Would you Live in a Stainless-Steel Igloo?


These heavily insulated steel shells are a new approach to the housing problem. Low in cost and portable, they give a wide flexibility of layout.
By FRANK ROWSOME, Jr.
YOU can't make an electric light just by perfecting a wax candle." So says Martin Wagner, Harvard professor and internationally known architect, in explaining how he conceived the unique igloolike houses shown on these pages.
Most modern prefabricated houses, Wagner asserts, are at the same stage of development that automobiles had reached when their builders were trying to make them look like buggies. In his opinion, a steel, plywood, and plastic house that is produced in a factory should not merely imitate wooden, carpenter-built houses. Instead, it should make full use, in form as well as construction, of new materials and new techniques.