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There are two approaches to the redesign of any apartment or house. One is to start with a list of your functional needs and to begin master-plan fling the house around these priorities. The second approach is to study the style and proportions of the house and to make the preservation of these qualities the major design determinant. This section approaches the redesign strictly from a functional point of view, whereas Section 3 focuses solely on the style and character of the building. Whichever approach you choose, be sure that the other determinant isn't neglected. A functional approach need not result in ruining the style of the existing building. Rooms can be reorganized without destroying their original character or detailing. Additions can be constructed that are sympathetic to the existing façade. Conversely, even if your first priority is the preservation or reconstruction of a period house, there is no need to sacrifice space, privacy, and indoor plumbing. Unless you are restoring a historic monument to period conditions, much can be done to integrate functional bathrooms, compatible electrical fixtures, and modern kitchen equipment into a gracious period piece. The first step a design professional takes in any renovation is an assessment of a client’s needs and an evaluation of the existing building. An analysis of needs focuses on the spatial, organizational, and life-style requirements of the people who will occupy the house or apartment. An evaluation of the existing premises is made in terms of its physical condition, aesthetic potential, historical context, and the size and distribution of its interior spaces. By following the steps outlined below, a relative stranger (the designer) becomes acquainted with the individuals living in the house or apartment and the potentialities of the space that's to be renovated. Although you may be very familiar with both your needs and the potential of your existing residential space, we suggest you follow these steps as well. You may find that we cover some points that you may have otherwise missed. In addition, we hope to teach you the first rule of architectural design: com promise. THINKING ABOUT YOUR REQUIREMENTS Some people about to renovate are quite sure of their needs: more closets, a new bedroom, an overhauled kitchen. Many renovators, however, are less sure of their exact requirements short of knowing that they need more space and they want the place to look “better.” We include this section for readers who wish to follow the redesign process from the beginning. We feel that a careful analysis of your household’s needs (especially in comparison with your existing space) may be of value and ultimately may save you money. E.g., one of our clients saw the need to build an additional four rooms onto his existing house. He claimed that he needed a gym, a home office, and a practice room to contain his piano and recording equipment. His wife, a writer, needed her own office. The four rooms were to be small and cramped since the site adjacent to the house was small. Two of the rooms would face the blank wall of a neighbor’s garage. After questioning the client on how he was going to use those three rooms, we reminded him that he could occupy only one of them at a time. We suggested that instead of his three tiny rooms he might be happier with a single large room which would contain gym equipment on one side and the piano and recording equipment on the other. The word processor would be built into a cabinet that could be opened to the room or closed off from it. The room would be pleasant and airy with a view to the backyard and perhaps a skylight or greenhouse extension. As an added bonus, his wife’s office would be more generously proportioned than was originally anticipated. If your budget and existing space are tight you will have to seriously differentiate between what are real needs and what are “wish list” items. An audiovisual screening room, a private gym, and a lap pool may be fine if you are renovating a château. On the other hand, if you are redesigning a five-room apartment for your family of four, the private-gym fantasy may have to be abandoned and the exercise equipment incorporated into another space. The design analysis that follows focuses on (1) functional needs—that which allows us to carry out our household activities efficiently—and (2) aesthetic imperatives—that which pleases the eye and enlivens us. Careful and thoughtful planning and a good eye for proportion will satisfy these two design categories. The third ingredient, that which makes a house or apartment into a home, is less tangible than the first two. It is the elusive “something” that satisfies our psychological need to feel comfortable and secure. It generates the good feeling we get when we return home from a particularly hard day at work and close the front door behind us. No matter how many times we cross that familiar threshold, the feeling that we are in the embrace of our own private world should be there; in fact, it should grow more intense with time. We sleep best in our own bed, in a room with our imprint, surrounded by the pictures we have chosen to hang on the walls. We feel that