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The Fe-Male Spaces of Modernism: A Western Canadian Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Rhodri Windsor Liscombe
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The Provision of improved facilities for women in domestic space and their increased participation in the design process were material aspects of the Modern movement in architecture. While initially directed toward the provision of improved conditions for lower-income families, the main outcome would occur in postwar middle-class housing, particularly in North America. This outcome was associated with a renewal of conservative suburbanization and populist capitalism. The consequences of these design and socioeconomic practices – especially as demonstrated in that significant liminal space between theorized professional production and anecdotal public consumption – for the reinscription of women's presence in domestic space was therefore of considerable import. Scholarly attention has concentrated on the architectural consequences of revised gender relations and on the activity of women designers and architectural writers. This essay seeks to advance discussion of those consequences and activities by means of a situated approach that is centered on a multivalent analysis of the supposed inscription and representation of the modern woman in the Modernist suburban home. The site is the rapidly expanding but physically, socioeconomically, and culturally discreet North Shore area of Vancouver, 1945–65. The location typifies the resuscitation of the middle-class suburb through what might be termed Automod-ernism. The extension of North American trends such as the individual family automobile and home ownership reinforced by laborsaving appliances became a distinct phenomenon of the Modern movement. The time frame corresponds with the postwar baby boom and sustained economic and demographic growth, when child rearing generally kept women, especially of middle-income families, mostly at home.

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Research Article
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Prospects , Volume 26 , October 2001 , pp. 667 - 700
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2001

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References

NOTES

1. Despite the relative longevity of feminist studies, this theme is only tangentially addressed in the recent standard histories of Modernist Architecture — notably, Curtis, William, Modern Architecture Since 1900, 3rd ed. (London: Phaidon, 1996)Google Scholar; and Frampton, Kenneth, A Concise History of Modern Architecture, rev. ed. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997).Google Scholar The contribution of women to precontact and postcontact North American buildings and design receives more consistent attention in Upton, Dell, Architecture in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), esp. 23, 43, 117–18, 160, 247, 272–73 (the sociology of appliances is addressed in 173–75)Google Scholar. The social historical context of postwar domestic design is examined in Smith, Elizabeth A. T., ed., Blueprints for Modern Living: History and Legacy of the Case Study Houses (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1989)Google Scholar; by Silverston, Roger, ed., Visions of Suburbia (London: Routledge, 1997)Google Scholar; and in the Canadian context by Ward, Peter, A History of Domestic Space: Privacy and the Canadian Home (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

2. This phenomenon is examined from a sociocultural standpoint, including analysis of the political context and the different racial factors operative in the United States and Canada, by Strong-Boag, Veronica, “Home Dreams: Women and the Suburban Experiment in Canada 1945–1960,” Canadian Historical Review 72 (1991): 471–504CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In a larger ideological perspective, the paternalism harbored within the later modern liberal tradition is discussed by Matustik, Martin J. B., “Ludic, Corporate and Imperial Multiculturalism: Imposters of Democracy and Cartographers of the New World Order,” in Theorizing Multiculturalism: A Guide to the Current Debate, ed. Willett, Cynthia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 100–17, esp. 113Google Scholar.

3. The literature is both extensive and expanding. The more general studies are exemplified by Wright, Gwendolyn, Moralism and the Model Home: Domestic Architecture and Cultural Conflict in Chicago 1873–1913 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980)Google Scholar, and Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Attfield, Judy and Kirkham, Pat, eds., A View from the Interior: Feminism Women and Design (London: Women's Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Roberts, Marion, Living in a Man-made World: Gender Assumptions in Modern Housing Design (London: Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar; Colomina, Beatriz, ed., Sexuality and Space (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; McNeil, Peter, “Designing Women: Gender, Sexuality and the Interior Decorator, c. 1890–1940,” Art History 17 (12 1994): 631–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Agrest, Diana et al. , eds., The Sex of Architecture (New York: Abrams, 1996)Google Scholar; see also Colomina, Beatriz, “Collaborations: The Private Life of Modern Architecture,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 58 (09 1999): 462–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Canadian studies include Luxton, Meg, More Than a Labour of Love: Three Generations of Women's Work in the Home (Toronto: Women's Free Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Parr, Joy, A Diversity of Women: Ontario 1945–80 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Purdy, Sean, “Building Homes. Building Citizens,” Canadian Historical Review 79 (09 1998): 492–523CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Adams, Annmarie, Exploring Everyday Landscapes, ed. with Mc-Murry, S. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997)Google Scholar, and Ville St Laurent Revisited: Wartime Housing and Architectural Change 1942–1992 (Ottawa: Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, 1997)Google Scholar. Adams has also published on the British and American domestic scene, respectively, Architecture in the Family Way: Doctors, Houses and Women 1870–1900 (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1996)Google Scholar, and “The Eichler Home: Intention and Experience in Postwar Suburbia,” in Gender, Class and Shelter: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, ed. Cromley, E. C. and Hudgins, E. L. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995)Google Scholar, as well as on women architects in the era, Modernist, “Archi-ettes in Training: The Admission of Women to McGill's School of Architecture,” Bulletin [now Journal] of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada 21 (09 1996): 10–15Google Scholar, and “Building Barriers: Images of Women in Canada's Architectural Press 1924–73,” Resources for Feminist Research 23 (Fall 1994): 11–23, each with useful bibliographiesGoogle Scholar.

