Shelter and Comfort

A richly detailed bungalow with broad sheltering eaves repelling the Vancouver rains

 

“The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house. All that cold, cold, wet day.” Dr. Seuss

 

Rain was falling steadily when I began this post, marking Victoria’s autumn shift from drought to damp and serving as a reminder to ensure drainage systems are working properly so that comfort is ensured. Keeping moisture out of houses has been a running challenge since man first bent branches together to roof out a patch of the sky – especially in damper climates like ours. Recently it’s been resurgent, as newly engineered flaws in roof and wall designs let moisture invade cavities that can’t dry out due to plastic vapour barriers. Rot consumes its wooden host with startling speed when walls can't dry out, especially when second-growth timber is involved!

 

 

Rot moves quickly in a new house once wood becomes soaked

 

All building eras have their failings when it comes to managing water, as do some very famous modernist architects. All house types require ongoing attention to water management, adding to the bane of home ownership and affecting how much we have to be involved in order to dwell comfortably. I’m fortunate in that my house, the Hubert Savage bungalow, does a reasonable job of keeping rainfall and moisture out of walls and foundations. For a century-old home, the general conception is fairly sound, meaning that water is successfully managed from roof to ground and then dispersed.

 

A gable roof form is ideal for shedding rainfall and generous eaves protect the walls

 

The challenge for architecture begins with a roof that’s impervious, shedding water and sending it away from the building's foundations. One advantage of early bungalows is the way their roofs are pushed well out over their walls, protecting them from being directly rained upon. These sometimes exaggeratedly broad eaves create a distinctly sheltering look too, a hallmark of the early California style and a feature that’s central to its lasting appeal. A relatively flat, projecting roof defines the one-story building’s style.

 

 

A prairie house by F L Wright sheltered by a projecting roof form with deep eaves

 

For bungalow designers, exaggerating the roof’s form reinforced the impression of the house as a haven or refuge from inclement weather. Generous treatment of the roof imparts a sense of security and coziness, a form-play that Frank Lloyd Wright used to great effect on many of his massive Prairie-style houses. But a house can only provide a cosy haven if it actually delivers a dry interior!

 

A sheltering roof over a bungalow with massive buttresses

 

The umbrella effect of broad roof overhangs shields the walls beneath them from direct rainfall. Any rainfall that does reach the walls is then sealed out by siding that directs it downwards to a device known as a water table – a slab of angled wood that casts any moisture out beyond the foundation. This is a very useful feature, as many California-style bungalows sit close to or even directly upon the land.

 

Gutters, downspouts, water table: water removed

 

Of course, water collected by the roof still has to be removed or it cascades over the edge, splattering on the ground and splashing wet organic matter right back onto the building. This might be alright in drier parts of the country, but here in the Pacific Northwest it would guarantee mossy, damp walls and develop ideal conditions for rot. Here on our wet coast, gutters and downspouts are needed to complete the job of moving rainfall safely away.

 

Backsplash: water and organic matter splashed onto walls from nearby trees

 

The Savage bungalow is somewhat optimistic in the configuration of valleys and gutters used to carry water away from its substantial roof forms. Being cross-gabled, valleys happen where the roof planes intersect, causing heavier flows of water. These valleys discharge into small, narrow gutter runs that are accessed at very sharp angles, which then send water to ground via metal downspouts.

 

Valleys empty into narrow gutters, small diameter downspouts: a vulnerable conception

 

Because this bungalow was built in an oak meadow, there’s a lot of tree litter moving across the roof that tends to collect where valleys and gutters intersect. In a downpour, this debris moves suddenly into the gutter, where it tends to plug the downspouts and cause overflows that run back over the soffits or splash wet soil back against the building.

 

Water collected by valleys overruns even modern gutters in a downpour

 

There are simply no exceptions to the implacable laws of physics: water is either managed systematically downwards to ground and safely dispersed, or it invades crevices and dampens materials. So this system has to be thought out carefully and methodically as part of design in order to protect the integrity of the house and the dryness of the interior, a process many designers continue to struggle with.

