1960's: An Overview

April 1965

William J. Koch Residence
Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Arthur R. Cogswell, Jr., AIA

The mid-century movement represented the first time architects incorporated huge expanses of glazing in private residential projects. In the Koch Residence, the architects designed a fine example of the open planned rooms increasingly desired by the 1960s. Culturally, this significant feature revealed changes in how families communicated, initiating a shift towards larger gathering spaces often with direct visual connection to the surrounding property. The low, linear lines of the ceiling and roof suggest indoor/ outdoor integration and essentially push the user away from the core of the home to engage with the connection to the outdoors.   Breaking with earlier traditions of separation from the landscape, elevation of buildings off of the ground, and use of extensive foundation plantings, these mid-century Modern structures clearly spoke a different design language, echoing the quest in society for new means of expression.