4. The architectural and wider sociocultural history of this phase of West Coast Modernism is reviewed in Liscombe, Rhodri Windsor, The New Spirit: Modern Architecture in Vancouver 1938–1963 (Montreal: C.C.A., Douglas & McIntyre and M.I.T., 1997)Google Scholar. This essay is an outcome of that research and a paper read at the 1998 annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, in Montreal. In its development, the author has benefited by the critique of Dr. Joy Parr of Simon Fraser University and Dr. Annmarie Adams of McGill University.

5. Lilly Reich's contribution is rather summarily treated in such major monographs as Drexler, A., ed., The Mies van der Rohe Archive, Part I, 1910–1937 (New York: Garland 1986)Google Scholar. Reich has no entry in The Dictionary of Art (London: Grove Macmillan, 1996)Google Scholar, unlike Jane Drew (9: 296–97) and Charlotte Perriand (24: 475–76), nor is there a separate entry for Tyrwhitt. See also McLeod, Mary, “Furniture and Femininity,” Architectural Review 181 (01 1987): 43–46Google Scholar.

6. McLeod, “Furniture and Femininity,” 46.

7. This aspect of the foundation of CLAM is usefully condensed in Bosman, Jay, “C.I.A.M.,” Dictionary of Art, 7: 293–96Google Scholar. See also Steinmann, M., ed., CLAM. Dokumente 1928–1934 (Basel: Birkhauser, 1979)Google Scholar. One woman architect who opposed Le Corbusier's rationalist idea of Modernism was Eileen Gray, designer of a house at Cap Martin for Jean Badovici, editor of l'Architecture vivante; for this episode, see John Wilson, Colin St, The Other Tradition of Modern Architecture: The Uncompleted Project (London: Academy, 1998) part 3, sect. 4Google Scholar, and Adam, Peter, Eileen Gray: Architect Designer (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987)Google Scholar.

8. Fry, Maxwell, Fine Design (London: Faber, 1945), 86Google Scholar n. Fry employed Denby as housing consultant for the Kensal House low-income housing development in Paddington for the Gaslight and Coke Company, 1936–37. Fry's illustrations interestingly pair functional and wartime design with kitchen appliances, as, for example, the Aga stove and Mosquito fighter-bomber.

9. The Vienna housing schemes are examined by Blau, Eve, The Architecture of Red Vienna, 1919–1934 (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1998)Google Scholar. Fry, in discussing the semi-prefabricated work (kitchen) unit he devised for the Kensal House, noted Ernst May's interest in women's needs (Fine Design, 63Google Scholar), for which see also Rowe, Peter, Modernity and Housing (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1993), esp. 139Google Scholar.

10. May, Elaine T., Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War (New York: Basic, 1988)Google Scholar. Le Corbusier commended centralized urban development so as to utilize mass-produced communal services that would yield “genuine freedom … in the heart of family life: freedom instead of domestic slavery” (The Radiant City [1933; rept. London: Faber and Faber, 1966], 38)Google Scholar.

