An Alice-in-Wonderland Challenge
(Part 3 of 4)
By Eve Kushner
My last two columns focused on making small spaces feel bigger. Once you've achieved that, you potentially face a new problem. When ceilings soar and when exterior walls are mainly sheets of glass, a house may feel more like an inhospitable showcase than a warm, cozy haven. The challenge is to retain a sense of roominess while also making such spaces intimate and human-scale. This brings to mind Alice-in-Wonderland's plight of suddenly growing larger, then rapidly shrinking. Fortunately, with architectural magic at hand, no mushrooms are required!
Kensington architect Bart Jones told me about three keys to humanizing space: proportion, scale and light. What's the difference between the first two? "Proportion is how one thing relates to another," he said, whereas "scale is how human beings relate to things."
"Oh!" I said, happily surprised. "It's about us!" Scale and proportion had seemed like dry words from geometry class, so I hadn't expected humans to be part of the picture.
"Yeah," he said, "we're not designing for tigers!"
When you notice his use of windows, you grasp that he definitely designs for humans. Take, for example, his Kensington office building, a long, narrow structure on a long, narrow lot. He created a wall of western windows to make the interior seem expansive, and he could have used massive picture windows on that western side. Instead, he divided each 12-foot-wide bay into four vertical lights. This division, he said, creates scale.
"How?" I asked. "Because it makes four smaller pieces of glass?"
"Sure. You can be in a high-rise with a 15-foot piece of glass, and some people won't get near it. They'll stay four feet back." Motioning to his window, he noted, "As soon as you do this, you create four vertical things. And you start to read that proportion in the space and joists above. And then it gets smaller in the 8-inch roof decking. This whole building, it's all members with proportion. You see it over and over."
Jones also creates scale by using symmetry. In the two-story living room of a small Kensington house, he centered skylights, arched doorways and windows between trusses. He notes, "We do relate to symmetry."
Upstairs, the master bedroom opens to the high-ceilinged living room via an interior window &mdash what one might call a Romeo-and-Juliet window. Hinged wooden shutters allow the window to be either open or closed, and Jones imagines that someone in the master bedroom might push the shutters open and call down to those in the space below. Although a two-story living room could feel dislocating or lonely, this personal touch allows people to make connections (or to give orders).
On the other side of the master bedroom, Jones nestled a window seat into a bay window. Whereas large, unified windowpanes might have seemed cold, Jones created an inviting space by once again dividing the lights.
If windows factor greatly into Jones's idea of humanizing a building, so do roofs and ceilings. The Kensington home could have had a massive roof peak, but Jones knew this would wreck the scale, making the house into a "gross thing" likely to annoy neighbors. Instead, he zigzagged the roof, creating two symmetrical peaks side by side. While reducing the potential interior space, this feature added charm, which strikes Jones as a worthwhile tradeoff.
He feels that a sloping roof can produce a snug, attic-like space that's eminently human &mdash scale. Even without a sloping roof, one can make a room more appealing by varying ceiling heights, says Jones, who used that technique in the two-story living room. After you enter that room through the front door, you pass under a low soffit. (Jones recommends tucking doorways, windows and fireplaces under soffits.) The adjacent space soars, with skylights pulling the eye upward. "So you have it both ways," says Jones. "When you enter, you're under this lower space, but you can look through the glass virtually to infinity."
To see the projects mentioned, go to evekushner.com and choose "on building."
April 2007 Builder Architect Edition Issue