Architect Breaks Down 5 TV Houses from Mad Men, That '70s Show & More | Architectural Digest

hi i'm michael white stirrer i've been

an architect for 33 years today we're

gonna see what some of our favorite TV

shows can teach us about suburban

architecture and design Don Draper's

home in Mad Men the Draper house is a

great place to start it represents some

of the earliest suburbs which we'll call

bedroom communities there was no other

industry in those towns people only live

there and they worked someplace else mr.

Kinsey mr. crane are here for you

meeting so this house was most likely

built in the early 20th century 1910s or

the 1920s when the railroads you know

came out to outside New York to the

suburbs right off the bat it's a

two-story colonial house it's got the

classic central entrance red door side

lights and the portico that gives it a

lot of half six over six double hung

windows and shutters which appear to be

fake the roof is asphalt shingles but

it's trying to imitate a slate roof or a

wood shingle roof which is what the

house would have been made out of for

Don Draper it's the perfect embodiment

of the American dream

which is what his character is all about

another thing that sort of jumps out at

me is that they have balloons I grew up

in the early 60s I never recall anyone

putting balloons outside their house for

a birthday party everybody knew where

the house was and just arrived but I

think this is more a motif from mm

rather than the early 1960s so it's got

the traditional red door which has a

variety of meanings through history

biblical and religious meanings in terms

of lambs blood over the door means the

blood of Christ on some churches in

colonial times a house with a red

doorman it's a welcoming and safe place

these are called six over six because

there are six small panes on the upper

sash and there are six small panes on

the lower sash and in colonial times

glass was very expensive and they didn't

really have the technology to make large

panes of glass so they made a small very

thin panes of glass and they just

combined them in modern days what people

do they take one big pane of glass and

they just apply this fake grid on top of

the glass it's not an actually divided

life as they were in colonial times so

let's take a look at the interior this

is a view of the Draper kitchen so

starting in the 1940s there was this

classic work triangle in the kitchen

comprised of the sink the stove

and the refrigerator and you can see

from there there's this triangle so one

would go from the refrigerator bring it

to the sink go to the stove and you

could see Betty here at the counter

doing just that so all three you can

move between sort of optimal distance

not too far and not too close and most

suburban kitchens were laid out that way

that jumps out at me is there's a bigger

window than you see on the front facade

there's four panes across as opposed to

three you can see the knotty pine

cabinets you could see the Formica

countertop with the metal edge which was

the technology at the time in about 10

to 15 years they would make Formica or

plastic laminate which is a generic name

where they would do the the sides as

well out of plastic laminate but for

Michael was new you know it was the

future it was plastic and plastic you

know after World War Two was this

amazing new material so people embraced

it through your places so typically a

colonial house if you had the means to

afford to build a colonial house you

also had the means to have servants so

you rarely saw the inside of the kitchen

all your meals were served in a formal

dining room on the on the ground floor

this is a different era it's pulse World

War two and the kitchen became the hub

for the family together and eating

kitchens became sort of the central

meeting place for the for the house The

Brady Bunch house the cool thing about

the rainy bunch is that Mike Brady the

head of the household is an architect

and that's reflected on the exterior of

the house as well as on the interior so

the idea that the stone is growing out

of the earth is very much you know Frank

Lloyd Wright's idea of the Prairie style

it's this transition of the earth into

sort of the man-made and architecture so

Frank Lloyd Wright was the most famous

American architect I mean he was a

genuine genius that word is thrown

around a lot but he was the real thing

he was self educated he saw the birth of

modernism and the birth of the suburbs

and his architecture particularly in

America was extremely influential in

suburban architecture particularly these

roof rafters being exposed goes back to

Arts and Crafts style and both the Arts

and Crafts movement and Frank Lloyd

Wright were very influenced by Japanese

design the board-and-batten is very

Japanese designs

over here and the sort of planting which

is indigenous plants or appears to be

indigenous plans from California I

always found interesting this window

right here on the outside I always

thought it was a little small for the

size of the wall and I found out later

that that window doesn't actually exist

that it was intended to make the house

look more like a regular split-level

house with a typical two-story house

you'd have the ground is a person

standing on the ground and you'd have

one floor directly above the other

bedrooms would be up here this would be

the attic and then your main level would

be here with your living room and dining

room and kitchen and that's a typical

two-story house a split-level they do it

a little different you enter the house a

half a level up and that would be your

main level and then the bedrooms are

another half level up beneath those

