Energy efficiency conflicted with postwar taste for glass and open layouts

Evidence

Even if a homebuyer appreciated the aesthetic arguments for modern design, the requirements for energy efficiency often seemed needlessly restrictive. A home could offer the new closeness to nature – the picture windows, the open layout – without the constraints of a solar house. Why orient all the important rooms to the south? Why not have great expanses of glass everywhere? Except for the handful of true believers, the answer was simply a matter of taste. — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 248

Categorization

• XREF: ‘Closeness to nature’ via picture windows is itself land/place-driven consumerism the reader may connect to the tree-cleared lots passage. — connects to: Mass-produced tract housing erased regional climate-adapted design by 1950 — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 240; Mass-production homebuilding homogenized house design and spiked energy use nationwide — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 34; Early solar advocates framed efficiency as saving resources, not reducing pollution — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 215 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Postwar modernist building choices were driven by cost and technology, not style ideology #corroborates (0.75) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 468