Buying a 1960s house
Attractive external steps, spacious garage, flower-filled garden and generous rooms flooded with sunlight: there’s no doubt that this is a 1960s house.
The 1960s house is clearly a development of those built in the previous decade: solid construction on multiple levels, and functional design. Constructed in most cases from cast concrete or concrete block, their terraces have largely disappeared in favour of gardens.
Fast and low cost, concrete block construction was used on an extremely large scale between the 1950s and 1970s to meet the enormous post-war demand for housing. It provided a space of one’s own in which to raise a family and install all the latest conveniences, led by the inexorable march of the washing machine. The problem is that concrete is ‘subject to capillary action’, because it is a porous material that absorbs moisture from the soil on which it is built, and that moisture then rises into the wall. So houses built in the 1960s are often damp and inefficient in energy terms, both of which must be addressed when renovating one of these homes. Nevertheless, they remain excellent, substantial homes with generous windows.The 1960s also saw the emergence and expansion of some of France’s great architectural names, including Jacques Couëlle and the Salier-Courtois-Lajus-Sadirac practice. Each responded in their own distinctive style to the boom times of this era with ingenious, aesthetic and functional buildings. Architect-designed homes of the 1960s are prized for their ingenuity, innovation and design.
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