Thoughts on design

Musings on architecture and landscape design

frost study

Next time you enter a room that feels lifeless and flat take a good look at it.  In many cases you will find it lacking interest at the edges.  Or think about sitting around and having a conversation with a group of friends.  How far away can they be for an easy conversation?

A rule of thumb is that the maximum distance you normally want to be separated by for a comfortable conversation is about ten feet.  So when looking at furniture arrangements or determining room sizes for seating areas I start with bubble diagrams with roughly sketched ten foot circles on my plans to help with the basic blocking out of my space and furniture arrangements.  Your seating group may be larger but then you may want to think of it as having two conversation areas within it.

Ideally your main seating group should be away from the walls of the room and oriented towards some sort of focal point such as a view, fireplace, or entertainment center.  Among other advantages that allows you to have circulation around the periphery rather then through the center of your seating area.  Once you have the focal point seating area (or areas) blocked out you need to look at adding interest to the edges of the space.

Giving the edges of a room a sense of depth ether through architecture or furnishings tends to makes a room more inviting and engaging.  Moving secondary furniture groupings for one or two people to the edges, and adding pairs of vertical elements like book cases or display cabinets will start to define niches and boundaries.  This type of arrangement breaks the room into a series of spaces, giving a layered and comfortable feel to the room.

Stair landing

An important character of a graceful house, one that separates them from those that feel tight and cramped, is the sense of transition from one space to the next.

Think of a gateway into a garden, possibly with an arbor overhead. Is there a stone pathway that leads up to the arbor? What is the fence like to either side of the gateway, can you see though it, is it a picket fence, an ivy covered stone wall? How do you perceive the garden before you pass through the gateway, can you see flowering plants or a small pond? When you pass under the arbor how does the sunlight filter through it? When you enter the garden do you feel different then you did approaching it?

Questions like these can and should be asked for most transitions. Is there a cased opening between the dinning room and kitchen? How deep is it five inches, a foot? Could you have a comfortable conversation between people in the two rooms with some visual connection through it? What is next to the opening? Is there room for furniture or wall space for artwork? Is there a change in floor level or the ceiling height? 

Often creating some sort of pause between space’s is desirable. A widening of the hallway with room for a side table before you enter bedrooms creates a nice pause between the feeling of being in your own private sanctuary and the more public feel of the family common.

Gradual change further emphasizes the sense of transition from one space to the next. Adding in-between spaces such as a work area, a generous stair landing, or some other semi private function will help in easing transitions. It helps to heighten the mental distance between functions.

There are many ways to achieve a graceful sense of transition. The key is to create in-between spaces, to create half steps allowing you to gradually transition from one environment to the next. To this you add visual connections between adjacent spaces so you have a good feeling for the total environment.