My Design Ethos

This is such a topic of passion for me. Hillside's ethos as far as what makes good design, is the combination of three elements:

1. Balance

2. Massing

3. Scale

I went to architecture school; I do not have a degree in architecture. However; I had a fantastic professor in the History of World Architecture I & II. This class was one of the most challenging courses I ever took, but the impact it has had on my knowledge of design has paid dividends to this day.

When I was in architecture school, I learned all the classical styles; exams consisted of drawing the different orders of columns, naming various parts of classical buildings, and understanding the economics of the times in which they were constructed. Needless to say, it was a very immersive course. This understanding of classical structures is how I approach each home to this day. The guiding principles I learned while in architecture school, though classic in nature, still hold water in modern and contemporary spaces. This sounds totally cliché, but you truly have to understand the rules to know how to break them.

Balance

One of the best primers for understanding balance, is in "Get Your House Right." This book has tons of illustrations of what to do and what not to do. Being a Type A personality, it soothes my need for order and structure in an otherwise wild west world of modern day design.

This book right here is the best guide for an aesthetic reference. I use it often.

Take a look at the two examples below. The one on the right is balanced, and orderly while the one on the left is misshapen and clustered. Balance doesn't necessarily mean symmetrical, rather that the house doesn't look too heavy or crowded in one area while looking sparse or boring in another. The house on the left has a boring cluster of windows on its right side, then there's a lot going on in the middle around the door, and then back to boring on the left side. Now let's look at the house on the right. Everything is in order; the windows are properly spaced; importance is placed on the entrance; and then an almost ancillary attachment on the left, tastefully added, so as not to compete with anything, but to compliment the more important elements.

Let's take a look at the next example below. I would venture to guess that you would agree with the book on which one looks better. You haven't been classically trained, been to architecture school, or taken any home design courses, yet you automatically know which one looks the best right? The home in the upper portion looks like most homes built during the 1990's. The home in the lower portion looks like it could have been constructed in the 1920's. The upper home has an identity crisis, the lower home is cohesive and gives a feeling of nostalgia.

When considering the above analyses, I often approach home design by how I want the exterior to look. When you consider production homes, they look at a check list of what they need to incorporate into their design to maximize the profit. They're not concerned with beauty, they're concerned with the bottom line. The true trick to the craft is designing something beautiful while also keeping it as cost efficient as possible; both can be accomplished.

Massing

Massing is how the various parts of a home are laid out in a three dimensional world. There should be a main focus, usually the entertaining part of the home, and secondary focuses, the bed chambers and/or service areas of the home. The importance of each space is emphasized by its real world size.

As you can see above, the massing of different shapes in simple layouts helps to create a sense of order. It tells you where your focus should be drawn. I would say the most important thing to note, is that one element is not competing with the other; they are complimenting each other.

This is all well and good, but how do we adapt this for the homes of today? Homes that are on a city lot make things much more complicated. Most of our cities were built-out in the post war era in the form of suburbs. The three bedroom, two bathroom ranch dominated the landscape and mainly consisted of 1,800 square feet at most. Now, at least in Dallas, these homes are being purchased for their lot size, torn down, and replaced with McMansions; homes reaching upward of 5,000 square feet in some cases. This makes massing much more difficult. Though a 5,000 square foot home is possible on theses lots, care needs to be given to it's massing so that it looks like it could have been there before the suburbs built up around it.

Scale

This is possibly my greatest irk when it comes to the homes of today. Scale is the relation of architectural features to one another and to the people who live and interact in them. There is nothing worse than walking into a home with 6'8" (standard) tall doors with a ceiling height of 10'+. It creates the look of the wall above having a huge forehead. Or walking down a hallway that is too narrow for two people to pass or so wide it feels like a room itself.

Scale is also the individual pieces working together to complement the whole. When even one piece of the structure does not match in size to the rest of the structure, it throws the whole thing off. Window and door sizes are one of the most common items out of scale for a home.

These examples just begin to scratch the surface of their respective topics. Hopefully after reading through this you don't see me as judgy, rather you understand the passion from which my design stems. Though I am not a classicist in my design style, I do understand its concepts and care about them. I'm not a proponent for the McMansion, though I understand constraints of city boundaries. I love a modern glass wall, but think there should be balance by a stone wall. I suppose what I'm trying to say is this: if you're going to design and build a home (hopefully with me), let's make it the best we can: let's make it work for you, let's make it cost effective, let's make it beautiful!