This Dutch door is a front entrance. The closed lower half signals that passersby aren’t encouraged to enter uninvited, but the open upper half communicates that the occupants, who are willing to share an enticing view of the entry hall’s elegant wallpaper, might be open to receiving guests.

Perhaps it’s the contrast of the stark, walled exterior and the hint of a vibrant, lively interior that drew my eye to this entry. Few other door types offer the opportunity for such a provocative juxtaposition. This one beautifully balances enticement and deterrent.

For more about Dutch doors read the Design snapshot: Entry duality, too.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

photo courtesy of the Skallops Kickstarter page

Skallops will be funded via Kickstarter on February 1, but it isn't too late for you to kick in, and get a Skallop play pack of your own. Get a Starter Pack of 104 Skallops and two decks of playing cards. Or, get the Builder Pack, which includes twice the contents of the Starter Pack. Or, splurge on the Architect Pack, which includes twice the contents of the Builder Pack.

The folks who created Skallops note that, alternatively, you can clip together business cards or cards of your own creation. I'd love to see some Skallop houses. If you create a Skallop cottage or manse, let me know about it at the KHS Facebook Page. Meanwhile, happy building.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

The tiny outbuilding to the right looks to be about five feet from the back corner of the petite main house, which appears to border a courtyard of sorts, edged by yet another modest outbuilding. Together, these diminutive structures shape a mini compound. Their arrangement carves out several engaging outdoor rooms within the lot.

Some might refer to such outdoor rooms as negative spaces between structures. To me, they’re positive spaces -- the reward of mindful siting.

Check out another “Design snapshot” about cottage placemaking here.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

According to the article by Charles B. Brenner and Jeffrey M. Zacks, a team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame has been investigating these types of minor memory lapses. They ran a series of experiments which determined that a shift in location, which involves passing into another room through a door and doorway, causes our memory to discard recently experienced memory from the previous room in order to make room in memory for new experiences in the next room. Interestingly, our memory doesn’t seem to discard recent memory when we move an equal distance elsewhere in the same room. It’s the transition through doors and doorways into different rooms that causes the effect. Plus, it doesn’t seem to help if a shift is back into the room where the memory was encoded; we still experience a memory lapse.

It’s fun to ponder the design implications of this kind of scientific finding. Perhaps it’s a good justification for keeping a home office distinctly separate from a home’s other living spaces, lest work pre-occupations seep into family time. Or perhaps it supports more open spaces in a senior living space, such that activities undertaken in a kitchen at one end of a space aren’t forgotten in a dining area at the other end of a space.

I’d be curious to know if the experiment holds true when the doorway doesn’t include a door. What if the doorway is oversized and doorless?  Might transitions through column-supported soffits have a similar effect? The scientists note that in one of the virtual space experiments, the difference between the various rooms was reinforced by different wall patterns. What, then, if subjects were to travel between real spaces exhibiting markedly different finish treatments in which a nuanced transition is indicated by an opening in low walls with nothing overhead? Would there be a “doorway effect” beyond the transition? I’d love to know. Here’s hoping there’s more research conducted into the implications of architectural space on our thinking and behavior.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

It also satisfies my Recipe for Architectural Charm. Well, mostly. Since it isn’t sited, it cannot exhibit an engaged relationship with landscape. It, however, possesses all of the other required ingredients: grounding rooflines, legible massing, simple color palette and harmonious materiality, and thoughtful details.

It’s a saltbox, pure and simple -- a form to which I and so many others intuitively respond. I wonder what parts of our brains or chemistry are triggered by the saltbox form? What else similarly triggers them? Maybe if we knew, we could more readily create other forms or spaces that likewise appeal.

I’ve written about the influence of architecture/environment/space on us, our bodies and minds, before here and here. If you’re interested in acquiring the little, ceramic house for yourself or a friend, find it on etsy. If you have a hankering to see a saltbox-inspired addition I designed, check-out the Reading, Mass. Kitchen & Bath Renovation/Addition.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

Cheers from Edgartown!

Read a bit about the Edgartown Light in this archived "Design snapshot", and find less bleary photos of it (than this one I took in yesterday's drizzle) on KHS note cards here.

Edgartown Light is a frequent and favorite subject.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

In this final installment of the exterior edition of How to look at houses… (like an architect), we’re moving up from the base, beyond the middle, to the top of home. View the entire exterior-edition video series here.

You can also find this video posted to the Fine Homebuilding SquareOne blog. 

I hope you'll discover that the more you train your eye on houses, the more you'll see. Warning: house observation, analysis, and interpretation may be addictive.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast and SquareOne

"Small adobe house with basement" by Graham, age 9

The title of Graham's sketch suggests it's a building section, but without the title, you might assume it's a building plan. This is one of the delights of the loose, napkin sketch. It's open to interpretation on both the part of the maker and the viewer. Perhaps one drawing is both section and plan.

Most architecture grads can remember at least one crit where a critic turned a student's model upside down or rotated a student's drawings 90 or 180 degrees, and remarked how much better a solution it was once overturned or rotated. Though exasperating for a student, such transformations can push us to see something anew, for better or worse. 

I would love to see a "napkin sketch of home" created by you, your family, and/or friends -- both young and old.

Please submit sketches via a scan or photo to Katie@katiehutchison.com for possible inclusion in the series. Include the artist's name and age, and a title for the sketch, if there is one.

Share your idea of "home" -- whether it's your cat, your porch, or your neighborhood; you decide what "home" means to you.

Let's get sketching.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

The “tiny institution” (De Botton’s words) of The School of Life offers a variety of evening classes, weekend intensives, events, meals, services and more.  Each offering, the website notes, has been envisioned “in collaboration with leading authors, artists, actors and academics.” Some upcoming class titles include: How To Have Better Conversations, How To Realise Your Potential, How To Make a Difference, and How To Change Your Mind. As a student of human behavior, each sounds intriguing to me. The School of Life’s online presence includes a blog and videos of the School’s Sunday sermons.  How I wish the School offered online workshops and podcasts of the events, too.

If you’re not familiar with De Botton, he’s the best-selling author of books ranging in subject from philosophy, to status, to, yes, architecture. You may have read my House Enthusiast post about his thought-provoking book The Architecture of Happiness. I find his work inspirational. So much so that his school and a few other entities and organizations, which likewise foster life learning, have prompted me to ponder creating my own school.

Though they may have once functioned as primary entry doors, they now appear to be acting as storm doors or secondary doors. Today, immediately inside them, a newer, single, French door sits in what is presumably an insulated wall. This is a very clever way to preserve an antique entry while simultaneously reducing air infiltration. It’s win-win; such a solution retains architectural character and improves energy efficiency. If you’re renovating an older home, keep an approach like this in mind in lieu of replacing unique, antique doors with contemporary alternatives.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast