¶ Bathroom as Symbolism and Association
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Index Entry
Bathroom as Symbolism and Association:
"This is part of what the intuition of young people today says: that 'We don’t want the symbolism of distinction… And it’s perfectly reasonable… His father wanted it for his kids, because that’s the way he associated it and as he envisioned poverty he didn’t want his kids to feel that way. Therefore he got his little quarter of an acre estate, emulating what the man of success had yesterday…
“There really is pathos in here, you know. The point is that building the architecture of the present is a great anti-priority holdover… I look at things in a highly analytical way. Human beings have so much association with this kind of a bathroom they have in that particular house. That’s where they remember crawling around and being loved by their mother, and of being wanted… So terrific association; that’s the way a bathroom should be. That’s to such an extent that when as a kid you go into somebody else’s house and say, ‘I don’t like bathrooms like that-- this is the only kind of a bathroom, the way I have it.’ The association thing is very, very powerful. In 1927 society didn’t want to listen at all; they were terribly annoyed by my being analytical about housing. It was pure symbolism and pure association.”
