2.2 | History

A Crisis of Fuel and National Identity

The concerns of the United States' massive consumption and role as a model for other nations which have been part of our own discourse as of late were highlighted by Brown in the early 1950s. Brown indicated that people in other nations saw America's material abundance and strove for similar lifestyles. His Cold War periodization is apparent in a discussion of the spread of industrialization to Japan and the Soviet Union. He wrote that '[b]y 1950 it seemed likely that industrialization, like agriculture, might one day become world-wide.'8

The data presented in the studies had been provided by the National Weather Bureau, initially collected in part for military use. By the mid 1940s enough data had been collected to make other applications of it possible.

Springing out of the second world war, climate was also perceived as a force which could be harnessed for national productivity, not only with regard to fuel usage, but also with regard to the productivity of man. Books such as Climate and the Energy of Nations, Climate Makes the Man, Mainsprings of Civilization, Temperature and Human Life, Climate Human, and American Building are highlighted in House Beautiful's introductory article and reflect this attitude.9 In the October 1949 issue, Gordon makes a statement in which he attempts to justify a modern aesthetic according to a climatic understanding. Although odd, it is demonstrative of the project's aims to attribute to climate greater significance. Gordon wrote; 'When you are extremely hot your body relaxes and your mind becomes contemplative, imaginative. You like flowing rounded lines, poetic ideas, shapes like a woman's. When you are very cold your body becomes tense and rigid. Your cool self becomes rational, energetic, efficient. You like things square, to fit exactly. If you had to design a building, it would come out engineered, functional, square-cornered, and factory-like.'10


Image appeared in the October 1949 issue of House Beautiful magazine.

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