Spatial awareness and human awareness picnicking happily together

[zdashamber]

I think rather a lot about architecture, planning out houses and condos and dorms and sometimes institutions in my head. I love houseplans, and look over them while bringing up a 3D version in my head, imagining how it would be to live there. I may start getting into architecture more here, because it would be fun to draw out every place I've lived in or visited extensively and critique them... For now, though, I'm going to note down some general stuff. Here are my dictums!

If I had a set of work with themes, main points would probably be light, arches, and handicapped accessibility. Handicapped accessibility?! you may think. Well, I've read several articles on it, and it makes a lot of sense to have wide doors, and access to useful house functions on the first floor. People want to stay in their house all their life, generally; and moving would suck even more when you were old. Plus, any house you can get a wheelchair through is a house that is enormously easier to move into. I'm not saying I can do it all the time, and I don't have a huge amount of knowledge on it, but it's definitely a filter I run everything through in my mind.

Light: I, apparently, like more light than almost anyone else I know. I dearly adore sunlight and want it everywhere, all the time, in massive soakable quantities. When the sun is, alas, down, I still want a ton of light... And not from a single fixture in the center of a room, goddamnit! WTF?! Throwing shadows below it in the center of the room where you need it, coming in at an angle so that facing the center of the room puts your book in shadow, and facing the walls puts your own shadow on the book! Insanity! Built-in light fixtures should be on the walls! Facing up, with translucent shades. With massive numbers of outlets in every room for putting occasional lights where you want them. And every room a circuit of its own!

Arches: Straight lines are practical, curves are a great addition if they're not in the way, bang, arch. The ceilings I love most are those with curved edges... My current bedroom has one long arch for a ceiling, like a barrel; I feel like I'm a captain of a ship. Yaar! It's keen. It's strong. Arches can also be laid flat to neat effect: I remember years later a slide of an excavation of, I think, an ancient palace on Crete: I remember sketching furiously to get the effect before the professor flipped on. It was the remains of a rectangular room about 14' wide, with a semi-circular raised area touching the edges, leaving curved seat/shelf bits in the corners. Might be neat to see in a living room, with a fireplace at the heart of the curve. Or you could just run the curve all the way up to the ceiling and pretend you were living in the gondola of a zeppelin. Anyway, arches are a great way to break up a boring wall while still having easy rectangular doors and windows in them.

Windows: While I'm on the subject, they should open wide enough to hang out of. Why mess with usability, airflow, and escape routes? Sheesh. I suppose there are places in the country where it's better to have your air constantly managed by machinery, but I've never lived in one.

Escape routes: Every room and every house should have at least two ways out.

Entryways: Should have a way to look out at who's at the door without the outside person easily able to see in. Should have a coat closet nearby, and a space for a bench so people to sit while taking off their boots. Should have a space both on the inside and the outside to set down your bags of groceries at hip-level while you unlock the door. Should have mirrors nearby to detect vampires. ;)

Stairs: Perhaps the most dangerous part of the house, architecturally. Lots and lots of people screw up their lives from falls on stairs. So, pretty as curved stairs may be, they're no good; even a slight curve massively increases the danger. Also: doors that open onto stairs are stupid! Likewise traffic patterns where misjudged momentum sends a person onto stairs. I've heard stairs ought to have a landing every person-height so you don't get too tired/numbed and miss a step. I like steps with about a 7.5" rise and 13" run, which is much bigger than I ever encounter. Dammit, I like striding everywhere, even up and down stairs! I hate granny stairs. Talk about a waste of effort, and mind-numbing boredom leading to falls. Bah!! Still, I guess the main point is to not get fancy or irregular. Every place I've ever rented had ridiculous stairs, and it's kindof annoying to have to think so much about your feet all the time. Also, piano movers hate you.

Bathrooms: Every house should have at least 1.5 bathrooms. I've lived in a couple places with only 1, and when it's a problem, it can be... problematic, eh? Should have a place where you can set your book while you're on the toilet which is bound to be dry: that is, not the side of a tub, or a counter next to a sink. Should not have the toilet set so that the door opens into your knees as you sit there. Should have a window, but not one you have to get wet to open: not in the shower or over the bath. Two sinks are quite nice.

