The thing I remember most about the article was Eisenmen only let his daughter wear white in the house. I think that most the kids wound up in creative professions. I'll have to keep whispering, "investment banker" in my son's ear as he sleeps.

Not exactly research, but a good footnote perhaps.

My family lived in a townhouse that had no walls for a year when i was in high school. It was all vertically separated so there was plenty of visual privacy but no acoustic privacy or doors to slam, other than the bathroom. It was kind of a woody goody Charles Moore style place. We loved it but the architect who designed it raised his kids in the same unit didn't seem like he had such great results. I think one of his kids had committed suicide and the other was kind of a lout.

Undoubtedly it was not all the space, but I always wondered if it had something to do with it. I later heard all kinds of stories about the architect when I was working in the same town, it sounded like he was having a pretty wild time so I'm sure that had more impact on his kids than the space the grew up in.

waited too long, that bit about Eisenmen's daughter was in response to liberty bell's article in Dwell.

i wonder what eisenmen's daughter thinks about wearing white now.
most modern homes i see around my neighborhood usually cut off from the street (neighborhood) by a privacy wall or some kind of tricked out visual divide.

not very friendly . i wonder how isolated the children feel in them while their tract house neighbors are usually out in the open.

not directly related, but the Reggio Emilia early childhood education approach is very interested in the spaces of the learning environments, including light, materiality etc.

I remember in my sociology class in first or second year of arch school an article about the maison Jaoul (Corbu), where they interviewed the kids once they were grown up about the influence of the house on their life. That's about all I can remember, and the article was in French, but I'm sure I can find out more about that...

^that house doesn't get enough play...it's really fantastic, but we seem to hear so much more about Villa Savoye etc in school, and not of it (this was my experience, I wasn't even aware of the house until a classmate "discovered" it senior year during an investigation of regionalism...)

mmm, probably that article:
François Barre’s interview with Marie Jaoul in “La maison Jaoul,” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, September 1979, 85–86.

"teachers in Reggio Emilia assert the importance of being confused as a contributor to learning; thus a major teaching strategy is purposely to allow mistakes to happen, or to begin a project with no clear sense of where it might end. Another characteristic that is counter to the beliefs of many American educators is the importance of the child's ability to negotiate in the peer group, which renders teacher intervention in children's minimal conflicts unnecessary."

i think these days the children are over protected, rightly or wrongly.

there was a professor who stressed learning about Jean Piaget in first year studio when i was a student. thanks AP.

French, that sounds like a rare article. if you can remember more please post.

thanks.

over-protected, yes. the Reggio way is explorative.

(I learned of Reggio from a studio brief. our project was to design a Reggio School for Venice - it was during a semester in Vicenza, Italy, about an hour from Venice...I ended up centering my undergrad thesis on this project and the notion of "the environment as the 3rd teacher.")

A detailed and well-illustrated discussion of the importance of the environment in the preprimary schools of Reggio Emilia can be found in Children, Spaces, Relations: Metaproject for an Environment for Young Children (Ceppi & Zini, 1998). This book describes the depth to which the environment supports the educational and cultural values of the school and the community. It demonstrates the belief that children have a right to be educated in thoughtfully designed spaces. Children in the Reggio schools are learning to value their rich visual heritage and to become perceptually aware through the support of the environment designed for multi-sensory learning.
from Design Share

doesn't growing up in a modern home make you gay?

i don't know where this is going but its an issue that should get more attention.
we as architects often complain about public not being educated enough about what we do and only attempt to 'educate' our clients after they sign a contract. what i am finding out though, we have little idea how what we do impacts people's lives and growth.
we say this is great this is good and this is bad but often without being able to answer why.
of course a 5000 sq ft new villa on a 5000 sq ft lot is wasteful specially if built for two people and their 3 years old, but so as the glass house in middle of same urban/suburban area with the same specs except titled and detailed as modern.
we do need some data to tell people "look this is better for you because of this this and this". we cannot rely on looks and furniture in space alone.
i am just throwing some stuff out there...

pullman mansion was designed by solon bemen and was torn down years ago...yeah this mm&w dig would have sucked to grow up in...