11. Fry, , Fine Design, 77Google Scholar. See also Lupton, Ellen and Miller, J. Abbott, The Bathroom, the Kitchen and the Aesthetics of Waste: A Process of Elimination (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

12. In Canada, the Prairie Housing Advisory Council established during the Second World War worked in conjunction with the University of Manitoba School of Architecture to publish pamphlets on improved farmhouse design and equipment; the B.C. Rural Housing Advisory Council produced comparable materials combining social statistics, ergonomics and the Modernist aesthetic (Liscombe, , New Spirit, 33, 141, 146–47Google Scholar). See also Marsh, Margaret, Suburban Lives (New Bern, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Weiss, Nancy, “Mother, the Invention of Necessity: Dr. Benjamin Spock's Baby and Child Care,” in Growing Up in America: Children in Historical Perspective, ed. Hiner, N. R. and Hawes, J. M. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 283–30Google Scholar.

13. Oberlander, H. Peter and Newbrun, Eva, Houser: The Life and Work of Catherine Bauer (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1999)Google Scholar; see also Radford, Gail, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. Fry, , Fine Design, 62Google Scholar.

15. Rice, Margaret Spring, Working Class Wives (Harmondsworth, England: Pelican, 1939)Google Scholar.

16. Women authors played an important part in the British wartime propaganda, notable for its invocation of Modernist architecture and planning as engine of the reconstructed welfare state envisaged by the coalition government from the early 1940s. Two examples of this literature, influential on Canada, are McAlister, Elizabeth, Town and Country Planning (London: H.M.S.O., 1943)Google Scholar, coauthored with her husband Gilbert; and Stephenson, Flora and Pool, Phoebe, A Plan for Town and Country (London: Pilot, 1944)Google Scholar. The Canadian situation is related by Panrr, Joy in her Diversity of Women and, with reference to Modernist design, her Domestic Goods: The Material, the Moral and the Economic in the Post War Years (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

17. Scrapbooks of the Department of Architecture, University of British Columbia Special Collections, Scrapbook 34 I–III.

18. The graduation lists for the period 1946–65 (University of British Columbia Special Collections) indicate that the gender statistics worsened: Pamela Mc-Taggart-Cowan and Jane Best graduated in May 1952 in a class of seventeen to be followed by only Beverly James in May 1956 from a class of eight; the annual graduates of the University of British Columbia School of Architecture were 1950 (5), 1951 (17), 1952 (19), 1953 (13), 1954 (10), 1955 (14), 1956 (8), 1957 (16), 1958 (3), 1954 (9), 1960 (13), 1961 (4), 1962 (17), 1963 (20), 1964 (14), and 1965 (12). In 1958, Frederic Lasserre investigated the minimal enrollment of women students, but took no specific action beyond ascribing the situation to their distaste for physics and mathematics plus the conditions of the building site (Liscombe, , New Spirit, 185 n. 91Google Scholar).

19. Gerson, Kate, ed., Constructing Careers: A Contemporary View of Women Architects in British Columbia (Vancouver: Architectural Institute of British Columbia, 1995)Google Scholar, catalog of an exhibition at Harbour Centre, Simon Fraser University. See also Adams, “Archi-ettes in Training,” and Designing Women: Gender and the Architectural Profession (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000)Google Scholar, with Peta Tancred.

20. Based on interviews with Doris [McGill] and Duncan McNab between 1995 and 1996.

21. Edited by F. J. Osborn and published by Todd. It included brief articles on Reconstruction by Modernist designers such as Joseph Hudnut, Dean of Architecture at Harvard, the landscape architect Christopher Tunnard, and the architect Felix Samuely, together with several contributions by women, among which were “Facing the Future,” by Jean Mann M.P. (Member of Parliament); “Diffusion of the Arts,” by Mary Glasgow; “Training the Planner,” by Jacqueline Tyrwhitt; “Here Is Ordered Shelter,” by Mary Gilbert; and “Careers in Professions Associated with Planning,” by Isabella Williams.

22. This critical strategy derives from the important analyses of popular culture by Marshall McLuhan (especially The Global Village [New York: Oxford University Press, 1969]Google Scholar) and Stuart Hall (especially Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices [London: Open University, 1997]Google Scholar), and aspects of structural and poststructural praxis, including the analysis by Barthes, Roland (The Fashion System, trans. Ward, M. and Howard, R. [London: Jonathon Cape, 1985])Google Scholar, who recognized the complex coding and shifting meaning in fashion magazines, especially in chapter 1, “Written Clothing.” See also Williamson, Judith, Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising (London: Marion Boyars, 1978)Google Scholar.