the more time, effort, and hard thinking you invest personally in designing your environment, the happier you will be in it. This does not mean necessarily that you should make all design decisions on your own. What we suggest is that you think about the atmosphere you wish to create. A home’s environment should mirror the life style of its inhabitants, their tastes and sense of style. FUNCTIONAL CONCERNS An analysis of the way you live should be the starting point of the design process. Private Spaces Most households consist of individuals who sometimes need to be together and sometimes want to be alone. We need to be alone in order to nap, think, study, or have a private telephone conversation. All people, children included, need to withdraw on occasion to put together the events of the day or to ponder a decision. The place a person chooses for this private contemplation is a room or area that's felt to be one’s own. The bedroom is the most likely candidate. Most people seem to have a particular attachment for the place where they sleep. Perhaps we shed our inhibitions when we take off our clothes. The bedroom need not be the only bastion of privacy in the house. The kitchen, when the rest of the family has deserted it, is another choice; so is the bathroom. Each member should feel that there is at least one spot in which he or she may be alone and undisturbed. The private areas of the house are the bed rooms, studies, or home offices which are to be used by one or two members but not by everyone. Private spaces can be large or small, bright or dark, open or closed. Some people consider the bedroom to be their sanctuary to be used to take morning coffee, read the paper, or make early morning calls. Often they retire to their bedrooms as soon as they finish dinner, toss off their clothes, don their pajamas, and watch TV or read in bed. Others might use the bedroom minimally. They would prefer to spend most of the time they are awake in the living room. It makes sense that these two kinds of bedrooms be designed differently. The former requires a small sitting area as well as room for the bed and TV; the second bed room could be very basic. Traditionally, individual bedrooms are the only private spaces in a house. Adult privacy is pro vided by the master bedroom, which is larger in area and has direct access to a private bathroom. The secondary bedrooms become the children’s spaces and are generally smaller, sharing a common bathroom. Although this arrangement has proven efficient for many families, it's not necessarily the model for every family. A household with visiting children, frequent guests, kids away at college, whose foremost concern is flexibility, may be happiest with a large area that can be easily partitioned into any number of smaller spaces. This space can be divided in accordance with changing needs (Iii. 2). Another family may find that it's essential to separate adult private and communal areas from the children’s bedrooms and playroom. The adult area might be a single space that accommodates sleeping, relaxing, working, and grooming in a group of areas. The children may prefer to play and work together but don't wish to share bed rooms. Their private space could be a large communal playroom-workroom with small sleeping rooms and bathroom facilities closely related (ill. 3). Other private areas are a painting or music studio, home office, woodworking shop, sewing or hobby room, personal gym, sauna, and steam-room. ---- ---- ----- “Room” or “Space” – What do these terms REALLY mean? Thus far we have used the terms “room” and “space” almost interchangeably. A “room” is usually defined by physical boundaries such as walls and partitions, doors, floors, and ceilings. A “space” is an area in which a specific activity is likely to take place. E.g., an area near the kitchen can be set aside for dining. It need not be a room surrounded by walls. It could be a corner of the living room or kitchen, a balcony overlooking the family room, or the center of a greenhouse. Any number of locations are possible as long as the original criterion of being close to the kitchen is maintained. Spaces are defined by visual rather than physical boundaries. These boundaries are provided by light, texture, color, materials, furniture, changes in floor level or ceiling height, and so on. A space can be partially enclosed by low walls or it may be totally free of them. The ceiling above it can be raised or lowered. It can be dramatically lit with a skylight. A free-standing fireplace or a “floating” bookshelf can partially enclose it. All of these elements manipulated in various ways set this space apart from any other space in the house, giving it a different use or setting a different mood. A house should be thought of as a relationship of spaces, not a collection of rooms. Achieving the proper space interaction to satisfy your needs is what constitutes a successfully designed house or apartment. The spaces can relate to each other directly or indirectly and sometimes they might overlap. E.g., the need for privacy and sound control will determine the distance between the bedrooms and the noise-producing areas of the house. Functional criteria will place the kitchen in close proximity