Bedrooms: Should face south or west. Should not have all the outlets behind the bed and the desk! Gah. Should have at least one long interior wall where you can put the bed without exposing it to the cold leaking through the exterior walls.

Kitchen: I had a kitchen once where the stove and the sink faced each other over a narrow passage. That was great! So many times I burned myself and just spun around to immediately run cold water over my hand; or got done cooking pasta and just spun around to dump the water out into the sink, or filled a pot with water and just spun around to start heating it on the stove. I highly recommend it.

Laundry room: Works best when on the same level as all the dirty sheets, but should not back up to a bedroom for noise reasons. Should have a work sink for soaking stains.

Fripperies: Oh, hell, yes! Doesn't everyone want secret rooms? Or at least wall niches. Or interesting mouldings outside. Or unique forms to rooms or the house.

Insulation: Everywhere! Grah! (I rather like straw bale houses.)

Views: Not into the neighbor's house directly, hopefully.

Common areas: It's nice to have a gathering room full of comfy seating with a TV, and one without. If you plan to have kids, it's good to have a space where their computer can be when they're young, where you can potentially divert a bit to glance at the screen. I hear home offices where two people in a house can compute at the same time are enjoyable for the sharing of things seen on the internet.

Vertical spaces: Big vertical spaces look all fancy and shit, but they're stupidly hard to heat, light, and dust, and they make noise sound awful, and they make you feel like you're in a fishbowl. 9' should be max height for everything, except skylights, which are awesome. Though I'd be willing for a bit of a compromise to allow exposed beams, which are sweet, because then you can hang hammock chairs or whatever else you like without tracking down ceiling joists, something I've never managed despite many years and many holes.

Lath and plaster: You have got to be shitting me.

EDIT 4/23/07: A couple other thoughts that came to me, reminded from comments and just forgot initially:
Entryways: Should have a concealed place on the outside where a FedEx guy would leave packages.
Kitchens: Nice to have enough space that you can fit a table surrounded by chairs so people can gather and eat in the kitchen space.

What are you guys's thoughts on living space architecture?

Comments

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

The one thing i will say about lath and plaster is that it's acoustically a lot nicer than drywall. However, at least in this house, wireless signal won't go through it.

[arrefmak.livejournal.com]

You may be interested by this author: Sarah Susanka

http://www.notsobighouse.com/showhouses/index.asp

[evilmagnus]

Holy crap, I had no idea. A kindred spirit!

I loves me de architecture'n'shit. Wanted to be one (an architect, that is) until I found out that it required Math.

I have built dream-homes in The Sims. I love Sarah Susanka's stuff. I geek over floor plans and critique them mercilessly (like, master bedroom off the main living space? You're never sleeping if you have n+1 people in your house). And so on.

I worry constantly that I can never buy a home-home, since it will not be built how I want to live. And I doubt we'll ever be in a position to have a home built for us.

So, yeah. Home design geeking = good.

[debela.livejournal.com]

The not so big house descriptor exasperates me. She does wonderful stuff and I love her ideas, but these are not small houses. (A friend picked us up a book of hers back when we were living in Clagett, which boasted 864 square feet and not a single stair. It had incredibly efficient use of space, but *that* was a not so big house. The houses in her book had thousands of square feet. Those are big houses.) The floor plans on her show houses, for example, have 15x13 kitchens, 14x17 parlors, equally enormous guest rooms - for heaven's sakes. It's disengenuous to refer to nooks of storage in a large house as taking advantage of all the space available in a not so big house - at that point, you just have excess space you're putting to use, and any decent architect ought to be able to figure *that* out.

I think, sometimes, that people respond so strongly to her because she uses long standing ideas about form and function and, regrettably, a lot of architects and builders these days use the what-looks-good-on-paper approach to design.

[evilmagnus]

Yeah, I should have been more clear - I love her ideas, not her show homes. ;)

Japanese houses - that's efficient use of space. Plus! You get a tea-house upgrade for free.

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

I haven't checked out her stuff at all, but I do like the idea of cramming storage into every possible space. Book storage specifically. :)

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

"Architect" was one of the careers I went into college considering, but they'd set up the major with a zillion boring useless-looking classes as prereqs for the interesting classes, and all of the classes, boring and not, were always full by the time I got a crack at registration... And on Berkeley, the architecture (http://seismo.berkeley.edu/tour/wurster.html) building (http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/05/images/wurster.jpg) is one of the most hideous buildings I've ever seen. Far and away the ugliest and most stupidly-designed building on campus. A mite discouraging. ;)

I'm not as worried about buying a house eventually, since for me light trumps all, and there are bound to be condos or houses for sale that have a useful corner pointing southwest.

[evilmagnus]

You know, I should also rant a bit.

KITCHENS!

For the love of all that is holy, your kitchen needs to be a separate room! Not only for smells (mmmm smellls!) but it makes it impossible for you to cook whilst anything else is happening in the main room. Too noisy, see. Those big granite-everything kitchens as the focal piece of the Great Room are beautiful for photo-shoots, but terrible to cook in (unless you regularly do kitchen shows and feed a dozen people a sitting). A reasonably-sized, square layout kitchen is fine. If you need to catch a cab to get to the other end of the counter, it's too big.

[ameer-tavakoli.livejournal.com]

I dunno if I agree with that all the time.

I think it can be nice if the kitchen overlooks into the main room (maybe with a bar as a slight seperation). It makes the part more vibrant and allows for there to be interaction while stuff is being prepped.

Of course, one of the major downsides to an open kitchen is that means sneaking into the kitchen to neck with your partner for a few minutes while meaning to check on the vegetarian lasagna or pie still in the oven is now no longer an option.

Like all things, there are trade-offs.

[hunnythistle.livejournal.com]

Necking -- that's what the pantry is for!

[debela.livejournal.com]

There's something to be said for a social kitchen; kitchens are often one of the main social areas of a house. Look at where people migrate in a party, especially when they're uncomfortable - the kitchen. There are ways to define the space - I agree with you that a kitchen completely open to the rest of the house is just not going good places - but it should be able to support multiple people and it should not be so cut off that the cook feels less like a host and more like a servant.

My objection to the large quasi-granite show kitchens is a little different: they're useless. They're pretty to look at, but they don't chop wood for crap. The angular cabinets are precisely the wrong shape for storage; the work triangle is usually dreadful; the vegetable sink often doesn't have a disposal; the base cabs have no pullouts and frequently have quarter shelves - and one day I will get my revenge for whomever thought *that* up - and the wall cabs have mullions. They're large, but they have limited workspace around the range - except that they often put a bar on the same counterspace *as* the range. Do these people not have children? No landing area for groceries, space wasted on a desk when they have insufficient base cabs, wire shelving in the pantry - ARGH - and the most miraculously foolish layout of drawers. Pot Drawers Are Not Useful; I will also shake whomever thought them up. (Some people find them useful; I think 'couldn't I just haul a bin up to the counter and rummage through that instead?'.) and I can go on. I hate the trend towards the show kitchens, because it pulls away from cooking kitchens.

Also, many, many of them forget the most basic question to start with when you sit down to design a kitchen: 'where's the trashcan and how does the trash get out?'.

[evilmagnus]

Also, many, many of them forget the most basic question to start with when you sit down to design a kitchen: 'where's the trashcan and how does the trash get out?'.

...don't the caterers clean up after themselves?

/runs and hides

[hunnythistle.livejournal.com]

I think it's because most showplace kitchens are designed for the owners to show off, and nobody really cooks in them. At the very least, the builders certainly aren't cooks!

Just like any kitchen that has shiny copper pots -- they're not cooking with those. Copper pots can be great, primarily on gas stoves, but need to be seasoned -- which means they're not gonna be shiny.

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

We're Americans! The trashcan is under the sink! :D

It's a good point about where people go in a party. My current kitchen has a nice amount of counterspace, but isn't quite large enough for a table that people can sit all around, so it's less than ideal for parties... (I like motleypolitico's thought below that it's very nice to have a sittable, eatable table in the same space as the kitchen.) Though it does have a sound system wired into the ceiling, so one party we moved the butcher block out of the center and made it a dance floor. Which was not ideal for getting spring rolls out of the oven and arraying edamame etc, but hey, dance floor, not bad.

Desks in kitchens... Beh? I guess if you make that the kid-computer, maybe, but doesn't it get all greasy? And full of crumbs? Just seems silly.

[hunnythistle.livejournal.com]

Kitchens design really depends on your lifestyle. Most people in this modern era really don't need much more than a microwave, a burner or two, and a decent sized frig. But if you cook, that's a whole 'nother story.

We cook, we're foodies. A bunch of our friends are foodies. Half of our social life revolves around food, wine, and cooking -- making the kitchen the single most important room in the house (unless it's the wine cellar!). And a focal point for social activities. As such, an open design is ideal, where the dining room is an extension of the kitchen.

I used to think that a separate room with a "formal" dining area would be a good set-up -- thus keeping the kitchen mess away from the guests. This would be fine if a) I had servants, or b) I was insane enough to throw large dinner parties where I did all the work . As it is, at our dinner parties, there's no distinction between guests and cooks.

All the guests cook. We get together and do meals with several courses, with each guest taking charge of one course -- often drafting other guests to serve as sous chefs. So, a few times a month I have 5-7 people in my kitchen, cooking 5-7 things more or less at the same time. We do several courses that involve cooking a course, then eating it, then cooking the next course, but many of the courses have several steps involved so several people are still working on their courses at any given time. Not to mention the kibbitz factor. So most of the people spend most of the time in the kitchen when they're not actually eating.

So I dream of a kitchen with a giant island, in an open floor plan, that includes bar space for people to sit nearest the rest of the living space. I think a vertical divider of some sort is a good idea, with the bar shelf being either higher or lower than the main countertop. I want at least two sinks, possibly three in the kitchen – all with garbage disposals.

I want all the elements of many of the showplace kitchens -- but arranged in a way suitable to MY needs -- including trash disposal -- lacking the aforementioned servants ;). I want all the drawers to pullout, and fit the cookware I actually own. I think I want more than one range, with the main one surrounded by workspace and easy to clean tile and a VENT (which is often missing on island ranges). A smaller, secondary range might possibly be suitable on an island, for prepping sauces, etc, but I'm still debating the merits of this. Two ovens might be good, altho not as important as multiple ranges or multiple sinks. And the sink faucets all need to arch up and over the sink, with a detachable spray head -- so you can actually wash the larger pots.

We've also talked about an "appliance row" where each appliance can have storage space, with some sort of pull-up/pull-out arrangement so it can be operated without moving much from its allocated space without being out on the counter all the time either. This one will be tricky. Currently, we own and frequently use: microwave, toaster oven, deep fryer, rotisserie, food processor, the Kitchenaid; with moderate use of: the meat slicer, the blender, the stick blender, the popcorn popper, the coffee/spice grinder, the espresso machine, the electric tea kettle, the ice cream maker and the ice crusher. And yes, we've experimented with combo appliances to reduce the appliance clutter, with mixed results.

Given the appliance situation, we really need lots of outlets, on more than one circuit. Currently, if someone turns on the microwave while the rotisserie is going, it blows the circuit. Which happens more often than I like.

[debela.livejournal.com]

Goodness. You need quite a kitchen.

Two ideas to store, against the day you build this thing (and I want to admire it):

Racetrack plugmold around the kitchen. This means a strip of outlets with an outlet every six or eight or twelve inches. We ran three circuits to my kitchen for the plugmold and alternated them in the plugmold itself so that if I plug three appliances in in a row, they're all on different circuits.

I put in deep-shelved, weight bearing carousel base cabinets in two of my corners, and keep the appliances in there. (My kitchen is 10x13; it was not going to support a mixing stand cabinet.) When my husband (the cook) wants one, he can plug it in anywhere he likes.

May I recommend deep pantries with deep pull out shelves, too? It sounds like you'd appreciate them. :)

The second cheat - we did get the arching faucet with the pull-out head, but I wanted a very deep sink that I could wash a lobster pot in and not get myself sopping wet in the process. We bought the deepest - 10" - undermount sink we could find and then mounted it under silestone, which gave it another inch of depth. This wasn't an aesthetic decision; it was a splash decision.

