Right house, wrong location.
The worst design error is not fitting the house to the site... a house designed…
Ever wonder why, there are so few stunning houses?
You know, the ones you stop your car to look at because it is perfect?
1 out of 100, 1 out of 1000?
But, I have looked backward at weird houses, some double takes…
Shocked
Confused
Stunned
What were they thinking?
WHAT?
(Do you dare me to knock on their door, and ask
…” Did you know your house is weird/ugly/an eyesore?”
That would be like asking them if they know THEY are ugly…..
So, Just can’t do it.
BUT THEY DO KNOW!!!
AND yet they still built this house,
HERE! WHY??? WHY??? WHY???
Probable answers include “..ugh…..I thought it’d be cool…, modern…., interesting…., fun…or most likely….I don’t know….”
but NOOOOOOOOO!
YOUR HOUSE is just GOOOOOFY
Repellant, odd, an eyesore…!!!!)
End of RANT…
So, why so many of these EYESORES?
And so few stunners…
The ones you stare at,
Reverse engineer, imagine BEING in,
Respectful of their beauty, scale, color, landscaping, location…timeless qualities that continue for generations…(iffffff deferred maintenance is not deferred. )
So what makes a house, FIT??? Here are. 4 reasons:
- 1. THE Region
Some places have a regional architecture… think
The cedar shake houses of Nantucket,
The Mid-Century Modern house of Palm Springs.
Art Deco of Miami
Adobe of New Mexico
You use this style as a beginning template, and design…
For more research, look into _______regional Architectural styles…
- Local
Maybe, your region is sort of vanilla… Quarter acre houses in a 50 year old neighborhood
But still, your NEIGHBORHOD, will have a style….if only a consistency of size, scale, colors, boxy/modern, traditional/contemporary, ranch vs Victorian… just whatever is dominant.
You buy into a neighborhood hopefully because it suits you, not as a place for you to change, fight, disturb…
Renovate….yes, but gently…
- SITE FIT
The worst design error is not fitting the house to the site… most houses are side by side….
Here is a nice house, but, fi yo look closely, it was designed FOR A CORNER!
See how the windows & dormers now face someone’s house? …when they are meant for a street, or a view?
Now it looks onto a wall of evergreens, hiding the house next door….because these windows/dormers are awkward for both this house, AND neighbor. “are you looking at me?”
…and it is especially odd, since this is a NEW house on the lot, the prior one torn down…!!!!
Here the opposite situation… a house built for ? but put on the corner…
and YET, it has NO windows, NO views, NO dormers to look wistfully out….
Just a massive, brick wall. This is not a design, but freaky laziness, and a kick in the teeth to the neighbors.
Because it is so stunningly brutal, It will get an even longer viewing time, just based on visible frontage along a street..
The truth is, this whole house has been build backwards….the 3 huge garage doors facing the street…when, these 3 garage doors would be better located around back.
This will be here for a generation or two…likely get sold to someone else in less than 5 years, and the whole thing tossed from owner to owner till it gets torn down again.
BTW…THIS was the house that was torn down, to create the boxy monster there now.
sad.
On a small scale, you need to fit your house to your site…(send link here….)
But when you widen the lens a bit, ….even more importantly!!!! much fit the house to the neighborhood.
Otherwise…no matter how great a creative piece of ART you have designed, it will just become the clown house of the street.
And, this is just embarrassing!
Good design evolves slowly…You fix one aspect then toggle over to the other. You fix the interior space demands, then adjust the exterior look of the house. Then you rethink the entire house, to meet the visual and practical goals of the roof, the pitch, the gutters, the size and even the axis of the roof peak changes.
You just can’t isolate any one part of the house, without looking how it affects all the others….or your design breaks.
The worst design error is not fitting the house to the side… a house designed for a corner lot, plopped down by a next door neighbor.
Or a house ON a corner lot, with NO windows on an entire side of the house, facing the street…
Or a house turned backwards, with 3 huge garage doors facing the street…when, these 3 garage doors would be better located around back, and a calm façade facing the street.
Finally, the inexcusable error of an ultra-modern Mac Mansion, next door to a small, Tutor house build in the 1930’s.
These errors just CANNOT be fixed! Sometime with enough land, shrubbery, and trees, you can see each house as a separate glance,
but otherwise, 2 desperate houses side by side within one microsecond glance is twisted, mean, and uncomfortable….and just rude.
You left those people back in high school, you just didn’t think they would reappear as your next-door neighbor!
Location
IN CONCLUSION :
Last year, there was a nice Netflix on Evans…
The director of the Godfather etc.. quite the dapper fellow, dresser.. Here was a line from his biography
Evans intuitively saw the advantages in dressing well, once commenting: “Background makes foreground. If I was paid too many compliments on a tie I was wearing, it would immediately go into a shredder. The tie is there for me to look better, not for me to make the tie look better.”
This is exactly your goal in house design. You want your house to be transparent to the neighborhood… NEVER let it be an EYE MAGNET.