bedrooms a half level down is the den

and the garage and if there was a

basement the basement would be under

here just like the basement would be

under here the roof and the attic and

then this roof would come in this way so

you could see underneath here one roof

line the gable is facing the street and

the other way the gable is facing the

side the same idea that this is one

story and this is two stories okay so

let's go inside

the main motif of the interior of the

house is this sunken living room goes

back to the Japanese and the sunken

dining area which is supposed to bring

the entire family together the table

when not in use flipped over and

actually became the floor and then when

it was in use it was lifted up and you

could actually sit in this sort of

depressed area and this entire TV show

was about that bringing two families

together the mother and had three

daughters and the father and his three

sons

so the staircase played a really

prominent role in the in the Brady Bunch

everyone lines up on the stair at the

beginning of it it's an open riser stair

directly derived from falling water you

know the famous Frank Lloyd Wright house

there's a trend that people step on and

then there's a riser the vertical piece

that connects it to the next trend and

this stair doesn't have the riser which

makes it really light and open and very

modern we've got this exposed stone wall

so we're sort of bringing some of the

outside in there's this polished brick

floor which is also that idea of organic

architecture there's the exposed

structure of the wood beyond with the

infill of the plaster board and then

there's this sort of Mondrian

like illuminated glass which refers back

to Frank Lloyd Wright and his idea of

art class and then that's repeated in

sort of these wood panels which is a

really funny idiosyncratic move but kind

of works really nicely in the in the

Brady house let's take a look at the

kitchen

this is like a perfect update to like

the Draper kitchen you know it's 10

years later so they still have that

Formica or plastic laminate countertop

but now the edge is also a plastic

laminate we're in the Draper kitchen it

was metal that was riveted on they have

the same encounter stove they have the

same wall oven just everything's been

updated they have all their new

appliances out on the countertops the

cabinets now are this more sort of slick

in modern would no longer that knotty

pine and even the furniture you know the

tabletop matches the counter and they've

got these sort of avocado green soren

and like chairs but they're knock-offs

you could see by the cruciform base he

didn't have a chair like that it's like

your table is over there and I think

they were knock-offs because like that

window on the front of the house they

wanted Mike Brady to be sort of high

design but they didn't want him to be

too high and I think I think those

chairs being knocked off so I'm much

more relatable and accessible to the

general public and I think that was a

conscious move on their part the Foreman

house on that 70s show this is the house

that was watching the Brady Bunch

I'm realizing that this is siding

exterior siding like clobbered siding

that we saw unlike the Draper house so

it looks like they actually expanded

their kitchen that's like a move you

wouldn't see too often you know other

than like Frank Gehry doing that at his

own house in Santa Monica in like

nineteen seventy eight or nine where he

like completely took a typical

arts-and-crafts house and totally redid

it using common building and industrial

materials like chain-link fence and

exposed wood studs and even put blacktop

down on his kitchen floor because that's

where the driveway had been but in this

case I don't think they were going for

that but yet at the same time the people

who made this TV show made a conscious

decision to keep that exterior and I

think it just says we prospered a little

then we expanded our kitchen but most of

the action on that 70

takes place in this basement you could

see the concrete block foundation wall

in the distance and the window that's up

high cuz it's just you know reaching

above ground and you see the hot water

heater and you see the washer/dryer with

the exposed pipes leading from it it's

even up on skids like a real washer

dryer would be and it's got the wooden

stair it's pretty authentic other than

the fact that the ceiling is way too

high typically the ceilings and suburban

basements were much lower like less than

eight feet they'd have this steel pipe

column that's called a lolly column that

metal pipe would support typically a

steel beam and that beam would hold the

wooden joists that basically hold up the

whole house so you'd find that in the

basement too I don't see that in

evidence here but that was always part

of a suburban basement as well but then

there was a whole trend in the suburbs

in the 70s to finish their basements

people would put down carpeting

they put paneling on the walls a false

hung ceiling the only problem was it had

very little light because the windows

are tiny and they're up high and they

were always smelled sort of musty and

moldy because it's a raw room basements

let the moisture in and then they let

the moisture out they're sitting in the

earth and that's just a natural

phenomenon of basements and people would

even put in bars in a bathroom down

there even though you had to pump the

water up to get out into the sewer

system so in this case on that 70s show

it's an unfinished basement it's the

perfect place to go downstairs and smoke

pot and cigarettes and drink beer and

have their own private world I mean it