to the eating spaces. A need for supervision may lead to the placement of the children’s play area close to the kitchen or as an alcove adjacent to the family room. ---- ---- ----- Joint Activities Most of the activities of the household are communal. The family usually dines together at least once a day and most of us prefer to watch the ball game with company rather than watch it on separate sets in separate rooms. The shared spaces— the living room, dining room, kitchen, and playroom—are the places in which to share ideas and experiences. These spaces should have a warm and comfortable feeling, conducive to such exchange. For some people a room filled with pictures and treasures collected on vacations creates such a feeling. People who love the outdoors are likely to feel happiest in a room that embraces the outside. Special demands are often made on the joint- activity areas of our homes. Many households differentiate between formal and informal areas. Some houses have formal parlorlike living rooms for company and more informal family rooms for TV viewing. Many houses and apartments have parallel spaces for eating: one formal for company and holiday meals, the other in or near the kitchen for daily dining. Others don't feel the need for so rigid a space hierarchy. They choose to use the same space for all kinds of purposes, both formal and informal. Each household has its own ideas on how to make best use of its space; it's the quality of space and not the quantity that's vital to good design. Space can be defined by visual rather than physical boundaries. In this house, one space is separated from another by a change in level, ceiling height, or plane. Special attention should be focused on the design of these joint-activity areas. What kinds of activities actually take place in the communal areas of the house? What kinds of experiences do you hope to have in these spaces? What kind of “feeling” should the rooms have? The shared areas of the house are where people gather to talk and argue, watch TV or look at the fire, read out loud or to themselves, prepare food, eat, gossip, listen to music, entertain friends. The activities to be housed in these areas will be as varied as the age groups within the family. The communal areas are also used for entertaining friends in large or small groups, with varying degrees of formality, and for sweet-sixteen and slumber parties and community-group meetings. Play areas accommodate activities that may at times be unharmonious, such as a quiet game of chess and a noisy computer game. Work areas might be used by someone preparing a term paper on the word processor while another family member is consulting with his boss on the telephone. Dining areas may be required to accommodate Boy Scouts eating pizza, a formal dinner party for six, the baby’s high chair and solo breakfasts, but, hopefully, not all at the same time. Once you have established the activities or combination of activities that are to take place in these areas, you should try to envision the environment or “feeling” you wish to create in the space. You may prefer to interact with family and guests alike on a small, intimate scale. A large space of ballroom proportions would be useless and feel uncomfortable. Perhaps a series of small spaces would be more appropriate. A family might feel the need for a large entertainment space for the adults, a big playroom to be used exclusively for the kids, and a range of smaller spaces for study, piano lessons, private tutoring, and word processing. If the construction budget and the space available are unlimited, all these spaces can be accommodated. Unfortunately, most people will find that they must work with finite space and a limited budget and will have to make compromises. This room, which embraces the outdoors, was designed to maximize views to the meadows and mountains beyond. Renovation architects. Service Areas The service areas are the kitchen and bathrooms, garage, laundry, and storage areas. The kitchen is best located adjacent to both the inside and out door dining areas. It should be accessible from either the front or back door so that you won’t have to haul groceries across forty feet of wall-to- wall carpeting to get to the refrigerator. The kitchen can be at the hub of the house, open to the living and dining areas, or in a separate room. (More about kitchens in Section 7.) The most critical question asked about bath rooms is how many are required. Many families have managed with one bathroom for years and it may be all that your household requires. As a general rule, we recommend two complete bath rooms for three to four people and two bathrooms and a powder room (which has a lavatory and toilet but no tub or shower) or three bathrooms for five or more in the family. These need not be luxurious and may have either a tub, stall shower, or tub-shower combination. The bathroom may or may not have a window, but most municipal ordinances require all bathrooms to be either mechanically (using a fan and a duct to the outside) or naturally (through a window) ventilated. It is most practical to locate the full bathrooms on a hallway adjacent to the bedrooms. If planned correctly, the bedrooms, hallway, and bathrooms should be