[hunnythistle.livejournal.com]

Excellent suggestions. I must save them into the house file. Lee's the one who usualy plays with all of the house plans, I just carp over his shoulder about what I want :)

Our current pantry shelf unit does have deep pull-out shelves, which I love. All the oils and vinegars and other liquids live there, and several short pull-out shelves have spices -- of which we have many from various cuisines. And the bottom shelf has a box that contains all the tea. This cabinent is about the coolest and darkest place in the house, other than the wine room, so a good spot for these.

When we had tall ceilings, we could hang a pot rack with many pans, but our current abode has ceilings too short for Lee to duck under that contraption.
We currently have a lid rack on the wall for lids, courtesy of Ikea, but while I love the concept, only a few of our lids actually fit their design.

Our current faucet is excellent; we've installed it in three different residences. I can't believe all the sinks I see where the faucet is only a couple of inches from the top of the sink. How does anyone wash anything?

We've also installed flourescent lighting fixtures over both the sink and the range, as well as replacing the overhead incandescent bulbs with flourescents, so at least the kitchen is well lit. We have tons of south facing windows, which I'm sure meets with Madeline's approval, but no overhead lights other than the kitchen and bathrooms. Despite the copious application of lamps, it's still a bit dim in the evenings. Which is fine for "atmospheric" dinner parties, but definately annoying for gaming -- the other half of our social life.

If you could take a ferry straight across the river from Edgefield, and go up the hills a few miles, you'll find a piece of land that we own, and have been planning to build on for several years now. It's a bit difficult, since we _still_ live in the Twin Cities! We've been planning to move back ages ago...

So it's remotely possible that at some point we'll build it, and at some point you'll see it. Probably even more likely than being hit by lightening!

[hunnythistle.livejournal.com]

Dang it -- I thought I hit spellcheck preview! All my spelling errors glaringly still present. Sorry folks.

[drusni.livejournal.com]

So now I have to ask... what faucet have you installed in all your kitchens? I'm looking for a good one to replace the one we have.

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

Huge agreement on faucets that arc out over a sink. I run into a lot of annoying bathroom faucets where the water comes out 3" from the back of the sink... How the heck is a person supposed to wash their hands? (Though, could be worse, my sister in London has a place where the hot tap and the cold tap are separated by 2 feet. Dude!)

In California flourescent lighting in the kitchen is required in the building code.

I envy your plot in Portland... Sounds very nice indeed.

In our house, a corner cabinet at shoulder level has a 3-shelf lazy susan in it, and that's a pretty nice place for all the oil/vinegar/spices/etc.

[ptevis.livejournal.com]

Have you read any Christopher Alexander? You might find his ideas similar to your own.

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

I have not, but a couple peole have mentioned him so far, so I'll be on the lookout next time I wander into a used book store...

[hunnythistle.livejournal.com]

I've found "Homing Instincts" by John Connell to be exceptionally useful. The basic premise is that your home should be designed to reflect your unique lifestyle. Not a particularly revolutionary approach, but one that all too often seems to be ignored by builders. It's understandable that those of us who can't build our own place have to make do with what we find. Yet, if you're aware of design features that compliment your lifestyle, you may be able to select places that work better for you.

This book has a chapter that asks questions about your own space usage and flow, and goes from there. It includes lighting, airflow, heating and cooling, foundations, outside materials, roofing materials, and windows, as well as spatial room placement. The book is less of a how-to design a particular house style, like the NotSoBig style, and more about how to make the decisions about deciding what style works for you. Each decision involves trade-offs; by knowing what these are, you can select the ones that work for you.

Also, the environment that you live in makes a huge difference. What works well where my parents live (the Pacific NW) does not work all that well where I live (the Twin Cities), and vice-versa. For example -- basements. Here, everybody has basements. Out there, few people do. Because we need to have deep footings that go below the frozen ground in the winter, adding on a complete basement only costs a little more, and is cheaper per sq foot than most of the rest of the house. Most of the expense already has to go into the foundation. Since they don't need deep foundations in Portland -- the ground is not frozen for 6 months except at the higher elevations -- basements are much more expensive, so few houses have them.

Another example is flat roofs. I love the Italian style houses with verandas and the flat rooftop as additional outdoor dining/gathering space. In MN, we get lots of snow. Flat roofs on residential buildings are problematic.