worked sort of perfectly the town of

agrestic in weeds

the opening sequence really hits home

the idea of Conformity everything being

the same so all the cars are the same

all the houses are the same all the

people are the same it's all about

keeping up with the Joneses in a way

it's this sort of dark side of the

suburbs and that's the whole impetus for

the show so this really reminds me of

the mass-produced houses that were built

in Levittown after World War Two in the

suburbs of New York these communities

were were completely dependent on the

car but at the same time they were also

influenced by the car in the way that

they were constructed just like Henry

Ford built his Model Ts on an assembly

line these

were built in that same fashion so they

would build one house in its entirety

from the beginning and figure out where

all the problems might be and then one

person was just two foundations one

person would install the windows I think

at their height they were producing a

house every 16 minutes which is just

completely insane but the idea was was

that these houses were extremely

affordable

just like the Model T was intended to be

on the flip side though you know they

were completely segregated they were all

about conformity and they're extremely

bad for the environment so there's a lot

of trade-offs there these type of

developments are the worst of both

worlds this sort of suburban sprawl as

its called

because they eliminate the woods and the

forests of the natural world and at the

same time they get no benefit from the

density that you would find in an urban

environment where people live in an

apartment and share resources and use

mass transit so this is an exterior of

Nancy's house this appears to be a

spanish-style Revival house but in fact

it's sort of a McMansion version of it

and by that I mean you know it's stucco

but it's not built on a masonry backup

it's built on a metal stud back up and

the roof tiles are vinyl they're not

clay the garage overpowers the facade

there's only one shutter on some of the

windows which is just an odd motif as an

architect you notice right away when the

shutters are fake or if they're actually

functional the arched windows in fact

are an arched and brick naturally makes

an arch that's actually thought that the

famous architect Louis Kahn used to ask

what does a brick want to be and the

brick would always respond I want to be

an arch bricks are stacked right and

they're stacked like this and to make an

opening in brick all these bricks would

just fall through unless you had a piece

of steel or a piece of wood to hold it

in place so in a traditional Spanish

home this is how they would have made

openings because everything was built

out of brick and wood was scarce and and

steel didn't exist so you would never

see this arch because then what they

would do is they'd come back and they

would put stucco all over it but in this

sort of house there's no necessity for

an arch it's just completely a stylistic

motif and these are all the sorts of

things that point with being a McMansion

where it's all about size and excess as

opposed to authenticity

Jane glorious house Modern Family

it's a modernist home in LA it sort of

has its roots in the sort of simple

Bauhaus style architecture that's in LA

these windows on the left they have

these sun shades on them you want to

shield the hot southern Sun so that the

heat doesn't get in during the day

that's all part of a passive solar sort

of idea so this is the rear of Jane

glorious house it has moments where it

manages the climate and shields the hot

Sun but it doesn't do it consistently so

you know you have a window in the height

of summer you don't want all that heat

to get in it's called solar heat gain so

what you do is you put a Sun Shade on

the window and all of a sudden that

blocks the sunlight it can't get through

anymore right bounces off the other idea

is that in the winter you want the song

to come in and warm the house and quite

often Frank Lloyd Wright being an

example people would use masonry inside

you know brick on the floor on the wall

and that would absorb the solar heat

gain and it would then radiate it slowly

which is what Mason really naturally

does and help to warm the house it's

just good architectural principles of

design so it's sort of cool modernism

but at the same time it's really warmed

up by its use of wood and the wood

appears to be an exotic hardwood like

teak or IPE and the thing about IPE

particularly is that it's impervious to

water it's super dense and really heavy

and it lasts forever because of that and

in fact the New York City Parks

Department uses it on their benches what

I find interesting and it ties back to

Mike Brady's house on the Brady Bunch

is that they also have a reference to

Mondrian with this glass motif which is

also a reference to the Frank Lloyd

Wright it sort of ties up nicely the

thing I find interesting about this

house is that Jay is the least likely

guide you would think would have this

house you know Jay represents sort of

the old-fashioned should

channel male role model I don't know how

I got stuck he's the patriarch of the

family and in a way he's very sort of

conservative yet he has this super

modern house and I think a lot of the

show is about J evolving and this house

helps them to do that so the spaces we

looked at today say a lot about the

characters that inhabit them which is

true for all of us and the spaces we

live in and the way that we live in them

and so the evolution of suburban

architecture really reflects the

evolution of the American Dream and what

that means to people over time