ABSTRACT
A recurring theme informing the design of postwar childhood environments was the conscious reference to the home. Children hospitals were reformed to minimize the perceived psychological harm of maternal separation. Schools were designed to ease the transition from the intimacy of the home to the social world of school life. The adventure playground was intended to ameliorate the negative impact of punitive parenting upon the future citizen, with the play leader functioning as a surrogate parent. The openness of the Pioneer Health Centre countered the perceived insularity of the home and the mother. If the home was the reference point for these institutions, it begets the question of how the design of the postwar house itself may have been influenced by the emerging conception of children as emotive subjects whose emotional wellbeing is considered fundamental to social stability. This chapter examines the ways in which the child-centeredness of the welfare state and its project of governing subjectivity was extended to the domestic realm and to the design of the postwar home. At the same time, the focus on how postwar architecture defined the role of the child and the parent at home may inform a revision of postwar architectural history at a period when mass public housing was its most significant medium for architectural speculation.