And insulation, mentioned by Madeleine, is NOT OPTIONAL. For several days during the winter, it will be -35 F. A couple of months are often spent in the negative teens. This is before wind chill is factored in. We have a few weeks of ideal weather, then 3 mos of 90 F weather, with 95% humidity. And it doesn't rain and get cooler -- it just hangs, a miasma resembling nothing so much as being smothered by hot,wet blankets.

Anyway, the point is, architecture should inherently work with the environment it is designed in. As a disclipline, it should be about maximizing aesthetics within the functional purpose of the building. If the aesthetics interfere with the function -- the building is a failure. Buildings with function and little or no aesthetic value are also failures -- oppressive, unpleasant, and demoralizing, especially for most of our society who spend the vast majority of their lives contained in said buildings.

Sorry about the (2!) long posts. Since this topic has me thinking and wanting to say more, perhaps I should make my own posts in my own journal!

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

Ah! I hadn't known why basements were so scarce here in California. In Colorado they were excellent for heat/cold regulation; I love them, and I'd wondered, Is it earthquake safety? What's up? The "we don't need deep foundations" thing makes sense.

Flat roofs are not a great joy of mine, since all the ones I've seen leak.

I appreciate your posts here!

[drusni.livejournal.com]

I agree with most of your points, actually, and try to incorporate a few in all my projects. Doesn't always work out, but I try. :-)

Another idea I love, this one from Christopher Alexander: every room should have at least two windows, preferably looking in different directions to maximize the amount of light. Hard to put into practice without an extravagent amount of exterior wall, but a lovely idea.

Regarding air conditioning & operable windows, etc: I always push for operable windows, but they are more expensive and the mechanical engineers hate them because they make their calculations more difficult if not impossible. That said, an environment like Michigan needs conditioned air at least 50% of the year, if not 75% to achieve best comfort. We're so darned cold for so much of the year we don't have much of a choice.

Oh, and the reason you'll not find any modern stairs with a 7.5" rise is that every building code I've seen has a maximum rise of 7". A good rule of thumb my old boss gave me was that (rise*2) + run = 25 gives a very comfortable stair. I've been curious to try it out with physical models of different rises. Unfortunately the standard stair is always a 7" rise and an 11" run, because it makes the stairs as short as possible and maximizes the amount of rentable space.

Interesting comments on the whole... if you ever have architectural questions, let me know. I can talk about my profession for hours!

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

Re stairs: Bother. Figured it was something like that, with building codes stopping the rise from being higher.

I also definitely support two windows per room arranged so that a draft can go through them. It really is nice to be able to air out a room.

Yay, talking about architecture! I have another friend who just recently went back to school as an adult to become an architect: vito_excalibur. She really knows where her towel is. I'm fascinated by all the litte gleanings of architectural knowledge you two occasionally post.

[motleypolitico.livejournal.com]

I think, sadly, I have not so much to add to this thread. But what I will offer are a couple of personal observations:

I hate hallways. I find them to be wasted space, and they grate on me, because a hallway with nothing but doors on it? How do you spice that up or make it aesthetically useful in any way?

On the subject of kitchens, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with granite countertops or counter space, IMHO. We've got more than enough appliances to justify putting some of the less used ones on more distance countertop areas. I will say that I don't like these 'showplace' kitchens where the kitchen is the center of the house - they're fine if you just want to heat up dip in them while entertaining, but I really do like a line between kitchen and the rest of the living space. Note, that I like having a goodly sized kitchen table, so you can serve meals in the kitchen when you want to.

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

I kind of like hallways. If you make them wide enough for a wheelchair to be comfortable in them, they're also wide enough to fill with bookshelves if you don't need a wheelchair. I really like bookshelves as a decorating tool and as a useful storage space. Also, having lived in several places where the living room was the main passage, it's annoying to place furniture around that use. People walk by behind you when you're on the couch, or walk between you and the TV, or you can't put a chair in a logical spot because people would have to divert around it...

I definitely agree with you on tables in the kitchen, so much so that I added it to my dictums. In my ancestral home in Colorado, the only table is in the kitchen, and it's nice to be able to sit there and talk while Mom cooks or washes. Also nice to have the refridgerator right there to get dessert or beverages without interrupting sociability in the kitchen.

[motleypolitico.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested to hear you critique my house sometime, just on principle. :)