It seems that kitchen design continues to trend in the upscale direction. People are looking for better cabinets, granite or solid surface countertops, and professional looking appliances. One of the icons of the upscale kitchen is the Sub Zero refrigerator. The name Sub Zero has come to symbolize not just a high end kitchen. Having that Sub Zero label on your refrigerator can influence a buyer’s opinion about the entire house. I’ve often joked that the label alone is worth tens of thousands of dollars in the resale value of the house. That’s how effective the brand identity campaign has been for the Sub Zero people.

And just what’s so appealing about a Sub Zero? Obviously it is a very good product. They have great features such as two individual compressors, one for the freezer side and one for the refrigerator side. Many of their super deluxe models have specialty features you probably didn’t even know you needed until they told you. But I think the single most valuable feature of a Sub Zero is the fact that it is “cabinet depth.” This means the front of the refrigerator sits even with the face of the lower cabinets and front edge of the countertop. It doesn’t stick out several inches like standard refrigerators and look like a big bulky box in the kitchen. With a cabinet panel installed on the doors of the Sub Zero, the bulkiest object in the kitchen, the refrigerator, can take a less intrusive position in your kitchen and give the entire kitchen a more unitized and cleaner look. (more…)

Have you ever been walking or driving along and had your attention grabbed by a house? It happens to me a lot. Maybe that’s because I’m an architect. But I think it happens to everyone. There is something about a good house form that can really catch your eye.

You might not know exactly what I mean by a “good house form.” We architects often use the word “massing.” This refers to the overall shape and bulk of a building. It’s the shape of the structure and roof line in its gross form. It ignores the finer details. It relates to composition, balance, visual flow and a lot of other artistic terms that even professionals have trouble expressing in words. But a good house form is one we know when we see it. One way to evaluate a house form is to stand back and squint at it. This will keep the details from confusing your mind. A good house starts with a good house form. The details will further enhance it, making it even better. But it’s hard to save a bad form with expensive materials and details. A house has to have “good bones.” (more…)

Today, we awoke to a freak snowstorm here in Raleigh, North Carolina. I say “freak” because any snow is a rare occurrence in this part of the country. Snow in January is a novel concept in the southeast. Everything, and I mean everything was closed. We were crippled by Mother Nature.

 When the flakes stopped falling, we had about six inches of nice, clean snow on the ground. I put on my tennis shoes (I don’t have boots anymore since I moved south) and found my gloves (they were in my golf bag where I left them following a chillier than usual round a few weeks ago) and set out to clear the snow. I don’t use a snow shovel any more. I’m not sure I still have one. I use my leaf blower, instead. It works surprisingly well. It fluffs up the snow and blows it away almost without a trace. I cleared my sizeable driveway in a little over an hour. The best part is my back doesn’t hurt! 

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    Garage doors are often one of the ugliest features on the exterior of a house. There are now quite a few “carriage house” type doors to choose from that look much better than the traditional flat or raised panel doors. But those special doors come at a significant cost increase. There are other solutions you might want to consider.

    Garage doors are often an unsightly feature simply because of their scale. We human beings tend to prefer objects that are an appropriate size or scale to our own size. The doors and windows of your house will be most appealing when they are size-appropriate to the people who will occupy the house. They will “express” an interaction with other people. On a subconscious level, we can emotionally connect with architectural features like that. Garage doors must, by their very nature, be sized and scaled to the automobiles that must pass through them. Garage doors end up being the largest doors on your house. We find them unattractive for that very reason. (more…)

    It’s almost impossible to discuss composition and architectural proportion without referring to the golden mean, also called the golden section. Readers of Dan Brown’s mega-bestseller The Da Vinci Code may recall the description of that formula in the book. As a brief refresher, the golden mean is the original organizing and proportioning method or formula for art and architecture. Its theory tells us that human beings are most pleased when things are in a proportion of 1 to 1.618. In other words, if a window is one unit wide, it should be 1.618 units tall in order to be the most appealing to human eyes. The golden mean was used prominently in Greek and Roman architecture and is just as useful in today’s world. Indeed, the same ratio that was applied to the design of the Parthenon is likely to aid your architect in the design of your new home. (more…)

    In homebuilding, picking out the right materials can be a little tricky.

    I talked yesterday about the value of painting out larger samples of your wall and trim paint selections to verify that the colors were right. The same principles applies to the other materials you plan to use. Don’t pick bricks from a photo or even from a brick sample card with several thin bricks on it. Without mortar, the bricks will look different than they will on your house. Stone is even tougher. I can’t imagine being confident in a stone selection from a handful of loose stones. Stones come in a very wide range of colors, textures, and sizes. And there is no good way to describe stone in words. Photos of other walls help, but you need to be sure your builder can reproduce the wall you want. (more…)

    In a high-end community where I have designed nearly one hundred houses, there are fairly strict house design guidelines. Covenants and restrictions are a necessary element in maintaining a level of quality, and thus, maintaining property values. No one is happy if a lime green house ends up next door. Design restrictions offer some limits, and as Martha Stewart says, that is a good thing.

    But some restrictions can go too far. One rule this community has is that every house must have a clearly displayed house number. (more…)

    In today’s quiz on house design bloopers, I offer up this photo.

     My question to you, dear reader, is do you see what’s wrong with this brickwork?

     I’ll tell you what struck my eye in tomorrow’s post.

Bill Hirsch

www.designingyourperfecthouse.com

www.williamhirsch.com

I happened to run across HGTV’s Dream House 2009. Here it is.

The outside looks nice, but the plans are pretty bad. (more…)

    Do you have a clear vision of the perfect house for you and your family?

    If you are like most people, your vision of your dream house is actually an idea without much in the way of concrete details. It may consist of mental images of houses you admire or remember. You may have merely a sense of what it should be, but no clear image of it in a physical way. This is normal. No architect expects you to come to his or her office with a design. After all, that’s what the architect’s job is. You’ve got to give you architect a chance to earn his or her money! (more…)