6.0 | The AIA Bulletins

The AIA Bulletin, a bi-monthly publication, featured climate data and associated design guidelines for architects to follow between September 1949 and early 1952. Each Bulletin featured guidelines for a different region (these are listed in the 'Regions' tab on the right sidebar). References to the House Beautiful articles was made in the Bulletin, and homeowners were often instructed to inform their architect about the Bulletin's findings. While House Beautiful provided concrete examples of climatically sensitive design in action, the Bulletin was solely maps, charts, and instructions for the proper design of basements, wall detailing, and percentages of glass. These Bulletins did not incorporate articles, with the exception of the first article, and were really intended more as manuals than as the glamorous, glossy project House Beautiful portrayed. However, subsequent textbooks would build upon the notion of combining the AIA portrayal of data with House Beautiful's rendering of the data's application.

The AIA Bulletin was critical of post-WWII construction and was interested in providing the public was quality housing. '[T]he term functional has been misused and has become in the hands of many designers,' the September report states. It contines;

'a catch phrase and a selling argument for their particular brand of design which in many cases is no more functional than some of the eclectic work of the preceding generation. Many of the owners and occupants of so-called functional houses are discovering that they have been sold another 'style' which consists of a new vocabulary of cliches which the designer has disposed in an arbitrary fashion for visual effect, a procedure little different from some of the much maligned eclectic practices.'22

Click here to see Victor Olgyay's 1963 diagram from Design with Climate (as a PDF) which illustrates the evolution and interpretation of climate data from collection to execution on different scales of building.