There is scarcely a woman houseworker
in the world who, if asked, would not be able to give a concise description of
her conception of the ideal house from the housekeeper's point of view. After
all it is the housekeeper whose work is centred in the home, and she ought, above
all people, to be consulted in the drawing up of architectural plans, says an
exchange.
Women are becoming more and more
interested in architecture, both from the artistic and the utility point of
view. Among the number of women who have taken up house designing as a
profession, two notable names are those of Miss Chapman who began her work some
twenty-five years ago over a draughting board in an architect's office in
Boston, and Mrs. May Cane, one of our most distinguished British women
architects.
Mrs. Cane, who has been elected the
first woman member of the Concrete Institute for Architects and Engineers, had
no special training for the profession of which she is a distinguished member.
She has always taken an interest in architecture, especially from the point of
view of adapting the construction of the house to labour-saving devices.
Mrs. Cane is the designer of a new
type of bungalow with fitted furniture, adapted to save domestic labour. The
idea is to build the furniture into the dwelling, so that there is nothing to
move, no space for the accumulation of dust, cupboards are under the fixed bed,
chests of drawers form part of the dressing table. The kitchen is a model of
labour-saving appurtenances built into the room. Bookcases, and even settees,
are part of the structure, and not of its movable appointments.
New Zealand Herald
17 June 1922
Page 4
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