During the holidays I was hugely excited to find a gorgeous collection of 1940s Australian Home Beautiful magazines – all bound up in a single volume. There was no cover on the book and nothing to hint at all the treasures that lay inside so when I opened it up I reckon my eyes lit up like a Christmas tree! These days Australian Home Beautiful is mostly about interior design, but back in the 1940s there was obviously a greater focus on architectural design – especially with the second world war coming to an end and people starting to think about building their own home.
Small home design was a prominent feature in the magazine, and lots of the articles resonate with today’s residential design trends. One story that struck a particular cord was ‘Exterior Design in the Small Home’ by Leonard A. Bullen which was part of a series of articles about architectural elements in smaller homes. In the first article (which I’ve included here), there’s some excellent, well explained information about massing, including three different exterior options for a small home plan. Hope you enjoy!
‘Exterior Design in the Small House’, by Leonard A. Bullen
“Only a very few of the houses you see when you walk along a suburban street are designed by architects. In the large majority of cases the design is worked out by the building contractor, while occasionally his client, the owner of the house-to-be, supplies the design.
Sometimes it happens that the builder has some architectural training and has therefore a certain amount of experience in design, and in consequence the house is an architectural success. I know of one or two building contractors who began their working life in architecture, and later switched over to building; and the houses they built are as well designed as those of most architects. In a few other cases the builder employs a trained architectural draftsman to design his work for him and here again the results are successful. But these cases are all too rare and only a small proportion of our home architecture is well designed. Not that all architects are 100 p.c. designers.
It is true that the average member of the general public is not aware of this fact, nor is he much worried by it when it is pointed out to him. Because of this, the architecturally-trained minority cusses and writhes at what it regards as the general public’s bad taste. I can sympathise with the architecturally-trained minority, but I can also see that the architecturally-untrained public is not really to blame, for comparatively few well designed houses are seen in the suburbs so that people lack a standard whereby to judge the rest.
Nevertheless, when you talk to the average man or woman interested in houses – and few men and women are not – you soon realise that his or her appreciation of fine design can be easily awakened. In this series of articles therefore I wish to tell you some of the things about houses that give them a harmonious and restful appearance, and to help you in your appreciation of design. I am assuming that you are a member of the architecturally-untrained public, and that you have the same interest in houses that anyone has who either lives in one now or hopes to build one in the future.
I will begin by talking about the general massing of the exterior – the grouping and shaping of its larger elements – primarily from the aesthetic side and secondly from the functional side.
To begin with, then, consider illustration 1 – a typical “open” plan which usually masses up an interesting composition if properly handled. In the next three illustrations I have given three versions of the exterior massing, largely to show you the differences in external effect that result from different ways of treating the roof.
Above: Illustration 1 (Australian Home Beautiful June 1945, p20)
In illustration 2, the roof is hipped throughout, so that we have an eaves-gutter right around the house giving to it a great deal of “horizontal feeling” and making the general effect lower and closer to the ground. This is emphasised by a brick base to window-sill height – another horizontal feature.
Above: Illustration 2 (Australian Home Beautiful June 1945, p20)
You can see what I am driving at by comparing this illustration with the next (illustration 3) where gable roofs are used instead of hips. The whole house seems higher, even though the actual height to the topmost point of the roof is exactly the same. The brick base is omitted, the eaves gutter does not continue around the whole house, and in the treatment of the porch there are no definitively horizontal lines. Consequently, although there is no vertical character about the house, the horizontal character is not stressed, and the whole feeling of the exterior in illustration 3 is different from that in illustration 2.
Above: Illustration 3 (Australian Home Beautiful June 1945, p21)
I, personally, like the gabled treatment better than the hipped treatment: I think the gables are brighter and more lively, whereas the insistent horizontality given by the hipped roof appears to me a little dull and monotonous. The fact, however, that I like it more does not mean that is better in actuality. To a problem in arithmetic there is one right answer, and the fact that it is the right answer is determined by rigid mathematical laws. In aesthetic design, the right answer is determined partly by the likes and dislikes of individual human beings, and partly by aesthetic laws. I may be able to impart to you some information about aesthetic laws, but I cannot impose on you my own personal likes and dislikes. To you, the hipped treatment in illustration 2 may be more attractive because its horizontal lines are more restful, and that may be perhaps because something in your nature demands this appearance of restfulness.
Now consider illustration 4. There are in this design elements taken from the other two: There are the gables of one and the hips of the other. It is not always a good idea to mix gables and hips in the one roof, but in this case the roof lends itself to such treatment, for it consists of a sort of pyramid-shaped central mass with two wings running into it.
Above: Illustration 4 (Australian Home Beautiful June 1945, p21)
What I have said in this article does not give you any profound and fundamental law of aesthetic design. It is not meant to do so; it is meant rather to show you how, in the general massing of a house, different psychological effects can be gained by stressing or by subduing some characteristic, for example, as in the examples I have used, the horizontal line.”
Interesting how this design was called “open plan”! 
Look out for a couple of other examples from the 1940s Australian Home Beautiful in the next few months – including a great story about prefab houses that were built from materials and techniques used in the aircraft industry…