 

 

Even stone buildings need joints and seams maintained in order to repel moisture

 

A fashion of the pre-WW1 era was to mate narrow-chanelled wooden gutters with small diameter downspouts, which looks just fine but tended to make plugging at the intake frequent. Periodically then, one finds oneself up on a ladder freeing the downspouts (which is awkward, given the lie of the land, especially if it's at two o'clock in the morning).

 

One bane of home ownership: regular cleaning of gutters

 

Another flaw I would be facing at home but for this building’s fortunate placement high on a rise, is the lack of infrastructure to conduct water away from the end of the downspouts. (Just as well, as perimeter tiles do tend to plug fairly quickly!) At our home on the ridge, much of the water collected at the front of the house is simply shed and left to drain down the slope, which it does quite handily.

Water removed by the slope and a path mimicking its movement

 

At the rear of the house the conception for dispersal is somewhat more sketchy. Here the building sits close to the ground above a minimal crawlspace, placed over a slight hollow that deepens towards its southeast corner. Here is where water wants to pool in a downpour during the rainy season. An effort has been made to drain the area with a pipe aimed down the slope, but unfortunately due to the configuration of bedrock it's set too high to really be effective. Roof water at the back of the house was originally sent into a set of narrow clay perimeter tiles, which of course then clogged quickly with roof debris (don’t they all!). Eventually these were decoupled and water was simply left to spread onto the ground a foot or so from the wall, ensuring some of it would drain back under the building. One of my early interventions was to have a wide-diameter drain (with a clean-out) installed to collect the roof runoff and carry it towards a rock drain where the land slopes away. This helped reduce the tendency of water to pool under the building substantially.

 

A building set directly on the land complicates managing water removal

Another intervention saw replacement of the three worn-out roof layers (two asphalt on top of the original 1913 stained cedar shingles) with a new cedar-shingle roof. Despite their thinness, seasoned cedar shingles are superb rain shedders. And if they’re made of high-grade material and properly installed, they can last a fairly long time. Overall, this system of gabled cedar roofs with cedar gutters and metal downspouts has proven to be a fairly effective and durable method of keeping the house dry (with the help of the bevelled wooden siding, of course), and therefore comfortable to inhabit. On the anniversary of its first century of use, the Savage house shows no signs of any moisture ever having penetrated its ceilings or walls (touch wood!).

 

Houses have always afforded us shelter, but as historian Alan Gowans (The Comfortable House) points out, before 1890 they were rarely designed with creature comforts built-in. Delivering a truly comfortable dwelling became an explicit aim of development with the advent of early C-20 bungalow home. Invading dampness is comfort’s persistent enemy, and certain novel features incorporated into bungalow design did a good job of keeping it out.

 

 

Water tends to pool on flat roofs, affecting the life-span of the membrane

 

Friends of mine who live in a much newer dwelling have not, however, been quite so fortunate. They inhabit a flat-roofed modernist house whose rather drab exterior belies interesting, well-lit interior spaces. But that flat roof has caused no end of trouble, regularly needing emergency attention for unclogging, draining, patching or wholesale membrane-replacement.

 

We are often unaware of water pooling because a flat roof is only glimpsed from above

 

This is not a new problem of flat roofs – it has in fact plagued modernist houses from the outset. It turns out that the public's instinctive preference for gable roofs isn't after all – as the more militant modernists would have us believe - mere sentiment. Gabled (inverted v-shaped) roofs actually make really good engineering sense because their angles cause water to be shed effectively. However, on flat roofs, water is much more prone to hang around, ultimately degrading surfaces and damaging seams.

 


"Like a river down the gutter roars the rain..." Longfellow

 

FLW at the Guggenheim

Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous flat-roofed buildings often had problems with leaks, a fact he once dismissed cavalierly by saying “if the roof doesn’t leak, the architect hasn’t been creative enough”. Le Corbusier, whose first and most famous flat-roofed house was also plagued by leaks, responded with similar arrogance: “Of course it leaks. That's how you know it's a roof.” These two renowned architects worked at opposite ends of the modernist spectrum, Wright being an imaginative romantic who embraced nature (albeit at times rather abstractly), Le Corbusier a clinical minimalist who wanted buildings to be machine-like and ignore nature entirely.

 

It should be said that there are no inherent reasons for buildings to leak, only designs that don’t sufficiently respect the implacable laws of physics. Water invades, through multiple avenues, and its accesses have to be closed off definitively by design, and by careful sealing.

 

 

Fallingwater, placed above the falls, so as to fuse building and feature into a whole

 

Wright’s famous masterpiece, Fallingwater, though still revered architecturally, nonetheless had continuing moisture problems. This derived in part from the building’s eccentric placement directly over a waterfall, a choice Wright made in order to fuse physical feature and dwelling into an organic whole. Aesthetically this arrangement continues to inspire an interest that borders on obsession, attracting over 150,000 visitors annually (4.5-million-plus in total since being opened to the public).

 

 

Dramatic cantilevers project interior and exterior spaces from a solid stone core

 

Wright’s stepped structure is cantilevered out over the stream, capturing the sounds of the falls for its occupants in every room. Bringing the falls inside audibly is one thing. Less desirably, this placement invites them to enter the building as moisture, in the form of humidity and damp rising constantly from their action. This moisture invades the entire building, with unintended negative consequences.

 

Wright used stone, glass, wood and fabric to good effect in Fallingwater's interiors

 

Built for the wealthy Kaufman family of Pittsburgh as a recreational villa, Fallingwater suffered so much from dampness that Kaufman-senior nicknamed it (affectionately) “rising mildew”. The problem of damp invading structure was compounded by engineering flaws within the dramatic cantilevers of reinforced concrete and steel, which allowed Wright to step the building down the landform. The cantilevers break up the massing while gaining space for outdoor living, simultaneously functioning as roofs for the internal spaces beneath them. Unfortunately, there were problems with the load carried by the reinforced concrete, which meant some early sagging and worrisome cracks. These fissures expanded and contracted as humidity levels fluctuated, stressing flashings and opening avenues for moisture to work its way back inside. Kaufman’s son reports opening up areas only to discover sopping wet wood and soaked insulation, fuelling mould and rot.

 

Intimate spaces: severity softened with wood, artifacts

 

And when it rained, things got way worse. Fallingwater actively leaked, even in Kaufman’s treasured study, a fact he informed Wright of with some impatience - who in turn suggested unhelpfully that he should move his chair and replace it with a bucket. Thereafter, Kaufman took to calling Fallingwater a “seven-bucket house”, in reference to the seven buckets needed to catch all the drips any time it rained. It’s said, in fact, that so much moisture collected in one of the hallways that a drain had to be installed just to get rid of it! Despite its flaws the Kaufmans remained deeply attached to their iconic home, able to enjoy the views and vistas through ample windows from its cozy interior while attempting to disregard its moisture challenges as best they could.



"And now the thickened sky like a dark ceiling stood; down rushed the rain impetuous" Milton

Le Corbusier, euro-modernist

With regard to Le Corbusier’s iconic modernist house, which predated Fallingwater by just a few years, things didn’t go nearly so well. Le Corbusier, who veered modernism towards extremism out of sheer contempt for prior building knowledge, systematically neglected water management at his infamous Villa Savoye, the first rendering of his belief that a house should be conceived as “a machine for living in.” Neither a gifted space planner nor concerned in any obvious way with human comfort, Le Corbusier achieved novelty in design by turning his back on the entire history of domestic architecture.

 

Despite a machine-like appearance and cold, sanitized décor that make it feel sealed off from the entire organic world, the flat-roofed Villa Savoye was an utter sieve from the day it was built. Set on stilts to remove it from the earth's dampness, this elevated structure failed to respect the laws of physics obliging one to design and seal all exposed joints properly in order to keep water from infiltrating a structure. In this regard, Villa Savoye was grossly deficient, indeed a total flop that would ultimately be abandoned by the couple it was originally built for! Like Fallingwater, Villa Savoye provided large outdoor spaces that simultaneously served as roofs for rooms beneath, with similar yet even more dire consequences.

 

Villa Savoye: a gigantic appliance or industrial air filtration unit, with strip windows

 

Indeed, so bad was Villa Savoye that its wealthy occupants complained bitterly to the architect about its failings from the outset: “It is raining in the hall, it’s raining on the ramp and the wall of the garage is absolutely soaked [….] it’s still raining in my bathroom, which floods in bad weather, as the water comes in through the skylight.”

 

The ideal bog: a machine for washing in that flooded during rainfalls

 

Le Corbusier felt houses should be isolated as much as possible from the organic ground plane (rather the opposite of arts and crafts thinking) so he set his villa on pipe-stilts that he called ‘pilotis’. Architecturally, this contributed markedly to the building’s ungainly looks, making it appear like some sort of weird armature or a modular appliance of unknown purpose.

 

Austere living spaces lacking natural materials with plate glass interior walls.

 

Shunning contact with the earth does not obviate the need to deal with weather effects – a truth le Corbusier simply chose to ignore (ignoring inconvenient realities seems a hallmark of both his urban planning and his architectural ventures). He introduced vast areas of plate glass, which certainly afforded loads of light inside, but which also (because they were unventilated) caused the house to overheat badly in summer and (because they were uninsulated) caused it to be impossible to heat in winter. Comfort was simply not on his radar.

 

No sense of entry attempted or needed in a machine for living in

 

Le Corbusier’s greatest failing however was his abject disregard of rain effects. It quickly became so uncomfortable living in the house that the owners sent him the following curt note: “After innumerable demands you have finally accepted that this house which you built in 1929 is uninhabitable…. Please render it inhabitable immediately.”

 

Abandoned by its owners, then commandeered by armies, then left to moulder

 

He ignored all of these requests (of course), and shortly thereafter the owners abandoned the building on the grounds that it was defective beyond repair (they were then fleeing the blitz-kreiging Nazis). During the war, it was commandeered for military use and emerged abused and in semi-ruin. Le Corbusier himself would eventually go to bat for his 'prize' dwelling, however, and did succeed in having it designated and restored as a monument to his personal greatness (or folly, depending on your point of view). Would-be modernists and sundry gawkers visit it now in droves every year.

 

The shroud signals a rotting exterior is being replaced

 

This indifference towards the invasive force of water continues in the minimalist camp of modernism to this very day. When contractors fabricate structures with poorly sealed stucco walls, metal framed windows lacking trim boards, roof membranes exposed to all weathers, and eaves that don’t project over walls in buildings whose walls contain vapour barriers that prevent them from drying out – the net result is buildings that develop moulds and begin to rot within a few years. We’ve seen a spate of this in condominiums and apartments over the past two decades here on our wet west coast (the phenomenon is euphemistically described as ‘premature building envelope failure’ or PBEF). We don’t know how many families endure living in mouldy environments as a result of PBEF, but it’s absolutely not a small number.

 

 

The idea of a gable roof is akin to that of an umbrella: a device for shedding water

The goal in all design and building is weather-tightness, though I would argue not air tightness, which bumps one right up against the ideology – oops, theory – of the modern vapour barrier. But that’s another matter for another occasion, perhaps. Fact is, at one hundred years of age, my bungalow remains dry and sound, sans flat roof, untrimmed windows, stucco walls or vapour barriers – and therefore it continues to serve us as a truly 'comfortable' house.

 

They may find dampness funny, but homeowners don't

Allusive Architecture

Eclectic allusions (swiss chalet, timber frame, oriental) make an intriguing facade

If you live in a house built before WWII, chances are it came with some sort of ornamental detailing that ‘alludes’ to other eras in the history of buildings. By ‘alludes’, I mean that the detailing refers to, recalls or echoes something that was common in prior times. Sometimes these details mimic groupings of features from a specific period, but more often, as with bungalows, they are an eclectic mix drawn from various times and places that the designer felt would help to impart a convincing look to the building. While such details may seem no more than arbitrary choices, how they work together with the form of your house is what gives it distinctive character.

 

Slender turned pillars supporting this verandah allude to Roman times

 

 

Playful or serious, simple or grand, added-on or integral to structure, ornament that alludes to prior periods abounds on and inside older homes. Take those columns holding up the verandah roof (above) – they might be turned wood in proportions reminiscent of the sleek Tuscan pillars of Roman antiquity, themselves allusions to stone pillars found at ancient Greek temples.

 

 

Massive chamfered posts support a heavy roofline

 

Or perhaps they’re solid but stylishly chamfered posts that distantly recall the art of timber-frame carpentry.

 

A sleeping porch with scroll-sawn balusters alluding to a Swiss chalet

These sawn balusters refer to the design of a classic table leg, upside-down

 

The verandah’s railings might have delicate scroll-sawn balusters that refer indirectly to an elegant table leg (upside down, photo above), or the roof over the verandah might be slightly lifted at the peak and tips, in a somewhat oriental manner (photo below).

 

This roof is lifted at its peak & edges, for effect

 

 

  

Or, its shingles may be rolled over the edges of the roof, vaguely recalling the look of a thatch-roofed cottage (photo below).

 

A roof rolled over its edges alluding to the look of a thatch-roofed cottage

 

Or, if by chance it's Craftsman-influenced, it may come with knee-braces, an allusion to post-and-beam carpentry (photo below).

 

Stylized knee-braces alluding to post-and-beam carpentry

 

All of these references are to things that worked in their time, that the eye liked generally, and that felt as if they belonged where they were placed. Architects chose and assembled them in order to impart a distinctive character to individual buildings, in an era when how a house looked to the world mattered more than it does nowadays.

A Queen Anne cottage with allusions galore, but perhaps too many colours

 

 

Some buildings come with so many allusions that the eye sees only a jumble lacking integration (a criticism levelled at Victorian-era buildings by modernist architects, with some reason). Other houses, like those of the bungalow era, are more chaste in their overall effect because their designers governed their choices with greater restraint (even though it could sometimes be wildly eclectic). 

 

Tudor, Craftsman, and timber frame, frankly achieved in this modern house

 

Craftsman-style houses were consciously designed to eliminate excessive detailing, preferring instead to focus on proportions, structural expression, and the drawing-out of effects of properties inherent in the finishing materials (like the wooden shingles alternated artfully below in a refurbished Vancouver home). 

Wooden shingles used artfully, above an allusion to timber framing

 

Often designers could be indirect in their use of allusion, burying their choices at several removes from literal interpretation. A distant original feature could serve to inspire a novel interpretation, without any attempt at literal replication.

 

This Maclure alludes to something, but what's not clear

 

Or, if designing a building for their own use, they deploy the allusions so indirectly that perhaps only they actually realize they exist.

 

Modernism was anti-allusion until it developed conventions, to which new builds allude

 

And of course modernist architecture believes it doesn’t allude to anything but its creator's intentions, making it entirely pure and self-referential, by which move it hopes to avoid the conundrum of being derivative.

 

 

 

Mixing allusions for effect: Tudor boards, exposed beams, dimpled stucco

 

 

The Hubert Savage bungalow came with a variety of allusions added to its distinctly California-influenced design (the bungalow form itself is laden with allusions to its origins in Bengal, India and its subsequent evolution as colonial architecture). As befits a design developed in 1913 Victoria – at that point a very English sort of place – this scheme refers overtly to Tudor-era buildings, as shown by its cross-gabled façade and decorative boards in the gable ends. A combination of boards and plaster panels in the gables hints at the wooden half-timbers and wattle-and-daub infill of Tudor-era walls, whose distinctive appearance still characterizes living buildings from the epoch. But here they just hint abstractly without trying to replicate.

Tudor boards in the gables: distant reference to a bygone era, for effect

 

 

Savage sprinkled Tudor references throughout his bungalow, as in the delicate arches above inset shelves built into the kitchen, dining room, and one bedroom's walls (photo below). This distinctive form of arch, albeit choose-able on aesthetic grounds alone, suggests a desire to seek continuity with the English cultural past.

 

 

The arched inset shelving alludes to the Tudor era

 

But Savage employed it as a motif to enrich the built-in décor of a then-modern house, and not structurally as it was used in Tudor times. This style of arch is unique in that its crown is flattened, similar to a Persian or Islamic arch from which it may have derived, and contrasting strongly with the pointed Gothic arches common in its day.

 

 

Allusions to Tudor: boxed beams, wainscots, Tudor-style arches, leaded glass

 

 

Other Tudor references common to many bungalows are the boxed beams in the living and dining room ceilings, recalling the exposed beams of actual Tudor ceilings, and the wood-panelled wainscots that lend a feeling of built-in furniture to the walls. Designers utilized these details not because they wanted to mimic Tudor times, but rather because they found them effective for the appearance and furnishing of their principal rooms.

 

 

Honeycomb-pattern window alludes to Tudor fascination with leaded glass

 

 

Savage’s bungalow also comes with an array of leaded glass windows, in rectangular, diamond-paned and even a honey-combed (hexagonal) pattern, which is consistent with the Tudor enthusiasm for these small-paned, multi-faceted windows. 

 

 

Tudor boards combined with exposed rafter tails on this Maclure bungalow

 

 

Tudor allusions were widespread in Victoria houses of the day, a trend reinforced by style-defining architects like Samuel Maclure, who deftly used them to render buildings expressing comforting continuity with an apparently familiar past. Yet even in grander houses built for the uber-wealthy, these allusions were never an attempt to literally replicate, but rather an effective way of symbolizing continuity while gaining a familiar look and feeling for these living spaces. Maclure’s expressive use of Tudor detailing produced striking buildings that remain convincing works of art to this day.

 

 

Tudor boards, signature decorative finial, in this modest Maclure bungalow

 

 

Not all of the Savage bungalow’s allusions are to Tudor. Nor are they all manifest or indeed obvious, some being masked and inviting speculation. One that I recognized some years after moving in is the ‘face’ that’s clearly visible in the design of our brick fireplace. Once you make out this unusual feature, it’s obviously been placed there intentionally, but typically it passes unnoticed because the eye simply doesn’t resolve the pattern in the brickwork. I used the room for years before mine picked it out against the background, but when I finally perceived it, it was thereafter inescapable. Heritage building consultant Stuart Stark, on the other hand, picked it up immediately, with his detective-like eye.

 

 

Once the eye discerns it, the face in the fireplace was evidently intentional

 

 

But just what does this face allude to? There I’m afraid I’m going on hunches alone, simply because it’s not a literal reference. One possibility is that it’s simply anthropomorphic, which is an ungainly term standing for the act of incorporating human features into a building. This choice is akin to a form of animism, whereby humans project a living spirit onto natural forces or animals, except that here it’s the human face rendered into the inanimate. But I don’t really think that this is likely, as there are no other indications in the building that I can detect.

 

 

Moderately anthropomorphic garage at this restored Maclure mansion

 

Another line of speculation might interpret it around the primacy of the fireplace in the ideology of the bungalow, and the focal role it plays in the room where much of family life unfolded. Control of fire for cooking and heating is at the core of human cultural evolution and is celebrated in all familial life in all settled communities (until lately, at least). 