23. The influence of WH&L on local architectural and popular culture is partially addressed in McKay, Sherry, “Western Living Western Homes,” Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada 14 (09 1989): 22–27Google Scholar. For discussion of the sociocultural impact of other popular North American magazines, see Seelhorst, Mary, “Popular Mechanics: 90 Years,” Popular Mechanics (02 1992): 83–108Google Scholar, reconsidered in an excellent 1998 seminar paper from the McGill School of Architecture by Suzanne Williams, “Building a Room of His Own: Popular Mechanics Magazine and the Articulation of Male Domestic Space in Post-war Suburbia”; Damon-Moore, Helen, Magazines for the Millions: Gender and Commerce in the Ladies Home Journal and Saturday Evening Post 1880–1910 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994)Google Scholar, reviewed by Adams, in Material History Review 44 (Fall 1996): 130–31Google Scholar; Scanlon, Jennifer, “Inarticulate Longings: The Ladies Home Journal, Gender and the Promise of Consumer Culture,” Canadian Home Economics Journal 47 (02 1997): 191ffGoogle Scholar.; Zhou, Nancy, “A Content Analysis of Women in Canadian Consumer Magazine Advertising: Today's Portrayal,” Journal of Business Ethics 16 (04, 1997): 385ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.; and Zuckerman, Mary, A History of Popular Women's Magazines in the United States 1792–1995 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1998)Google Scholar.

24. Exemplified by Irigaray, Luce, An Ethics of Sexual Differences, trans. Burke, C. and Gill, G. G. (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1993)Google Scholar, and Irigaray, , The Irigaray Reader, ed. Whitford, Margaret (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991)Google Scholar; and McClintock, Anne, “No Longer in Future Heaven,” in Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation and Post Colonial Perspectives, ed. McClintock, A., Mufti, A., and Shohal, E. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 89—112Google Scholar. See also Cixous, Helen and Clement, Catherine, The Newly Born Woman, trans. Wing, B. (Manchester: Manchester University, 1986)Google Scholar; and, more generally, Moi, Toril, French Feminist Thought: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987)Google Scholar.

25. Liscombe, , New Spirit, 51Google Scholar; and Hull, Jillian, “In the Zone [Selwyn Pullan],” Western Living 29 (04 1999): 26–28Google Scholar.

26. Collier, Alan, “The Trend House Programme,” Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada 20 (06 1995): 51–54Google Scholar.

27. Friedan, Betty, The Feminine Mystique (London: Gollanez, 1965)Google Scholar. See also Lupri, Eugen, e.g., The Changing Position of Women in Family and Society: A Cross-national Comparison (Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1983)Google Scholar; Allen, Graham, Family Life: Domestic Roles and Social Organization (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985)Google Scholar; and Arendell, Terry, Contemporary Parenting: Challenges and Issues (London: Sage, 1997)Google Scholar.

28. James, Susan, “The Master Bedroom Comes of Age: Gender, Sexuality and the C.M.H.C. Competition Series,” Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada 20 (12 1995): 104–11Google Scholar. Fred T. Hollingsworth, among the most successful domestic architects in postwar Vancouver, considered that the only private spaces in a house should be the bathroom(s) and bedrooms, the remaining areas being for social interaction (interview with the architect, November 1999).

29. See Williams, “Building a Room,” n. 23; and Gelber, Steven, “Do-It-Yourself: Constructing, Repairing and Maintaining Domestic Masculinity,” American Quarterly 49 (03 1997): 66–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. Liscombe, , New Spirit, 48, 112–13, 205Google Scholar; and interview with the architect, 1992.

31. Miller, Russell, Bunny: The Real Story of Playboy (London: Michael Joseph, 1984)Google Scholar.

32. McCraken, Ellen, Decoding Women's Magazines: From Mademoiselle to Ms. (London: Macmillan, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. James, “Master Bedroom.”

34. These factors, discernable in the data published by Statistics Canada, are examined in broader scope in Martin, J. P., ed., Violence and the Family (1978; rept. New York: John Wiley, 1979)Google Scholar; Nelson, Hilde, ed., Feminism and Families (London: Routledge, 1997)Google Scholar; and Kopaczynski, Germain, No Higher Court: Contemporary Feminism and the Right to Abortion (Scranton, Pa.: University of Scranton Press, 1995)Google Scholar.

35. Sedgwick, Eve K., Epistemology of the Closet (New York: Harvester, 1991)Google Scholar.