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If you’re lucky enough to find yourself on Martha’s Vineyard this fall, look for my upcoming book The New Cottage from The Taunton Press on page five of The Vine Fall Home and Garden 2018 issue. Three Vineyard cottages (and 21 others from across North America) are featured in the book, so pre-order your copy today ;-)
by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast
I didn't go scouting for this Design snapshot, it comes straight from our own small house, our cottage. It all started several years ago with my husband's desire for a screen door on our side entrance. At the time, I wanted to ponder what design the screen door might take. But I couldn't escape the fact that no matter how delightful a thoughtfully designed screen door might be, it would be leading to an existing unsightly steel-and-glass door installed by the previous owner. So the project sat on the back burner percolating.
Then this past fall/winter while working on my upcoming book The New Cottage from the Taunton Press, I looked anew at a photo of a sunny Dutch door entrance on one of the featured cottages in a pocket neighborhood designed by Ross Chapin Architects. A light bulb went off. I remembered the original 32-inch wide wood-and-glass side door that the previous owner had stored in the garage when they replaced it with the code-conforming 36-inch wide steel-and-glass side door that I found lacking. Why not modify the original wood-and-glass door to become a 36"-inch wide Dutch door worthy of a new screen door?
Voilà. The newly reconfigured Dutch door is a versatile joy. It offers window-like ventilation when the upper portion is open and door-like separation when the bottom half is closed. Since the Dutch door itself is the primary feature, the screen/storm door design is as simple as possible so as not to obscure or detract from the main event. (The exterior color is "Magnet" from C2 Paint.)
Is there an old wooden door with character in your garage? Maybe it's worth transforming into a Dutch door? There's something so fun and friendly about a Dutch door.
by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast
"Design Thinking" has been a hot topic for quite some time now. Many of us in the architecture and design fields have been a tad irked to see our process co-opted by enterprises focused on monetizing "user experience" and the like. So I was heartened to discover the different angle that Providence's DownCity Design has taken. Follow the link to explore their design-thinking toolkit for the classroom: "The Change Agent." And here's a video about it.
According to the DownCity Design website, "The Change Agent Toolkit is a set of fun, hands-on learning activities that guide groups of students through the Design Thinking Cycle. It's like a game that helps kids tackle any challenge they've identified, in any subject. The free web-based resource includes everything an educator needs to lead students through the design process."
It's a great example of design thinking put to work to generate a classroom learning tool for the design-thinking process. Very meta. Bravo!
by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast
The KHS Manchester Garage/Garden Room
I learned of the German word "fernweh" last month on NPR. It translates as "farsickness" or "a longing for a place you've never been." Apparently, many folks have this feeling for a place that relates to their ancestry. I certainly do. For me, the place is Norway. One of my great grandmothers came to the U.S. from Norway, or was it my great-great grandmother? In any case, I grew up enjoying a tradition of Norwegian holiday baking. But I've never been to Norway or been told much about it.
Yet somehow I seem to be hardwired to design buildings with a hint of Norwegian influence. Take the little outbuilding in the photo above. You may recognize it from the KHS website, or (back in the day) from Cottage Living, or perhaps from my book The New Small House. Now that I'm more actively pursuing photos of Norwegian vernacular architecture on Instagram and such, I'm noticing that it almost looks as if I floated this little building over from Lofoten to Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. Yet I only recently learned of Lofoten, more than ten years after designing the Manchester Garage/Garden Room.
And my taste for Norwegian and Scandinavian design doesn't stop at the vernacular, it includes the more modern, too. Just today I spotted this post from @Nordicwall on Instagram, and it momentarily took my breath away. So what is this about? Is the Norwegian/Scandinavian aesthetic in my DNA? Or am I subconsciously (and now consciously) absorbing Norwegian/Scandinavian influence to reinforce what I know of my heritage? It's one of the delightful mysteries of being human: why and how do we connect with the world, not just the world we know but the world we feel we know, if only in our imaginings.
by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast
