Josef Karel Říha: For Housing Reform - The Apartment and Its Furnishings

The interior design of apartments has always evolved over time towards typification, characteristic of the contemporary conditions. It can be said that the professional interest in the subject of housing has progressed from large apartments over time to medium-sized apartments and today to the smallest apartments, disregarding large apartments as a contemporary expression (most large apartments today represent bygone stylistic efforts). The furnishing of apartments mutually conditioned the floor plan solution, and as soon as the contemporary interest aimed at medium-sized apartments, practicality and space-saving considerations were already taken into account. The reduction of kitchens and bedrooms (especially in French and English floor plans) and economical solutions for apartments in rapidly growing cities necessarily provoked new requirements for furnishing; both the progress and ingenuity of industrial production played a role, capable of supplying and manufacturing in series at lower prices, as well as the introduction of electricity, perfect city sewage systems, etc. Due to the stylistic confusion and applied forms of the romantic period, however, the actual furnishing of the apartment remained untouched by new currents, and on the contrary, the average apartment from the end of the previous century is an example of completely misguided furnishing and a total misunderstanding of the actual purposes of furniture, far behind the functional, simple, and very well thought-out furniture of the late Empire, which was created during the time of the first political freedoms, during the middle class era.
Modern efforts to improve apartment standards have mostly dealt with the formal aspects of the apartment, and I believe that architects have been more concerned with this as their countries lay further east on the European map. However, the strongest impulses have recently come from America, and their result is the attempt to view the solution of the apartment as a solution to the domestic process, approached on the basis of rational knowledge and an awareness of the significance and functions of every detail, as well as their mutual arrangement and connections. Recently, a widely circulated book by B. Taut, "Die neue Wohnung," is primarily based on positive values from American sources, mainly seemingly on the book by Mrs. Christine Frederick, and from the impulse of the American spirit grew the competition organized by the publishing house "Bauwelt" in Berlin, which was dedicated to the contemporary issue of small apartments with built-in furniture or better said according to the results, with minimally sized furniture arranged as conveniently as possible (the built-in nature in most cases was not entirely necessary and somewhat advantageous compared to freely standing furniture). But at the same time, upon discovering the American influence, we can also admit to Europe that it, as a centuries-old battlefield for the expression of the artistic spirit of the era and manufacturing methods, is more capable of creating apartments appropriate to their time, without today's romanticism of "sweet home" and apartment interiors that are filled with very strange illustrations in various American magazines and reviews.
Articles specifically about the practical arrangement of apartments, kitchens, installations, and domestic processes will be brought by "Stavba," including a report on the aforementioned American book and then about a book by Mr. Eng. J. Špaček, dedicated to these questions and their solutions in America. There is nothing substantial to add to American insights, and it is more about adapting them to our conditions. But regarding the economics of living space, we can approximately say the following about the development of floor plans in residential buildings here: We need the kitchens to be reduced to a minimum, and in return, the accessories of the apartments should be increased and improved. Gas stoves allow for the simplest kitchen solutions. Built-in wardrobes are of great significance for both the practicality and appearance of the apartment, as they allow, for example, that besides libraries – if particularly large ones are already needed – no piece of furniture exceeds a height of 1 m 20 cm, thus neutralizing the lowered height of rooms and maintaining the impression of the interior even in new buildings with minimal heights, since the impression is relative and depends on relationships and proportions, not on actual heights. Low furniture is present in some fashionable French interiors. Built-in wardrobes only become practical when they do not create corners and angles in the rooms, which then become just as lost as when using freely standing furniture. The significance of our directly lit hallways in their current form is questionable (elsewhere, directly lit bathrooms are used, where a WC can be installed, and unlit minimal hallways; in recent times, it has been the opposite here). A significantly large area of directly lit hallways cannot almost be used at all for living and placing furniture when its walls are punctured by doors.
As for furniture, it can be said that modern furnishing cannot be resolved without considering a complete revision of existing habits that have created specific types of individual pieces. Lifestyles change, and with them, the needs of households necessarily change as well. If the need for porcelain, glass, etc., is revised, the shape of the sideboard and the entire arrangement of the dining room changes. If the tendency of the time is to increasingly use semi-finished products that are purchased ready-made during cooking, if gas is used for cooking, or if, in the future, with the electrification of Europe and the payment for investments in hydroelectric power plants and valley dams, cheap electricity will be used for heating, the kitchen and its furnishings will radically change. The use of bathrooms with mounted sinks and the use of recessed wardrobes completely change the appearance and character of bedrooms, where only beds, possibly a linen cabinet, or a toilet and comfort are needed. The character of the modern apartment (some Dutch interiors) depends on a whole range of factors that have nothing to do with "art" and today's artistic education and are significant enough that without them, in a house built in an outdated manner and without modern construction furnishings, it is impossible to create an interior permeated by a truly modern spirit. These are factors that are still officially completely overlooked, although respecting them leads to a number of completely surprising results, after which effect generations, misled by the application of "stylishness" of past eras, which formed under entirely different living and production conditions, strive laboriously on incorrect paths. I do not believe that the exclusive word in our foreseeable future arrangement of apartments will be dictated by typified factory production. For recently, factories specializing in wood processing have begun to supply a whole range of ready-made semi-finished products to carpentry workshops, such as plywood, laminated boards, etc., which can significantly reduce the manufacturing lead time in the workshop and the amount of manual labor expended, which is still very significant even in furniture factories. Even small workshops can operate well and compete if they produce furniture in such a way that they process semi-finished products as much as possible and carry out assembly work, especially those that large factories cannot avoid. However, this requires that furniture designs respect the possibility of such production and adapt themselves to their time. And in this circumstance lies the second germ of modern furniture, the type of furniture that, regardless of the luxurious interiors of the applied arts, formed by a spirit that does not look back at time and surroundings, will flood the apartments of the vast majority of people and give its time a certain character, just as any previous "stylized" period did. However, the stylishness of the past has been surpassed, and unlike previous periods, furniture of various kinds will be used in the same room.
Finally, the ever-increasing technological discoveries may have a significant influence on the way of furnishing and its character, which may one day radically change the quality and type of materials used. Older furniture, for example, almost exclusively knew the use of marble or later imitations of it, whereas today multifarious glass production makes it unnecessary to resort to expensive and cumbersome materials. The same applies to the floors of our rooms, the use of windows, and the methods of locksmithing, which will become increasingly significant in the production of practical furniture. The development and quality of modern textiles and the advancement of lighting technology are also specific questions, important because almost all our apartments are illuminated in an unbearable and outdated manner, even compared to the possibilities of today's technology in this field. Without orientation in this chaos of industrial attempts and positive results of today's technological progress, it is impossible to create or rather simply assemble a modern interior.