somewhat isolated from the communal spaces of the house so that a bather need not walk through the living room in bathrobe and slippers. Many designers provide a separate bathroom for the master bedroom. Some more luxurious houses are provided with a bathroom off each bedroom. The powder room should be located near the living areas but not directly off the living room or dining room. It is best located off a hallway or the entry foyer. If you have a two-story house it's a good idea to have a full bath on each floor. (More about bathrooms in Section 8.) At one time closets and storage areas were created out of the leftover space between rooms and at the ends of halls. Built-in closets were considered so unimportant that many beautiful and gracious homes were constructed with virtually no clothing closets. Today closets and storage space are at least as important as bathrooms and bed rooms. Most of us find that we need a lot of area in which to hang our clothing and store such paraphernalia as cross-country, downhill, and water skis. Clothing closets are ideally located in or very near the bedrooms of the people they serve. Extra closet space can be located in any part of the house. These closets can be used to store the winter wardrobe in summer and the summer clothing in winter. This system necessitates a twice-yearly switching of the closets’ contents. General storage can be located just about anywhere. In tight quarters space to store suitcases and other seldom used items is often found above closets in hung ceilings (designed to take the load of the items being stored) and under platforms (Ill. 4) and Section 13 for more storage ideas. HOW MUCH SPACE DO YOU ACTUALLY NEED? Although we feel that the quality of a space is more valuable than its quantity, we recognize that the size and shape of a room are important factors in how it works, looks, and feels. It is difficult to quantify the aspects of good design in regard to size and proportion; the best we can do is offer some suggestions as to how you can develop a sensitivity to size and compile a list of standard room dimensions. As a starting point in learning about size and proportion, we suggest you measure rooms that feel “right” to you (whether in your own house or a friend’s). You can “pace off” a room by step ping toe to heel across the room (most men’s shoes are about a foot long or you can adjust accordingly). At some point in the design process you should measure your own furniture and existing rooms and draw them to scale (Section 4, Inset II) to get some idea of the size of your house or apartment and to have some means of comparing the size of the existing rooms with the ones you are planning. It takes a while to get a good idea of how big (or small) rooms should be. Proportion refers to the relationship of length, width, and height. A nicely proportioned room is either square or rectangular but not overly long and narrow. The ancient Greeks believed that the ideal proportion conformed to the golden rectangle of 1:1.43, and felt that a room’s length should never exceed twice its width. We agree that 1:1½ is a good guide to room proportion. Rooms 20’ X 28’ or 14’ X 20’ are considered well-proportioned. The height of a room is critical as well. A large room (20’ X 28’) with a very low ceiling (8’) may feel more like a finished basement than a ball room. The same room with a ceiling height of 22’ will actually look small and somewhat institutional. A ceiling height of 12’ to 14’ would be most appropriate. Any small room with a disproportionately high ceiling will look smaller than an equivalent room with a lower ceiling. E.g., a 14’ X 14’ bedroom with a 14’ ceiling height would look like a smaller room than the same room with a 9’ ceiling. To apply the Greek pro portion to room height, we use the width of the room to determine the ideal ceiling height, which would be 0.7 as great as the width. E.g., if the room is 20’ X 28’, the “ideal” ceiling height would be 0.7 of 20’, or 14’. The ideal height for the 14’ X 14’ bedroom is about 9’. These Greek ideals aren't actually adhered to by contemporary designers, but we include them as guidelines. Many families find that one living space is ample for sitting, reading, playing, and entertaining friends. Other families require multiple rooms for these functions. The living room can be as small as 200 square feet (11’ X 18’) or as large as 500 square feet (18’ X 28’). The former space will feel intimate but is large enough to accommodate a small party. The latter space is amply sized to accommodate large parties. Anything over 600 square feet is baronial in size but may seem over- scaled for a simple tête-à-tête. A space this large will require multiple seating arrangements to make it work as a living room. The above dimensions apply to the family room and the playroom (Ill. 5). Dining rooms are often sized to fit the furniture they will house. A large room that accommodates both living and dining requires less overall space for the dining functions than if they were contained in a separate room. In the case of a large dinner party with an expanded table the dining area can “spill over” into the living space (Iii. 6). Bedrooms can be any size. A single twin bed is 39” wide and 