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).
We can be reasonably certain that none of these children reached adulthood.
As a public service, Projectophile is alerting its readers to the dangers posed by key elements of mid-century modern residential design.
1. OPEN LEDGES:
I love open, flowing space as much as the next modern girl. But I know it would only be a matter of minutes before my kid flings himself off one of these deadly ledges…
Red arrows show the direction of travel of children’s bodies
What four-year-old can resist that hidden nook?
That’s going to require at least ten stitches.
Where are all the children? Probably under that ledge, unconscious.
Someone needs to call protective services on this place, because this stylish modern mother is too absorbed in her reading to notice that all her children have fallen into the living room garden:
2. FIRE, WATER, AND OTHER DEATH TRAPS INSPIRED BY NATURE:
First of all, make sure your kid wears her helmet when she inevitably climbs up, and then falls of of, this rock formation in your dream living room.
Be sure to check those crevices for rabid bats.
As soon as you turn around to fetch the marshmallows, Junior is going to stumble right into that open fireplace (and stumble out with some third-degree burns). And watch out for that mysterious little nook on the right!
The use of indoor reflecting pools creates a calm and deadly space in your modern dream home:
Children in mid-century modern homes are advised to wear flotation devices at all times. This glamorous couple has no idea what danger lurks in that strangely-placed reflective pool.
“Darling, why is it suddenly so quiet in there?”
And for goodness sake, don’t send your kids trick-or-treating near this Mid-Century Modern fortress:
3. FLOATING STAIRS:
Nothing is more un-modern than an unsightly railing on your stairs. To add extra danger to your mid-century staircase, twist the stairs into a dramatic 180-degree turn, or simply make the angle of the stairs extra steep.
(Hey, aren’t these just a bunch of IKEA Lack shelves nailed to a wall?)
These extra-dangerous stairs lead right to the ceiling, guaranteeing a concussion for your curious child.
These soaring, multi-story bannisters add a touch of safety, but you know my kid would totally get her head stuck in between them. Keep a crowbar handy to pry her free…
The mid-century dream house below comes with its own on-site medical team, in the very likely event that your children will either drown, fall, slip on those mossy stairs, or impale themselves on a rock.
Or maybe that’s dried blood I see on those stairs?
If you care about your children’s safety, perhaps you’ll want to settle down in a late Georgian colonial revival.
projectophile 
I just moved into a MCM and the first month, I lived in fear that the dog would fall down the stairs. Turns out, she is smarter than me but I am pretty sure a toddler will never set foot on the second floor.
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This is awesome. Thank you.
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That mysterious nook is for fire wood.
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Hilarious!
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love it!
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Or, 15 good reasons to not have kids.
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@Barry C.
If one sees this as a “good” reason not to have kids…Don’t have kids.
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Well said Nuschler.
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Pssst! Not everyone wants to have kids! and that’s ok.
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Right ON, Barry C!
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I love your sense of humor, and I think we would be great friends! Perhaps next you could do a post on how to gain a sense of humor. Because apparently…….
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awesome. I saw those lack shelves as stairs a while back.. dying to find the original image of them leading to the ceiling. I do love me some MCM though.
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There’s a staircase like that in the Winchester Mansion in California–Open the door, go up the stairs, crack head on ceiling,.. weird. In the new home, one puts Plants and widgets on the shelves and the kids/cats drop them onto unsuspecting visitors below!!!
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Hahaha! This actually made me laugh out loud. I had one of those ‘its funny coz it’s true’ moments. Thank you.
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I really appreciated the humour in this posting, however thousands of us did grow up in these houses and loved it. I really believe in survival of the fittest.
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Exactly Malcom. If the kids can not navigate the architecture of these homes safely, then how will they survive out in the real world? These architects could be doing us a huge favor. Besides the visual delights if the spaces, they are potentially thinning the heard.
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So agree David & Malcolm!
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To quote Larry Niven “Think of it as evolution in action”.
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love the house. so its not child proofed, oh well…
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really funny perspective on MCM homes
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My parents stuck a playpen in the backseat of their mid-1950s tail fin Ford when I was a baby, and I’d stand and crawl around in it while they were driving. No seat belts. No child seat. No nuthin’ holding it down. Those were the days.
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Funny thing, even on our 1947 Chrysler, there was the option of seat belts. When my father bought our 1960 Ford Fairlane, still no seat belts. He collected three of that model (actually a standard coupe, a salesman’s model with no back seat or roll-down back winds, and a Starliner). Loving to tinker, he decided to put after-market seat belts in them. He found that the threaded anchor holes for the belts were already there, filled with rubber putty. I wonder how far back that goes.
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Is that last house with the endless pool and the extra-steep stairs the one from “Diamonds Are Forever” where James Bond had to fight Bambi and Thumper to rescue Willard Whyte?
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Good Eye that’s the Elrod House by John Lautner. I think Mr. Lautner may have REALLY not liked kids! You need to look up the Sheats Goldstein House (also seen in several movies): Sharp edged triangular glass tables, a narrow shiny irregular entry path surrounded by water, hillside terraces with no railing, an invisible sink! – – – You get the picture. Very funny column BTW!
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We just looked at a 1958 house on the mkt that had a very lovely wood deck (12″ drop) with just a top rail along the length and no rails whatsoever at the ends. Supposedly, 6 kids were raised in that house.
