Chicago architect George Fred Keck (1895-1980) unlike many of his Modernist contemporaries, was a technocrat and tinkerer first and foremost. Long before the advent of solar panels, his solar homes sought to use new technology and materials to make architecture congruent with climate. His 12-sided House of Tomorrow, built in 1933 for the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago was the first glass house, a work of solar architecture that can be seen as an origin point for our current understanding of passive solar design and sustainable energy efficiency–a lineage well told by Houses of Tomorrow: Solar Homes from Keck to Today at the Elmhurst Art Museum outside of Chicago (though May 29). Using photos, plans, and drawings, the exhibition concisely illustrates a hinge-point between design, technology, and science. But it shines most brilliantly when exploring the experiential aspects of Keck’s obsession with light and glass, bringing components from the original house into the gallery not as archaeological artifacts but to create a vivid narrative of what living in the House of Tomorrow might have felt like.
The House of Tomorrow was built around a spiral staircase and central utility core, with beams to support the roof and floorplate in a multi-directional cantilever. Keck’s experiment in building to maximize solar performance was ratified somewhat unexpectedly for the architect during the house’s construction in a frigid Chicago winter, when he saw the workers stripping off their coats because the interior was so effective at trapping heat. Keck would go on to spend much of his career working to master those properties in hundreds of houses he designed with his brother, William Keck. Today passive solar performance is fundamental to addressing energy efficiency in the climate crisis, but for Keck, potential energy savings during the Great Depression was about thrift, and his House of Tomorrow fit into the Exposition’s wider thesis that scientific progress would bring prosperity.
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