Three P's of Traditional Home Design

Think about the historic places that Americans love. The buildings contributed to a public realm, created privacy for residents, and located parking so it did not dominate the street. Just as America's founding fathers knew how to design a democracy that has worked for more than two centuries, their contemporaries designed and built homes that we still recognize as comfortable, balanced and beautiful.

Traditional homes have a sense of order and balance -- no single element screams for attention. From the outside, the home is readily understandable: the front entry is prominent, so visitors clearly know where to go; parking is functional, but inconspicuous; side yard and rear yard patios and gardens often afford luxurious degrees of privacy.

Some of today's home-design problems stem from a lack of understanding of classic forms and elements. Although the ancient Greeks devised a series of practical formulas that yield timeless structures, present-day designers and builders are often unaware that those formulas exist. Reinventing those formulas is costly, and usually results in a final product that people intuitively sense is somehow not quite right.

Proportion

Proportion is intuitively recognizable. We know it when we see it in a car, a person's appearance, a home or a public building. The true measure of a well-proportioned home is that it "feels right" to us (though we might have difficulty describing exactly what feels right). Utilizing the right proportions is perhaps the most cost-effective way to convey a timeless sense of elegance and grace.

Colonial builders did not have many resources -- they had to make simplicity look good. This philosophy of "doing the most with very little" extended to the farmers who built 19th-century farmhouses, as well as to the small, family builders who constructed homes in the early part of this century. The most consistent aspect of traditional homes is that, regardless of style and budget, they are properly proportioned. It's still true that well-proportioned homes look better at the same or less cost than poorly proportioned homes. This is the lesson that today's builders can learn from the builders of yesteryear. Giving a home proper proportion means creating comfortable relationships between walls and roof lines, cornices and gables, doors and windows, and each of a home's various elements. Windows and other wall elements usually maintain a strong vertical orientation, for instance, and the roof should never visually overpower the home beneath it.

Proper proportion also gives homes a public face that respects neighboring buildings. This is why Greek Revival, French, Georgian, Victorian and Queen Anne styles are often found successfully intermixed in some of the stateliest older neighborhoods in America. The styles can vary as long as the rules of proportion are maintained.

While no single element overpowers other features in a traditional home, the front entrance is a focal point, conceived as an integral part of an entry sequence that begins at the street. The front yard is proportioned and treated as a transition space that takes a visitor from the public realm of the street to the semi-private realm of the porch or stoop. When a home has an entry sequence that begins at the curb, rather than at the foyer, there is less need for "exploding entries" and other costly gimmickry inside. Since many new homes are dominated by front garages, the solution is often a shot of "architectural steroids" to help restore emphasis to the front entry. Unfortunately, the result rarely is successful.

Parking

Over the course of this century, the American home, like other aspects of our lives, has increasingly been designed around the requirements of the automobile. The garage has gravitated from a discreet position behind the traditional home to a position of architectural prominence at the front of the conventional home.

The garage has become one of the most massive and noticeable exterior features of most new homes, resulting in complaints from home buyers about "garage door architecture," or what some New Urbanists refer to as a "garagescape."

The impact of a garage and a paved driveway on a relatively nice home can be devastating. In traditional home design, it is paramount that garages be given almost as much attention as the front entry. Planning for vehicular access, driveway locations and parked vehicles should be considered integral to the home design. While designed for storing cars, garages often become used as a glorified junk closet, one that -- if the door is left open -- exposes to view everything from toys to yard equipment.

Fortunately, in both old and new traditional neighborhoods, one can find a host of parking design solutions. Some home designs architecturally integrate garages while downplaying their visual impact. In other instances, the garage is simply discreetly tucked away to the rear. Another technique that helps to make a garage look more residential is to create usable space above the parking area for a guest house, home office, hobby studio or a kids' play room.

Other design opportunities include enclosing private garden areas with rear garages attached by breezeways. Front driveways can pass under a porte cochere, which allows for convenient access to the car in inclement weather. The ultimate solution is an alley or rear access lane that allows not only parking, but garbage and recycling to be removed from the fronts of homes. However, alleys are not appropriate in certain situations and are not a necessity for creating a traditional neighborhood.

Depending on the desires of the local marketplace, detached garages that blend with the traditional architecture of the home may be a design option. A detached garage allows one to see more house (sans garage) from the street, opens up more wall space for windows, and can enclose a rear yard to create privacy (if the garage acts as a privacy wall). Detached garages can also be semi-attached with a breezeway or accessed by passing through a porte cochere, both of which allow direct covered access to the home.

Since a detached garage is a structure apart from the home, it can be flexibly adapted to a wide range of accessory uses to meet today's changing lifestyles and family demographics, such as a home office, mother-in-law suite or a college graduate apartment. However, the majority of today's new home buyers in most markets still prefer an attached garage.

Privacy

Traditional homes are notable for providing a public face that contributes to the streetscape of the neighborhood. But residents also need a balance of privacy in which to retreat from the more active public realm of the traditional neighborhood. A home that has both rooms and outdoor living spaces with a high degree of privacy is essential for almost all humans, including the inhabitants of traditional neighborhoods throughout history.

It is critical for neotraditional designers and builders to keep in mind that just providing a front porch is not enough to satisfy most home buyers. For many, the private realm of a home is ultimately more important than its curb appeal. Consumer preference research shows that while new home buyers prefer the look of traditional streetscapes, most people are not willing to sacrifice the floor plan or privacy they feel they need. Unfortunately, many new traditional homes incorporate a usable front porch, but do little to address the livability and privacy issues of side or rear yards.

Floor plans offer a variety of ways to achieve privacy. In some cases, it requires placing public rooms facing the street while private rooms are secluded to the rear of the floor plan. Because of changing lifestyles and consumer preferences, some rooms, such as the dining room, study or Great Room, can be located within either the public or private sides of the home.

The transition between the public realm of the street and the privacy of the home can be a diverse and stimulating visual and spatial experience. According to leading traditional town planner Andres Duany, "One of the most luxurious experiences for a home owner is to walk from a lively public realm at the sidewalk, through the front door and the home, and into a rear yard with total privacy."

The transition from public realm to private sanctuary can be enhanced with various design elements, including plant materials, landscape elements and grading. Homes in traditional neighborhoods have long raised the finished first floor level (also an important element with proper proportion) to provide a further degree of vertical separation and privacy from the views of passersby along the public street and sidewalk.

Most of the plans found in the TND Series address the issues of proportion, parking and privacy. Notable examples of appropriate proportion include plans HUB-3-E, LRK-90148 and RT-901-C, found on pages 82, 107 and 122, respectively. Plans ALL-1-E, AM-2153 and WAA-14-E (pages 17, 25 and 72, respectively) handle the parking issue expertly. For well-executed treatments of the privacy problem, see plans DD-2298-1TND, HAI-1-S and KRA-2901 on pages 19, 68 and 110, respectively.

James Constantine is a principal with Community Planning and Research, Inc., in Princeton, New Jersey. A researcher in consumer housing preferences and an urban planner, Mr. Constantine helped to select the plans presented in TND Series Volumes I and II.

J. Carson Looney, FAIA, is the Principal in Charge of Residential Architecture and Community Planning with Looney Ricks Kiss Architects, Inc., in Memphis, Tennessee. The firm's work, ranging from modest homes to town centers and multi-acre new towns, has received wide acclaim from developers, builders and consumers.