75” or 80” long. The smallest bedroom could include a bed and a dresser and pivot space (make sure you adhere to code requirements) (Ill. 7). Keep in mind, when designing children’s bedrooms, that most children over the age of ten have sleep-over dates. The bedroom should be large enough for a foldout cot or trundle bed. (If this doesn’t work, be prepared to offer the guest room or family room to your kid for these mini—slumber parties.) A queen-sized bed is 60” wide by 80” or 84” long and dictates the minimal size of a bedroom for two people at about 10’ x 11’ or 9’ X 12’. (These dimensions don't include closets.) More space is required for bureaus, lounge chairs, desk space, or exercise machinery. If you have a lot of kids and are tight on space, you may consider combining the bedrooms in some novel way. Two children’s rooms can be reconstructed as three rooms. A large bedroom can be divided into two tiny private sleep-study areas with a joint play space. A high ceiling may allow for a more elaborate arrangement which partially piles one room onto another (Ill. 8). Home office and study sizes depend on their function and what you want to put into them. If you build in desk space on both long walls of a room, the room should be at least 8’ wide. This room will be adequate for only one person since there isn't enough circulation space around the chairs for two or more. If two people are to use the space, the room should be 9’ or 10’ wide. A clothing closet must be at least 2’ deep to accommodate clothing on hangers. A depth of 2’-3” is more comfortable. Any depth over 2’-6” is inefficient since the increased depth will not permit the hanging of additional clothing. A walk-in closet with hanging on opposite walls can be 5’-6” wide, but a width of 6’ or 6’-0” is more comfortable. These closets can be any length. A less effective closet (but useful in awkward spaces) is one with two rods, one directly behind the other, which hangs clothing two rows deep. This closet is useful primarily for storing out-of- season wardrobes or other seldom used items since you have to remove most of the clothing on the front row to get to the clothes in the back. Linen closets can be as shallow as 18” deep but shouldn't exceed a depth of 24” (Ill. 9). Kitchen and bathroom sizes and proportions are detailed in Sections 7 and 8. Outdoor space comes in all sizes and shapes depending on where you live. If you are one of the few city dwellers with a penthouse, balcony, or backyard, consider yourself lucky. Good design will maximize this space so that it's attractive and useful. If you have a choice in relocating the outdoor living and dining areas, consider these spaces as you would the interior spaces when you plan the redesign of the floor plan. Any outdoor space will be more useful if it's located adjacent to the communal areas and has good access to the kitchen. SOME PLANNING CONSIDERATIONS The organization of the living space is very much dictated by the size and nature of the household. A family with small children has different needs than a household of adults or one of adults and adolescents. A single person or an adult couple living without resident children can exercise a great deal of design flexibility in planning a renovation. Such houses can have showers in the living room, balconies over the living room as bedrooms, or totally partition-free interiors. Of course, this arrangement can work with a family with children as well. It is our experience, how ever, that a completely open space does not work for most families with children. The noise factor is enormous and the lack of audio privacy ensures that there is no place to retreat for an intimate encounter, parental argument, or private telephone conversation. A house designed for a family with young children should include play space and room to accommodate the kids’ toys and paraphernalia: bikes, baby swings, strollers, games, dollhouses. Large children’s bedrooms can serve as play areas, but they are likely to be too far away from the central areas of the house for parental supervision. A playroom off the kitchen is a good idea for a household with young children. The playroom can double as a guest room or a study if it's provided with doors that can be closed for privacy. The problem with designing a house around babies and young children is that children grow up very fast. A family that designs a house around the needs of a two-year-old will find that the child is three years old, going on four, before the construction is completed. We have found it hard to convince the parents of young children that very soon their progeny will be demanding separate bedrooms and private space. Parents who open the playroom to the kitchen so that they can supervise their children find it hard to believe that in a short four or five years they may actually prefer to have the kids (now teens) play with their friends in some re mote part of the house. If you have small children, try to have the foresight to incorporate the needs of adolescents in the scheme of things. As a final consideration, if possible, try to pro vide space for guests. This room can be a “flexible” room, sometimes study, sometimes guest room, sometimes playroom. Next: Style and Character |