FOGlight, my recollection of that Eisenman's daughter article is that her bedroom had to be white, she finally convinced him to let her paint ONE wall and it had to be dark purple.

And the modern house owner who bought her childhood home was a different house, it was done by one of the lesser-known California Moderns, as I recall.

But who knows, I ruined my memory in high school, I could be way off.

on a similar note, how about this:

saving the eames house - interview with lucia eames
metropolis magazine january 2005

some info on the web, but you have to log in:
http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=1066

oops, wait, just browsed through it: she actually went to college when construction started, so it's not relevant to what you're looking for.

parallel to that,i found bachelard's accounts disturbing. i am completely the product of deteriorating apartment buildings and of a building culture wilder and faster than the creeping vines of nature. also i always thought of an attic as somewhere you hang yourself in and the basement somewhere you bury your victims. in an apartment, i guess you could lock yourself in the bathroom and slit your wrists/throw in an electronic appliance in the tub or jump off the balcony...but what a drama queen. apartment buildings turn death into a modernist public spectacle, ambulance practically in the lobby. in one of bachelard's places, you can dream and scheme, take sleeping pills like sylvia plath did and dose off in the basement..or even decide to take a nice stroll out and wade into a river ouse like woolf did. just be generally old-world in your way out. maybe god, or whatever, will put you in hell, or whatever, for being far too postmodern and historicist.

i grew up in and around places like this. this taken from my mom's 'house' (notice i didn't use the word 'apartment' even though thats what it is.)



24 hours of noise and pollution. bedrooms in the back sees neighbors' bedroom windows 10-20' away. you grow up with the acknowledgement of city, public transportation, public/privacy lines overlapping, and survival through the crowds. modern? yes.

it seems there is more private transportation going on than public, at least around your ma's house.

that too, but, count about 10 cars up and multiply that with 20 = 200. thats the number of residential units within that length. good luck finding a parking. +, they moved the bulk of bus lines one parallel street over.

liberty
I think you're probably right, I probably just wanted him to sound like a nut job. I did my fair share of trying to destroy my memory in High School as well.

I grew up in a slightly 'alternative' household (vegetarians, alternative private schools, etc.). personally, I think it was wonderful. Public schools just suck for creativity. We had no grades, studied about 2-3 hours a day, had our bikes at school, took almost daily class trips to various swimming holes, made out own meals, etc., etc. Great memories.

I also distinctly remember be very good with Tanograms when I was 7-8 (that's what I attribue my affinity for angles to)

there was an article in the nytimes magazine....hmmm....probably a couple years now, on the trend and affects of modern design for kids. alma bucher at the bauhaus designed a number of children-oriented products, furniture. dwr just launched their kids division; also check out modern seed. there was also a modern-styled dollhouse from bozart, who are now defunct. of course, there's also montessori.

db, have a look at Burkhalter & Sumi 's kindergarten at Lustenau ,Austria, done in red coloured facade like kids building blocks.

my mother on the other hand, likes the noise and activity of the street. she is 85 and smokes 3/4 pack a day and loves her newly remodeled ikea kitchen, green color with glass cabinets.
whereas some of my childhood friends can't stand anything modern and view it as lack of style and taste. they fill their otherwise modern apartments with fake classic furniture in dark woods and gold leafing, and see open plans as childish and uncreative. go figure.

There is a a slim book about the Hanna house and the kids/family life within it. (And how the beehive geometry affects them.) It's kind of a pander to FLW though, but still interesting. Many arch. libraries have it.

There is also a good amount of research/anecdotal records of the California Open school ideas that Neutra began, and their effect on pedagogy. I went to an open school (built in early 70s) for awhile for elementary school and it was a terrible disaster. When you read about the original ideas, however, they seem very plausible. (echoes of communism...) Anyhow, studying Neutra's stuff is always fun, and in his books there is a lot of talk about why he felt the open school plan is better for children. There was quite a large movement in that direction for awhile and thus a lot of attention paid to its effect on kids.