How to Live in a Flat? Heath Robinson Knows!

Housing is important in maintaining and improving public health, as well as quality of life and wellbeing for all. As well as dangers to physical health such as damp, excessive heat and cold, and hygiene, poor quality housing also impacts on mental health and wellbeing because people need space, light, security, privacy and quiet. The thinking on housing and wellbeing has been developing over the last 100 years. The focus on morality and basic health concerns in the nineteenth century was replaced in the early twentieth century by broader concerns for wellbeing. For example, The Complete House Book of 1937 pointed out that ‘Insufficient lighting was is not only depressing and a strain on the eyes, but can also cause worse trouble; headaches, indigestion, general lassitude and irritation can often be traced to it’.

Once Britain had recovered from the First World War and the depression, there was a boom in house-building in the 1930s and the clearance of slums was a priority. Although the new homes were often smaller than those built before the war, an increase in flat-dwelling promised to bring exciting new developments in modern urban living. In the Victorian era living in a flat was looked down upon because of the association with working-class tenements. However, such prejudices broke down in the inter-war years, so much so that in 1934 the journal Building devoted its August issue to flat design.

Features of privately built flats in the 1930s included things like bay windows – regarded as important to distinguish privately owned flats from council flats, which at the time did not have bay windows. They also made rooms appear larger, gave residents better views and admitted more light to rooms, which was a very important consideration in modern architecture at the time. In the title How to Live in a Flat you will see that Heath Robinson draws his blocks of flats as lovely Art Deco buildings with clean lines and the large steel-framed windows that were popular at the time.

Flat design also took into account the radical transition from living in a house with servants to living without the support system that had been a feature of home life for everyone except the very poorest for centuries. Modern technology helped to make this easier with things like communal hot water systems. As Leslie Hoskins, curator of the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture, told The Daily Telegraph in 2003:

There was still a notion that the most desirable way to live was in a house with servants. It was to counteract this idea that brochures for 1930s flats all talked up the modern comforts and amenities on offer. Great emphasis was placed on the fact that blocks of flats provided round-the-clock hot water – which was something you'd only get in a house if you had a maid who kept the boiler constantly stoked.

A communal hot water system was also designed to show that living in a flat could represent a move upmarket, something that developers were keen to emphasise to counter the prevailing prejudice against living in a flat.

Serviced flats were common too as a way of providing an alternative to a full coterie of servants. For example, The Isokon building in Hampstead, London, is a concrete block of 34 flats that was designed by architect Wells Coates for Molly and Jack Pritchard and which opened in 1934. The flats were an experiment in minimalist urban living. Most of the flats had very small kitchens as there was a large communal kitchen for the preparation of meals, connected to the residential floors via a dumb waiter. Services, including laundry and shoe-shining, were provided on site.
    

The Isokon Building

The main entrance of the Isokon Building                                            

Furniture too was designed specifically to make living in a small space easier. Drop-leaf and gate-leg tables, which date back to the sixteenth-century, are a testament to the historic lack of space in British homes. In the 1930s flat the nest of tables became popular. In fact, this concept of things stacking away or folding up was close to the hearts of 1930s interior designers, as demonstrated by such remarkable gadgets as the 10-way settee, the night-time dressing table which transformed into a daytime desk and the four-seater dining table which could be packed away inside a sideboard.
All of these developments are caricatured by William Heath Robinson and K. R. G. Browne in How to Live in a Flat. Indeed in the Introduction the authors specifically refer to the scarcity of servants, which they give as one reason why people feel they have to move into a flat. However, what Heath Robinson is best known for are his solutions to every-day problems and he is on top form in this book with his contraptions and devices designed to help with life in a very small space. Thus we have the Heath Robinson Dibedroom – a combined dining and bedroom achieved by moving a wall:

Another proposed solution, similar to the dressing table/desk combo mentioned above, is Heath Robinson’s combined bath and writing desk for business men - not only space-saving but time-saving too!:

Recently there have been several newspaper articles about tiny studio flats being sold and rented for outrageous prices. It seems we are living in ‘rabbit-hutch Britain’. The RIBA says that new-build British homes are the smallest in Europe and the average home is now just 925 square feet – barely half the size they were in the 1920s.One thing that certainly doesn't help is that Britain is the only country in Europe to sell houses based on the number of bedrooms and not on the square footage. In 1967-9 minimum space standards (the Parker Morris Standard) were introduced but these standards were scrapped by Margaret Thatcher in 1980. Since then there has been increasing concern about the harm that lack of space in the home can cause; small may be beautiful - but not if you have to live in it. Therefore, How to Live in a Flat is surprisingly relevant to life in Britain in 2014. In fact, several of Heath Robinson’s space-economising solutions have been used in practice to maximise the use of space in small flats. We have beds that fold down from wardrobes fully-made and ready to sleep in, communal rubbish shoots, central heating and multi-purpose furniture. So Heath Robinson was way ahead of his time and reading Howto Live in a Flat may spark other innovative solutions to making life bearable in a tiny twenty-first century home!