Dream House Fumble #3 – Answer
Here is the answer to yesterday’s Dream House Fumble question. I asked if you saw what was wrong with the brickwork. Here’s the photo, again, just to refresh your memory.
Dream House Fumble #3
Does the brick look “glued on” to you? It does to me. Brick is a heavy, solid material that is the actual structure of thousands and thousands of buildings that date back to the Romans. It is a material that should express its strength and it should not be used as a “detail” material or a wall facing, like vinyl siding.
In this house, the item that really caught my eye and drove me to snap this picture and show it to you is the “key”, or “keystone” at the top of the half-round. A key is the wedge shaped block at the 12:00 o’clock position. Originally, in masonry arches, the key was the last stone set. It secured the arch structurally, making it capable of supporting considerable loads across an open span. In classic detailing, the key in an arch often was mimicked when the arch was built of wood. It retained it’s psychological quality of “locking” the structure together.
In our example here, the arch is made of brick, the key is made of wood, and there is no key at all in the brickwork! The brick absolutely denies its structural properties. If it were structural, it would collapse. As a result, the brick appears as simply an applied material that serves as mere siding. The entire look is visually abrasive and dissonant. This window would have been much more successful if the wooden key had been omitted and a brick or cast stone key had been installed in the brickwork.
While we’re at it, I could point out other strange details, like the excessive width of the window trim and the awful half-round fan detail above the center window. I suppose that was put there to replace a more expensive true fan window. A real window would have made a great difference for only a couple of hundred dollars. Wouldn’t it be worth it right on the front of the house? I will give them credit for placing the downspouts around the corner and not running them right on top of the brick quoins. Ironically, the quoins are costly and enhance the expression of strength in the masonry. Better to have ditched the quoins and done the window and arch properly.
You may think this is a little picky. But this is what separates a good house from a marginal house. The details make the difference.
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Tags: architecture, brick, brick masonry, dream home, home design, home designs, homebuilding, house design, residential architecture