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And six more mysteriously disappeared 🙂
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It’s not just children – my father inadvertently followed some lumber he was tossing off the front deck of the 1959 I-style house I grew up in. The railing ended once the deck was no longer 6 feet above grade. Somehow he avoided landing on the wood or seriously injuring himself, but it was an eye-opening experience for me to realize how quickly a parent could get into trouble when you only turned your back on them for a few seconds. My personal experience as a child was similar to the A frame pictured above, except I didn’t run under the handrail, but vaulted onto it – then toppled over the far side to smash the lemon tree flat. Why anyone would plant something with thorns that size where children would live might be the landscape architecture version of this post.
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If you had enough money to live in one of these homes, wouldn’t your children be away at boarding school anyway?
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So this will go on forever? projectophile makes a tongue-in-cheek study of the safety pitfalls of Mid-Century Modern design, and some get it, and some do not. Get a sense of humor. From some of the designs I’ve seen, the architects had one.
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I’m always afraid of the non-tempered glass in sliding glass doors and all-glass walls…
Also, I was told by one of the Stahl children (who grew up in Case Study House #22) that their mother made them wear life jackets when playing in the yard around the pool; and after the kids were found roller skating on the concrete Living Room floors in that glass house, they put in carpets…
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Hey, thanks for the great collection of photos of so many groovy mod homes! I say, let that ultra controlling “parent” buy a Georgian colonial revival or an ugly boring tract home. That means less competition for those of us who appreciate style and aesthetics in our living space. Mid century modern architecture rocks!
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I remember some of these home features growing up and we as kids loved them!!! This was part of the evolutionary process in the good old days. What didn’t kill us made us stronger (and scarred- not scared!) “The Bubble Wrap- Everyone is a Winner” generation with Helicopter Parents is totally unprepared for the realities of the real world. Great pics & commentary.
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Architecture has been a con game, an emperor-with-no-clothes racket, for at least 60 years. All the points made by Tom Wolfe, Henry Hope Reed, and James Howard Kunstler on this subject still apply. Those points will continue to apply till the narrow, deadly cult of contemporary architecture is overthrown. Let me repeat some of them:
Before architecture can evolve along human, humane, lines builders must return to basic principles. Buildings need to be easy to navigate, comfortable and relatively safe to use, and practical to maintain.
(Can anyone name a single living architect with the least interest in these principles?)
Another important principle: enduring beauty, or at least long-term attractiveness and harmony with surroundings.
Contemporary architects sneer at the idea of harmony and claim airily that there is no such thing as beauty. But it isn’t the people who demand these qualities who are deluded — it’s the architects. The incompetence and ugliness of contemporary architecture can’t be explained away. To deny this ugliness is to deny reality.
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Don’t forget that in MSM times kids were to be seen, not hurt!
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What happens if the lights go out?
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haha.. I think it’s funny when people don’t get sarcasm and get all worked up about someone’s blog post.
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Great post…how so many may actually feel this way 😦 Let the kids experience and learn how to deal with what they are given. A few bumps and bruises are needed to grow and be strong. I love the pics.
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And that my friends is just another reason supporting my decision NOT to have children.
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Isn’t there a dichotomy here? Mid Century Modern architects and their clients are anal in their passion for minimalism or visual cleanliness. Why would they (clients especially) not also be anal in their requirements for safety? Perhaps this is why there is a limited demand for such housing.
When and where was the last market value speculative house you saw?
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Reblogged this on Technicolor Phantoms and commented:
NICE!!
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One of the pictures presented in this site is out of the Hitchcock movie from the 50’s “North by Northwest.”
It is an interior shot looking down into the living room from the open second level.
The house was the modern one built on a cliff near Mt. Rushmore for those who have seen the movie (I just re-watched it two days ago). Between cantilevered living spaces both inside and out and Mt Rushmore near by, you could take out the whole family on a bad day.
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The exterior of that house is a matte painting, with the upper floor door superimposed for a shot of someone looking out. The rest of the house was done on a sound stage in Hollywood.
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I was born in the fifties and surprisingly all of my siblings and I survived into adulthood. When I was a baby I would sleep in the 1953 canvas butterfly chairs that are in my living room right now, My mother would turn the coffee tables upside down so that I could pull myself up to a standing position and learn to walk by holding the hairpin legs. My son learned to walk holding on to the same table. Living in a mid century modern world I was never afraid to throw myself off a cliff into the lake, or downhill ski, or travel to distant lands on my own. But mid century modern mothers, including my own, did take a lot of valium! Your arrows helped me to understand why.
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Super funny. I was just researching mid-century homes since we’re about to embark on a remodel of ours, and stumbled on your site. Great fun.
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I love my MCM House. I even run with scissors!
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This really ties into the natural element of the river. While a love of plants or
nature inspires cottage and Asian gardens, formal garden designs express the humanistic value of people as the
center of the cosmos. Though there are many companies
that can assist you in helping to maintain the beauty of your property and home, one should not choose the first company that is found.
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I’ve lived in a MCM home all my life (4 years to 40something) and we had an indoor garden, etc. but neither my sister nor I suffered any broken bones. Fell off my bike and skateboard in my cul-de-sac street and playground. My mother never childproofed our house. My sister and I climbed all over it. Love MCM designs am always looking for the designs wherever in the world I travel. There’s just something quite organic about the design that draws me. Funny article.
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I think our MCM homes are a deterrent for thieves. If the crooks actually make it into the house, they’ll never get out alive because they will: fall off steps that had no railing, plunge into a cold pool, step off a ledge & fall 30 feet or sustain a serious head injury on some interesting architecture. Ha ha.
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I am currently sitting at my work desk and tears are streaming down my cheeks.
Thank you ! And yes we did find bats in the crevices in one friends home MCM home.
Our building systems professor brought in images of her three story stairs similarly without any railings – she had three girls at the time under the age of 4…To quote her, ‘They’ll learn…isn’t that how we evolved into stronger humans?’
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