Mika Savela: Laundry Modernism

Feb 7, 2012

17 notes

Laundry Modernism

Not just to slightly update my stance on laundry, but also because I find the whole urban process of washing and drying clothes fascinating, I wanted to write something about one of the most common sights related to living in HK (and also many other cities in the world for that matter): the many faces of drying clothes and doing the laundry.

No. 5 for the laundy room, in the ground floor of Villa Savoye.

I guess laundry, as any other household work, has been included in the modern design agenda from the beginning. Though, in the early days, the grand modern villas were equipped with industrial size sunlit spaces for the domestic chores, which were then carried out by the domestic help. But gradually as the modern apartment living started to happen, careful measurements were taken of the average European housewives, efficiencies calculated, ergonomic standards applied in order for the nuclear era families to lead their new, clean swept, detergent fresh lives.

But I guess somewhere along the way, the modern plan for living, simply became a utopia for the actual reality of housework. Especially in the more subtropical climates, apartment living people were left alone with the problem of getting their laundry washed, and above all, dried. The architecture of functions didn’t really provide good solutions for the laborious aspects of domestic life. It was perhaps thought that like every other housework, the tedious act of washing clothes was soon to be history anyway.

Now, as I write this, I look out from the window and I see other people’s clothes hanging on a rather DIY-looking clothes rack, on the roof terrace of the opposite building. And when I look up, I see multiple bunches of clothing hanging outside the umpteenth floor windows of a modern apartment building. From my kitchen, I can see the kitchen windows below me, being used as an opening for putting clothes out to dry with a long hook. Everywhere I look, I can see laundry, hanging, as little faded pastel colored spots in the image of the city. And I suppose the view as such, was not really what the modern life was envisioned to look like, though the picturesque urban clothesline does perhaps appear in some of Corbu’s sketches.

In a way, the necessity of laundry overrules any design rules. Laundry is pushed out from the doors and windows, into the urban space. Sometimes it even seems that the number of design solutions for drying your clothes exceeds the design solutions for actual apartments. And it’s not just the actual clothes but also an entire range of gadgets they hang from, which are still there, even when the clothes are taken away.

Especially for the modern Asian consumer, doing laundry and organizing the small home accordingly has really become a discipline of its own. In the middle of all kinds of portable washing machines, hangers, hooks and pins, there is a call for modern order. The Japanese “no-name” department store MUJI, shows example for people to make best use of their tiny domestic spaces with simple, natural, wooden and white design solutions. Remedies for the chaos of real-life households. And there you have it. The arch enemy of modernity: chaos.

There is also something about the urban presence of laundry that is related to poverty, to places where modern progress has not yet cleared up the chaotic streets, places where people still have to hang their clothes outside. Though, in the urban imagery, this is often romanticized, think Sicily, old New York, working class Manchester, or the early 20th century Chinatowns of the world. However, the low-wage, hard work aspect of laundry has not been eradicated by modern day washing machines. Take a luxury hotel in Dubai, Shanghai, Paris or Berlin and follow the chain of events, leading to the forever white sheets and towels.

A clip from Popular Mechanics, December 1911:Above, public laundry in St. Brigida, Genoa, Italy around 1890-1900.

I think somewhere in this equation, lies the ultimate question. Is it really too much, in the modern tropical life, to expect super fluffy towels to stay dry, all air-conditioned and freshly scented? Personally, I would say there’s always some room for the non-modern ways of making things orderly as well.