ABSTRACT
In the years of reconstruction and economic boom that followed the Second World War, the domestic sphere encountered new expectations regarding social behaviour, modes of living, and forms of dwelling. This book brings together an international group of scholars from architecture, design, urban planning, and interior design to reappraise mid-twentieth century modern life, offering a timely reassessment of culture and the economic and political effects on civilian life.
This collection contains essays that examine the material of art, objects, and spaces in the context of practices of dwelling over the long span of the postwar period. It asks what role material objects, interior spaces, and architecture played in quelling or fanning the anxieties of modernism’s ordinary denizens, and how this role informs their legacy today.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part 1|63 pages
Psychological Constructions
chapter 3|19 pages
Scopophobia/Scopophilia
part 2|82 pages
Ideological Objects
chapter 4|20 pages
The Allegory of the Socialist Lifestyle
part 3|58 pages
Societies of Consumers
chapter 7|20 pages
“But a home is not a laboratory”
chapter 8|17 pages
Architect-Designed Interiors for a Culturally Progressive Upper-Middle Class
chapter 9|19 pages
Domestic Environments
part 4|70 pages
Class Concerns and Conflict
chapter 11|27 pages
Upper West Side Stories
part |15 pages
Coda