4.1 | The Quality of Newly Constructed Suburbs

Part of the motivation for this project came from architects concerned over the quality of developer housing being built after World War II. This project, in some respects, was also intended to legitimate the architect by demonstrating how these professionals could improve comfort.

Magazine spreads from House Beautiful magazine, photograph by author.
Model on bottom right is image from Jeffrey Ellis Aronin's Climate and Architecture.


House Beautiful featured articles on good developer housing, as well as how the developer house (specifically) could be improved. The diagram on the lower right is from Aronin's book Climate and Architecture. The AIA was not concerned with how the arrangement of buildings could improve climatic conditions, however, the researchers who built upon this Climate Control Project did begin to investigate the issue of how climate can be manipulated on the larger scale of a community.

This project represents one contradiction between how the AIA and House Beautiful approached this project because of their varying agendas and audiences.