"15 Mid-Century Modern Dream Homes that will Kill Your Children"

[james_davis_nicoll]

Generally I am not keen on a lot of 20th architecture but some of these are quite nice.

The clean lines, the geometric decorative elements, the seamless blending of indoor and outdoor space… I sure do love mid-century modern architecture.

Do you know what I love more? My children. And that is why I will never live in my MCM dream home. Because mid-century modern architecture is designed to KILL YOUR CHILDREN. (Also, moderately clumsy or drunk adults).

Comments

[azurelunatic]

I'm not entirely sure I could navigate those stairs.

[vass]

I make the mistake of beginning to read the comments on that post, and discovered what a good proxy "I'm childfree, therefore NO ONE ELSE should care about the children!11!" can be for ableism toward adults.

[konsectatrix]

Those stairs are terrifying.

Also, have learned that architecture fandom is very easy to troll.

[kraig]

Replace architecture with any word you care to nominate, or no word at all.

[seawasp]

So what they're saying is that it's a great environment for kids to learn that when mommy says "don't do that", she really MEANS it.

[evrymemry.livejournal.com]

WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN

but in all honesty those floating steps would probably kill me.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I can see myself wandering off one of those ledges.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

The first apartment I lived in was the place my now-husband and his mom rented. It had one of those ledges for the second floor, a half-width ceiling with narrow hand-made wooden stairs, no railings anywhere. That I am still alive is a miracle.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Indeed. The warnings about kids climbing up and falling off rock fireplaces were quite silly, but I'd not want to be going up and down one of those floating staircases in a hurry and get startled by one of the cats running down it.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

If I were eight I'd be right up to the ceiling on that. (As soon as Mom wasn't looking, no doubt.) Why else would you put a rock-climbing wall in the house?

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Everyone would climb up our rock wall. They were a perfect introduction to rock-climbing, twenty feet up and carpeting below, just don't fall on the sofa. There are still pennies we left up there.

[frilled-shark.livejournal.com]

My father grew up in a house with floating, polished wood steps (they did have railings, though). His mother lived in it into her 90s and somehow nobody ever slipped while running up/down in stocking feet. I don't know how they did it, those stairs scared me whenever I visited.

The house was recently sold and the new owners renovated it. I don't even think those stairs are up to building standards anymore.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

My favorite was the one with the narrow guardrail-deficient bridge across a moat, just to get to the front door. It's a trap for the UPS agent!

[heron61.livejournal.com]

For extra fun, try coming home in the dark if the circuit for the lights on either side of the bridge went out (assuming there even are such lights). At that point, crawling would seem like your safest bet. An early winter ice storm would also be impressive - as you slide off the bridge and then onto and through the thin layer of ice over the freezing cold moat. There a good chance you would escape anything worse than minor injuries, but panic followed by hypothermia doesn't sound like my favorite way to start the day.

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I liked the moat, too. You know that it offers an option for a tipping section so the home owner can fling James Bond to the piranhas.

[vass]

Or a nice alternative to 'the guttering on your roof' or 'the nearest tree' for the delivery person to aim your newspaper at, should you still get one.

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

At least most of the railing-less ledges and stairs are flat/uniform. The one that scared me the most was the black and white photo of a reflecting pool, where the bridge was a handful of random sized overlapping slabs to maximize the chances of tripping. The visible electric outlet right next to the water is a bonus.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Maybe that's where Peter Jackson got his anti-railing mania?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

If I'm not mistaken, this is also a style that involves a step or two down (easy to forget about) to get from one major room to another, so that those open floor plans aren't too boring.

[(Anonymous)]

We don't need no stinkin' safety railings!

And neither does the Empire!

http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/24885/safety-railings-in-the-star-wars-universe

http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0452.html

[julesjones]

I'm afraid of heights. I felt dizzy just looking at the photos of the floating stairs. The spiral one would have me curled into a whimpering ball if I was expected to actually use it.

[editrx.livejournal.com]

I grew up in one of those types of homes - sort of makes me wonder how I survived. I do admit I jumped off the garage roof (um, more than once - I thought I might be able to fly, since I could in my dreams, and this demanded repetition for serious scientific study!). Other kids in my neighborhood had similar homes of weirdness and we didn't think much of climbing, exploring, etc. I mean, none of us died. I did open my lip once in one fall (not from the garage, but from a step).

My godfather, Howard Head (Head skis, Prince tennis rackets, etc. - crazy and lovely inventor), had a huge home in Baltimore with a sort of moat made of "floating" tiles surrounded by hip-deep water and HUGE koi. I mean really really enormous. One night, pretty drunk, he missed some step and fell in. Apparently ran to a neighbor's and called the police that someone had attacked his house by putting sharks "in his front lawn." My mother had to drive from DC to Baltimore to bail him out of the drunk tank.

[frilled-shark.livejournal.com]

I love this story.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Climbing wall, YES. Open fireplace, YES. Reflecting pool, NO. House mold is bad enough without giving it a beachhead.

But the real reason I don't want a house like that is the heating/cooling bills. Give me a nice pre-A/C Arts and Crafts bungalow with functioning windows. And transoms, so I can let the air in and keep the cat out.

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

Yes! Transoms are your friend as are things built in the 1920s - 1950s in terms of window cooling, even in the swamp-like climate here.

[t--m--i.livejournal.com]

I loved the comment where someone asked (seriously or just very good at deadpanning?) whether that post, which included the phrase, "rabid bats", was serious.

[dcseain.livejournal.com]

The HS i didn't attend has floating stairs, if ones with railings on what would be the open side.

[laetitia-apis.livejournal.com]

Maintaining the over-wrought tone appears to have gotten to be a bit of a strain about halfway down the page. Puts me in mind of the Gallery of Regrettable Food. But it ends sooner, so the author doesn't get as far into puerility.

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

Yeah, as much as I love Lileks... all too often he doesn't know when to stop.

[chrysostom476.livejournal.com]

September 10, 2011 would have been a good bet.

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

I gave up on him long before that... back when he switched from writing a journal to having a blog.

[chrysostom476.livejournal.com]

2001, obv.

[felis-sidus.livejournal.com]

Let's see... At about age 4 I followed my older cousins up on the pitched roof of our 1940s bungalow. None of us fell off, but we did knock down the suspended ceiling in our den. Somewhere between ages 3 and 5 I fell an down an entire flight of safely enclosed stairs in my aunt and uncle's conventionally designed town house. Somewhat later, I slid slowly off the roof of the old-fashioned garage at my father's office where my sister and I had climbed to pick the grapes dangling from a vine in an overhanging tree.

When we moved into a mid-century modern house when I was seven, I had no trouble managing the step-down family room, the balcony off my parent's room which led out onto a roof with both pitched and flat portions that were great for sunning and jumping off of, or the roof itself. The only one who ever was injured by the design of that house was my mother, who gave herself a black eye when she was insufficiently cautious while opening the front door with the doorknob in the center of the door.

As a young adult, I caught the heel of my shoe at the top of a set of stairs which turned 180 degrees at a landing half-way up. Or down, more to the point. Through a series of acrobatic maneuvers I managed to land on my feet on the landing, no thanks to the nice, protective bannister.

I conclude from all this that any house will kill your children if they're adventurous enough and that stairs are not my friends. Those open stairs probably would do me in even today.

[joenotcharles.livejournal.com]

Some of the more elaborate ones won't ever have children in them anyway. If you're rich enough to afford that house, you're rich enough to afford boarding school.