Web tour: Things That Inspire: Heads up

Click on this photo to see it in the KHS photo note cards/prints gallery.Surf the web this week, and you’ll find the House Enthusiast Primer on the third dimension referenced at Things That Inspire. Using abundant interior images, Things That Inspire translates the concepts described in the House Enthusiast Primer to interiors via photos illustrating a range of spatial depths and heights in well-appointed homes. Both webposts invite readers to train their eyes on a dimension vital to shaping our experience. Whether the third dimension is expressed overhead, in a framed view corridor, on a textured surface, by an articulated stair, or with a spatial illusion, our environments are richer for having explored it.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

Design snapshot: Victorian dormer

Click on this photo to see it in the KHS photo note cards/prints gallery. Since one House Enthusiast reader noted at Things That Inspire how I really have “a thing for properly designed dormers,” I thought I’d prove him right with another dormer post.

This dormer with Victorian detailing adorns a mansard slate roof. The chamfered pilasters on either side of the 2/2 double-hung windows add depth and interest, as well as significance to this rooftop jewel. The main roof eave brackets are echoed in the mini-me styling of the dormer eave brackets which receive the eave overhang. Thanks to the dormer’s low-pitch gable with flat-roofed extensions, it resides below the transition trim between the mansard’s two roof slopes. Window head trim punctuated with circular nodes further animate the tableau. It isn’t difficult to conjure an abstract face within the composition.

Maybe you too will develop “a thing for properly designed dormers.” I can only hope.

Click here, here, here, and here to see some more of my writing about dormers.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

Essex National Heritage Area 2009 Trails and Sails

Don’t miss the next two weekends of free outdoor and cultural activities in Essex County as part of the 2009 Trails and Sails experience. Visit their extensive website to plan your itinerary. You might want to consider the Cox Reservation Walk in Essex or the Guide’s Favorite’s at Beauport, the Sleeper-McCann House in Gloucester. Perhaps you’d like to climb aboard a Yankee Whale Watch in Gloucester or a pontoon boat to go Cruising the Essex River. Join the Ipswich Maritime Walking Tour to stroll the Historic South Green and the shores of the Ipswich River. Visit the Italian and Rose formal gardens at Maudslay State Park as part of the Newburyport Tour + Tea in Formal Gardens. Partake in a Chestnut Street Stroll among its sea captain houses or Lunch Hour at the Gedney House c. 1665 in Salem. Check the Trails and Sails website for dates and times. Enjoy some of New England’s treasures north of Boston. 

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

Web tour: House Enthusiast MeMe nomination

Me, me on the family Seawind KetchMuch to my surprise John Black, who blogs from northern California via A Verdant Life, nominated House Enthusiast for a MeMe. 

I featured A Verdant Life as a web neighbor last spring in hopes of sharing John’s wise and witty posts on garden design, landscape design, and, well, the verdant life, with House Enthusiast readers. 

I’m thrilled to accept the MeMe torch from John and to pass it along, which involves satisfying a few rules of engagement:

  1. Link back to whomever nominated you.
  2. Reveal seven tidbits about yourself.
  3. Nominate and link to seven other blogs.
  4. Notify your nominees with a comment on their blogs or in emails.
  5. Notify your nominator(s) when your “acceptance” post is up.

Seven formative influences on my passion for designing, discussing, and framing place in and around our homes:

Read more

Web tour: The Glass House: Modern Homes Survey

The Amato House in New Canaan, Conn. designed by James Evans c. 1966It always sounds curious to talk about preservation and Modernism in one breath, but the two are fast becoming linked as time marches forward, leaving the mid-century Modernism movement farther and farther in our past.  In an effort to protect mid-century Modern houses for future preservation The Philip Johnson Glass House (a National Trust Historic Site in New Canaan, Conn.) has created a “narrative survey of 91 existing modern homes in New Canaan” designed by masters of the era like Marcel Breuer, Eliot Noyes, and John Johansen, as well as a second generation of Modernists.  Following the lead of DoCoMoMo (the international organization for the Documentation and Conservation of buildings, sites and neighborhoods of the Modern Movement), the Glass House hopes that the Modern Homes Survey will provide “criteria for significance,” rendering the featured houses preservation worthy.  The digital version of the Survey is accessible online for free.  It tells an interesting tale of a bucolic region surprisingly populated by the works of celebrated Modernists. 

I wrote about my visit to the Glass House here.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast