A-frame

A was the architectural letterform of leisure building in postwar America. Eager to stake out mountain and lakeside retreats an entire generation of high-end homebuilders and weekend handymen found the A-frame an easy and affordable home to construct; its steeply sloping triangular roof distinctive and easy to maintain )almost no exterior walls to paint!). Fueled by A-frame plans and kits the style became something of a national craze with tens of thousands of houses built. Indeed the A-frame was an icon for recreation and acceptable form of modernism (although its origins go back thousands of years) and a convenient tool for marketing a wide range of products including gas-powered toilets motorcycles and canned vegetables; Fisher-Price even made one for children. So popular on the domestic front the A-frame was eventually adapted to other building types from roadside restaurants to churches. In a fascinating look at this architectural phenomenon Chad Randl tells the story of the trian