Sometimes the biggest difference between a design that works and a design that doesn't is proportions. But "good proportions" isn't really something quantifiable, and it's not always an easy thing to pin down. To make an analogy: think of someone wearing a tie that's too long or too short. It doesn't matter how expensive the tie is, something doesn't look right if it's not just the right length. The same goes for houses: just like makeup or a tailored suit, architects use different visual tricks to emphasize certain things, downplay others, and ultimately just make the house look the best it can be. This can happen even with the simplest, most cost-effective materials. Sometimes all it takes is using the right size windows and spacing them out just right, or controlling the roof lines, or thickening up the corner boards just to make the building read differently. It's graphic design in 3D.
Last year I was approached by a contractor to add a second floor to a split level ranch in Weston. Unlike most second floor additions, this was practically a teardown, saving mostly the foundation and only whatever walls agreed with the new floor plan. With a back-of-the-envelope floor plan already provided, the difference would really come down to what the exterior looked like, and I was determined to do it right.
An Odd House
The existing house, pictured above, already had some weird proportions. It was a split level, and as you can see there was a bit of distance between the front door and the windows. The garage was also at an inconvenient height-- below the first floor, but not low enough that the first floor could be extended gracefully above it. Luckily, the contractor's plan was to gut remodel the entire first floor, so these problems could be handled a little more aggressively. We were going to work within the existing footprint, keeping the foundation and whatever first floor walls we could. Where we needed to, we would cantilever over the original foundation to avoid any digging.
Massing Problems
The first step in the design process was to see what a second story would actually look like if we just put another one on top of it. The result was... not great. In the diagram below (green dashed area), it's immediately apparent this doesn't work. There's just too much house, especially at the garage. This is where a lot of second story additions fail-- the massing. Unfortunately we've all seen these, and the solution is usually to slap a bunch of gables and bump-outs on the front to break it up-- giant boxes with a bunch of triangles. We could do better.
To solve this problem, there were two things that needed to happen:
The house needed to feel shorter.
The house needed to be broken up into smaller pieces.
Half Stories
To make the house feel smaller, the go-to strategy for architects is to use half-stories instead of full stories. This, coupled with a steeper roof (15:12 instead of the usual 4:12) would leave the building somewhere around the same height, but the effect would be that of a much smaller feeling house.
Of course, half stories don't offer as much headroom as a full story, so where we needed to we bumped up the roof to full height. What's important is that we made the full height portions "read" as dormers. You'll notice that the back of the garage (left of the image below) is almost entirely a full story, but the steep pitched roof on the ends make it feel like it's not. You have to use this strategy selectively, as it's not entirely believable in every situation. But here it allowed us to get the headroom we needed at the bedrooms, while making the front of the house feel smaller.
Smaller Pieces
The second strategy we used was to break the house up into smaller pieces and link them together with connectors that recede into the background. In the diagram below, you can almost think of it as the "farm house" on the left, and the "carriage house" on the right. Both share the same architecture (white with steep roofs) but are visually and volumetrically separate.
To link these two buildings together, we added a structure that contrasts in color and texture. Instead of white clapboard, we have dark gray board and batten siding and a low pitch roof. It's visual weight is secondary in every way to the other two volumes. We applied the same strategy to the third garage (a must for the contractor, but something we wanted to downplay visually).
Front Porches Hide Everything
Last but not least, we added a front porch. Front porches are a go-to design strategy for 2nd story additions, and there's a reason: they hide everything, and they help with scale. Entrances need to feel like entrances, and front porches knock the size down and bring a sense of enclosure. They say "this is the entry" to those approaching a building. They also help cover up walls that might feel too tall, or windows that don't align. In this project, the front porch is masking the tall exposed foundation between the ground to the first floor and the blank space between the first floor and second floor. It also gives the house a stronger horizontal feeling to offset verticals from the gabled bump-out.
February 2022 Update:
March 2022 Update:
October 2022 Update:
Patternbook Architecture & Design is an architecture firm located in Beverly Massachusetts. We specialize in residential design, and draw our inspiration from historical New England homes.
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