The Waterbury Democrat., 1940-09-30
Here's Way Of Living Long War
Might Force On The World
British Architects
Advocate Houses
Without Windows
BY PAUL MANNING

NEA service Stam correspondent
London, Sept. 30-For the last 20
years the American way of living
has been development of spacious
windows, daylight in the home, wide
lawns, big individual gardens and
sun baths.
But if this war continues for two
or three years longer and if the
new housing plans now on exhibit
ton at the Royal Institute of Brit
ish Architects are accepted by the
British government, that whole
scheme of intelligent housing may
go by the boards.
For Britain'S architects have been
busy during the last months of ci-
villain bombing devising houses that
are virtually windowless and prac-
tically bombproof. So if the idea
catches hold in England and the
effect sweeps to America, the U. S.
family settling down to a new COM
munity housing development may
well find themselves sleeping in
bombproof bedrooms in windowless
houses located in invisible towns.
The ideal wartime single house,
British architects find, is a one
story concrete and brick affair with
narrow Sits resembling windows To-
Gated just below the roof. Outside,
the walls and roof would be COW
cred with a zigzag rustic wash
which would blend with the sur
rounding houses and countryside.
Inside, the houses would be little
more than sleeping dornitories,
what with double hunks, sliding
shutters for the blackout and small
high windows covered with wire
mesh to prevent flying splinters.
OBJECT:
TO GET SLEEP
1.-THE thought of living in win
dowless houses may shock many
people," a member of the institute
said, "but I think it is an idea we
shall have to get used to. There is
no doubt that the blasting in of
windows causes a great deal of dam
age which could be avoided"
The object of these precautions,
of course, is to get sleep. These
houses would be built with REIN
forced concrete slabs top and bot
tom with 10 IL inch thick brick
and steel walls. People could sleep
right through an air raid with COM
parative safety because each house
would be a small fortress, immune
to every explosive except the direct
hit of very big bomb.
Great slum clearance units would
no longer be built along the lines
of the Dorchester and Queens de-
velopments in New York. There
would be Accommodations for 1900
TOO workers; but each building
would be long, narrow and one story
high. In peacetime, because of the
concrete floor and ceiling, second
story could be added.
COMMUNITY
GARDENS
Bachelor men and women living
in this housing project just ada
cent to a large factory would be
housed in separate buildings which
would each be divided into three
units; kitchen, lounge and living
room for one, bedroom and wash
room for the secnd and third.
Sixty men could live in reason
able comfort, while AZ women would
have c2sc.s roo:s. in the same space.
A large number of boys and girls
from 16 to 20 are always employed
in wartime munition factories, SO
they would be provided with the
same setup as the adults with the
exception that one small, lightless
recreation room would be con-
structed.
Married couples with children
would be given the individual one
story cottages having the addition
al space of a living room.
In both the individual and mass
housing units, no individual back
yard gardens would be permitted.
Everyone would grow vegetables
in large community tracts of Is IL
acres so as to preserve the cam
outage effect Of the whole COM
munal layout.