 

 

Skara Brae: neolithic site showing a central hearth in an early human settlement

 

 

The fireplace and hearth remain potent symbols of our mastery of the elements and of the sense of domestic haven that this control affords us (one which is thought to have been under our control since Neanderthal times, i.e., over 400,000 years). In Greek antiquity (which formed the crucible of western civilization) the hearth itself symbolized both family and domesticity, and was important enough to have its very own Goddess, called Hestia, who oversaw the sacred place where fire was kept.

 
  

Vase painting of Hestia, hearth goddess

 

Hestia was among the primary gods of ancient Greece, venerated in temples where virgins apparently kept sacred flames. She was also the primary goddess of domestic life, “the giver of all domestic happiness and blessings” and deemed to be present in every individual dwelling. The bungalow’s prioritization of family life in a room anchored by a focal fireplace expresses continuity with these ancient domestic ways. So my hunch is simply that the face worked into the fireplace bricks is an indirect reference to an ancient hearth goddess who inspirited all individual homes – a remote pagan allusion in a modern Anglican household. The thought that this face distantly refers to Hestia is reinforced by the fact that Hubert Savage was an architect building a hearth-centred home for his own family, and that Hestia is also credited in lore with having taught men the art of building houses.

I feel more certain of the meaning of another deeply buried allusion I believe I’ve unearthed, in the form of a barrel-vaulted back room that Savage cleverly tucked in under a lifted roof extension. Designed as a summer tea room (as it's shown on plan), a British variant of the open sleeping porches often found in early bungalows, this tiny room serves many purposes integral to the home’s operation (back entry, hallway, utility hub, cooling cupboard, garden room, and more.) It can only work because of the barrel-vaulted ceiling, scooping out just enough height to enable the room to be functional. 

 

Curious coved ceiling alluding to a railway carriage

 

 

I was attracted to the unusual curve of that ceiling from the moment I first saw it (it imparts a snug and cozy feeling to the room), yet I had no inkling that it might be an allusion until years later. It was while perusing Anthony King’s engaging history of the bungalow as the first global house form that I had my ‘aha’ moment (The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture). King relates the early twentieth century linkage of the bungalow with things bohemian and artistic in England, an association that arose from their popularity with theatre types who escaped to seaside locations where these recreational homes served as getaways. Such resorts developed a bit of a racy reputation as regards enabling individual freedoms and looser styles of living, making them rather controversial in stuffy old England, yet emblematic of freedom for those more concerned to be hip. One community in particular, a resort known as Shoreham by Sea, had clusters of these permissive bungalows in an area that came to be known as Bungalow Town.

 

 

Recycled railway carriages were often used as recreational housing in Britain

 

 

I was fascinated to learn that it was common at the time to use surplus rail-passenger cars as ready-made bungalows – often two or three of these would be attached and turned into serviceable recreational housing. (Railways were a huge invention in industrial England and fifty years after they first flourished, there were a great many surplus rail passenger cars that were cheap to acquire). Pictures in Anthony King’s book illustrate the distinctive curve and banding pattern to the ceilings of these metal cars, some of which continue to serve as houses to this day. The curved ceiling in our back room is highly reminiscent of an early railway passenger car. I can’t help but think that Hubert Savage, a newly expatriate British architect, building his own home bungalow-style near the seaside, took the opportunity to bury an allusion to the use of these ready-made rail-car bungalows in his native England. And that, by extension, he thus reinforced an association of his modern bungalow with the ‘free and easy living’ that was being marketed as part and parcel of the bungalow-lifestyle across North America.

 

 

Three railway carriages as a makeshift bungalow, still in active daily use

 

 

Like most allusions in architecture, this is no more than an indirect reference to something past and unlikely to be seen as such by those who inhabit or use the building over time. Nor is it necessary to see it in order to use and enjoy the building. Yet these details comprise the building’s living character and fabric, and their particular combinations help create its distinct personality. I have to admit to a certain satisfaction in being able to recognize especially the buried references – it’s rather like being let in on a private entertainment!

 

 

Books For Looks:

 

The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture, A. D. King, 1995