A streetscape in historic Savannah, Georgia. Photo by Richard McLaughlin.

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

Plan HDS-99-306 is the epitome of order and balance. (Its floor plan appears later in this article.) This home resides in Celebration, Florida. Photo courtesy of James Zirkel Home Design Services, Inc.

George Donovan's plan GD-2923. Photo by Todd A. Trice.

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.

It's still true that well-proportioned homes look better at the same or less cost than poorly proportioned homes.

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

How it should be done: Robert Kramer's plan KRA-2952. Graphic courtesy of Robert Kramer

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.

Above/below: Architectural firm Looney Ricks Kiss used these diagrams to demonstrate proper proportion to the developer and builders of Cordova the Town, near Memphis. Graphics courtesy of Looney Ricks Kiss Architects, Inc., ©1997.

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.

It's hard to know where to start critiquing these two suburban homes. On the left we have a garage-dominated home that tries to draw the eye away from its maw with not one but two (apparently) exploding entries. The technique works to an extreme, pulling the eye toward the upper left corner of the home until it meets the blue sky, which is far more appealing. The home on the right makes fewer mistakes, but does so at the expense of architectural interest, of which it has none. The windows are too small; they swim in a sea of bland siding. The garage dwarfs the front entry, which comes across as an afterthought. Photos by Richard McLaughlin.

Parking
The

This "garagescape," coupled with an absence of sidewalks, offers no sense of community or aesthetic appeal. Photo by Richard McLaughlin.

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 well-rendered 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 to that week's garbage.

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

Alley view, Northwest Landing, Washington. Photo by Jason Miller.

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

Plan CDG-2124 offers a studio apartment above its detached garage. This home resides in Fairview Village, Oregon. Photo by Jason Miller.

No privacy here. These suburban houses back up to a common lawn and each other, forcing residents to carry on outdoor activities in full view of their neighbors. Tacking decks onto the rears of the houses doesn't solve the problem. It never has and it never will. Photo by Richard McLaughlin.

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.

The floor plan for LRK-95279 creates a private outdoor room in its side yard. Graphic courtesy of Looney Ricks Kiss Architects, Inc.	Another fine example of a privacy-creating layout, plan HDS-99-306 wraps its form around a covered backyard deck. Graphic courtesy of James Zirkel Home Design Services, Inc.