Domesticity in Times of Crisis: Peter G. Harnden’s house in Orgeval: Modern Hybrid Transatlantic Interiors

Peter G. Harnden’s house in Orgeval: Modern Hybrid Transatlantic Interiors

Abstract

In 1952, both the French magazine L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui and the Italian magazine Domus published a small house built by an American architect on the outskirts of Paris for his personal use. The outsider they highlighted to was Peter G. Harnden, the architect who directed the American propaganda campaigns in Europe in the postwar period.
This was not a new project but a renovation. A single house with the characteristics of the traditional houses was not sufficient for the model of domesticity practiced by the architect. Moreover, Harnden needed the house as soon as possible. Therefore, the operation consisted of joining two small vernacular buildings in the small French village of Orgeval: a house and a barn. The strategy was completed with a garden that resulted from the demolition of four other buildings.
Inside, the architect exhibits an interest in objects of everyday life and authorized designs that extend throughout the spaces of the house. Furniture from the Eames, Prouvé, or the Viennese school is mixed with African rugs, mats, wicker plates, German porcelain, and different versions of vernacular stools. This studied and photogenic accumulation of pieces and ornaments supposedly made the house a more comfortable, fun, and pleasurable experience. It was a fundamental characteristic of the American Way of Life launched to the world by the United States of America, of which Harnden was a loudspeaker in Europe for more than a decade.
Consequently, in this work, the American architect would interweave architecture and domesticity in postwar Europe through the combination of respect for a well-understood tradition and the materialistic world typical of his place of origin. This, in part, helps to understand the exoticism with which the magazines mentioned this project. The study and analysis of this hardly known case include its deliberate diffusion and propagandistic impact, in which the design of the interior space is crucial in a context of crisis and emergency in devastated Europe.