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ARCHITECTURE: SPACE AND COLOR

Central Feature

Space—lots of it—was the key feature of interior design in the 1950s. Influenced by the severe designs of Mies van der Rohe and other Bauhaus architects who sought an integration of visual arts into society, both American homes and public buildings were built with lots of spare, open space. House Beautiful magazine was lyrical about "our wonderful 20th century concept of space … the free and easy movement from the house to the garden and back to the house … vistas for the eye to roam or relax in—indoors and out and upwards." Said designer George Nelson in Living Spaces: "It is not efficiency that we are looking for, but freedom from dimensional barriers."

Breaking Down Barriers

At the same time, walls and rooms became scarce. Wright's concept of "open" architectural plans meshed with the idea of flowing space, and great rooms—actually, no demarcated rooms at all—were the result. There was a bonus: the function of the room could change according to the occasion.

Furniture

Furniture was also spare and was grouped according to function. There was probably no wall between the living room and dining room; the furniture identified the room. Recessed lighting fixtures replaced space-consuming lamps, and flooring materials "were continuous throughout a space, to enhance the sense of openness." There was minimal clutter in 1950s homes—few ornamentations or gewgaws. They would, after all, take up space.

Offices, Too

Open plans were the preferred look in offices, too. CEOs were sold on the idea that open space encouraged communication and greater intimacy among workers, thereby helping the company run more smoothly. The spare, lean office furniture designed in the 1950s by Charles Eames, Eero Saarinen, George Nelson, Florence Knoll, and others fit right in. A pamphlet published in 1957 by the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company talked about the advantages of open space: "An unexpected dividend is the greater intimacy in which we spend our working day. In vertical buildings, where quick elevators take one from a small work level to the street level, there are few spontaneous meetings, few casual interchanges of work experiences. Here in the … lounges and on the daily routes of travel through the buildings, we are getting to know each other better."

Privacy? What Privacy?

With few walls (except glass ones) in houses and offices of the 1950s, privacy was hard to come by, but 1950s designers came up with solutions: screens, freestanding storage units, and curtains. All were used to divide one large space into smaller spaces and give some privacy as well. The screens of the 1950s were imaginative: some were fiberglass, some were bamboo, some were strips of plastic beads. Plastic accordion walls were popular, too. In offices bookcases and storage units were used to divide vast spaces into smaller, more-private nooks.

Colorful Colors

Americans in the 1950s liked bright, bold colors as much as they liked space. Splashes of color warmed up the severe architecture and simple furniture of the era. Colors were displayed exuberantly, sometimes as accents, sometimes covering entire rooms. One designer, Donald Deskey, even came up with a line of "splotchily colored furniture … made of cast aluminum and poly-chrome Micarta. In tones ranging from blue-into-violet to red-into-sienna, they provided some of the color accents thought to be so appropriate for the more sophisticated space of the fifties." Even some bomb shelters were colorful. Writer William Manchester described one in Los Angeles with "brightly painted concrete walls [and] shamrock green plastic carpeting."