Bringing modernity home

The concept of open plan is related to what happened in British housing design after World War II. Since people wanted to forget about tragedy with which they had met during war, designers believed that by concentrating more on comfort and well-being of occupants while designing houses, they would contribute to leaving past behind and having a hope for better future. The priority was to give people as much freedom as possible. Government started with undertaking a program to provide better acommodation for working-class families. Dwellings of all kinds were built with large amounts of accommodation around the city. They were meant to be self-contained to house people and industry. Harlow New Town, which is outside London, is an example of such town. The reason why they were built outside the city was not only the fact that the land was cheaper, but also there was much more space.

What also influenced open space design, were the utopian expectations of urban planning. Designers believed in social equality and adaptability to change.

Open plan was about elimination of walls to unite rooms and make spaces. It was about creating more internal space and having a closer relationship with nature. Architects started to treat space according to logic, rejecting conventional room arrangements. The form was supposed to base on social consideration rather than on aesthetic conventions. Basing on time and motion studies, they stated that really important thing was to have an access to fresh air, sunlight and to be time efficient. Rooms became areas withing spaces and the relationships between these areas became more significant.

However, for occupants word ''open'' meant being able to control access to their own space. They closed the front door and opened the back door into the garden and that was a thing that they never had before.

By the 1960, concept of open plan became so popular that it earned the label of ''universal product''. But the results did not really meet designers' expectations. They believed it was possible to create a neutral spaces, suitable for everyone and devoided of cultural connocations but open plan meant different things for different people. Occupants didn't use spaces as designers had intended them to use. For example, people preffered to eat dinner in the room where the meal was prepared rather than to use open-plan living-dining room for this purpose. They modified spaces, built walls to divide rooms... Although designers wanted spaces to be as functional as possible and to get rid of any unnecessary ornament, people made displays of ornamental and disfunctional objects representing memories and numbers of items showing their interpretation of modernity. Coffee tables were meant to mark the center point of the seating area and they were mainly used as a side table in the corner of the room featuring ornaments and other arrengements of objects.

Modernity started to meant ''adaptability''. People could construct and reconstruct their surroundings to fit in with the changing lifestyle rather than accept what designer preapered for them.

Harlow New Town