The great room is the heart of our home. Since we entertain frequently, it must serve two purposes — purposes which are sometimes at odds with each other. This is the place we spend time together and the place where we welcome others into our home. Today, we’ll focus on how we designed a perfect place to spend time together as a couple.
We wanted a space that would be comfortable, functional, and beautiful. We wanted a space where we would love to spend time. By honoring how we use space together and by using patterns from A Pattern Language, we were able to build a space that filled our needs.
The obvious pattern to start with is Common areas at the heart (129):
- Problem: No social group — whether a family, a work group, or a school group — can survive without constant informal contact among its members.
- Therefore: Create a single common area for every social group. Locate it at the center of gravity of all the spaces the group occupies, and in such a way that the paths which go in and out of the building lie tangent to it.
The heart of our house is the great room: a single large area consisting of the kitchen, dining room and living room. This open space allows easy interaction when Jeff and I are doing different activities and provides spaces for us to be together for cooking, eating, reading, crafting, or, well, whatever. Although we think of this space as a kitchen, living room, and dining room, the layout and the fact that over half the space is dedicated to the kitchen and dining room makes it essentially a Farmhouse Kitchen (139):
- Problem: The isolated kitchen, separate from the family and considered as an efficient, but unpleasant factory for food is a hangover from the days of servants; and from the more recent days when women willingly took over the servants’ role.
- Therefore: Make the kitchen bigger than usual, big enough to include the “family room” space, and place it near the center of the commons, not so far back in the house as an ordinary kitchen. Make it large enough to hold a good big table and chairs, some soft and some hard, with counters and stove and sink around the edge of the room; and make it a bright and comfortable room.
Even though the great room is a single large space, it allows for intimacy. The L-shape allows each function to have its own well defined space. Such functional differentiation also lends itself to the generation of a Sequence of Sitting Spaces (142):
- Problem: Every corner of a building is a potential sitting space. But each sitting space has different needs for comfort and enclosure according to its position in the intimacy gradient.
- Therefore: Put in a sequence of graded sitting spaces throughout the building, varying according to their degree of enclosure. Enclose the most formal ones entirely, in rooms by themselves; put the least formal ones in corners of other rooms, without any kid of screen around them; and place the intermediate one with partial enclosure round them to keep them connected to some larger space, but also partly separate.
Each area has its own level of intimacy. The seating in the living room, which looks out over the whole space and is visible from the entry, is the most social and public but even with in that space, some seats — the one facing toward the outdoors, the end of the couch half hidden behind the fireplace — feel more private. These are the seats we gravitate to when it’s just the two of us. The dining table is a bit more intimate; people sitting there are, by the arrangements of the seats around the table, more closely connected to each other than the rest of the space. Although we don’t use them when it’s just the two of us, sections of the bench around the fireplace are most intimate. These are the places you go to have a 1:1 conversation or to get some time alone.
We can’t ignore the functional aspects in a space like this. Of course, we made sure that spaces like the kitchen are highly functional. We also included a fair amount of storage for our games and books and the projects we are working on. With laptops and phones and tablets, a office is not necessary as often as it use to be, but when it is, we have a space that is near enough to still feel connected to the life of the home. For when we do need a little more isolation, we built a Half-Private Office (152):
- Problem: What is the right balance between privacy and connection in office work?
- Therefore: Avoid closed off, separate, or private offices. Make every workroom, whether it is for a group of two or three people or for one person, half-open to the other workgroups and the world immediately beyond it. At the front, just inside the door, make a comfortable sitting space, with the actual workspace(s) away from the door, and further back.
Our office does not (yet!) have comfy seating, but it is connected to the rest of the home when we use it, by virtue of a large opening and a sliding glass door. For those times when we need a bit more privacy, it is a Solid Door With Glass (237):
- Problem: An opaque door makes sense in a vast house or palace, where every room is large enough to be a world unto itself; but in a small building, with small rooms, the opaque door is only very rarely useful.
- Therefore: As often as possible, build doors with glazing in them, so that the upper half at least, allows you to see through them. At the same time, build the doors solid enough, so that they give acoustic isolation and make a comfortable “thunk” when they are closed.
The space also works well because it connects us to the outdoors. This is helped by windows with Low Sills (222):
- Problem: One of a window’s most important functions is to put you in touch with the outdoors. If the sill is too high, it cuts you off.
- Therefore: When determining exact location of windows also decide which windows should have low sills. On the first floor, make the sills of the windows which you plan to sit by between 12 and 14 inches high. On upper stories, make them higher, around 20 inches.
Although our window sills are not as low as Alexander recommends, they are low enough that the sill is just above the seat of our couch. This means that whenever we glance aside, we are connected to the outdoors.
Of course, some of these are Windows Which Open Wide (236):
- Problem: Many buildings nowadays have no opening windows at all; and many of the opening windows that people do build, don’t do the job that opening windows ought to do.
- Therefore: Decide which of the windows will be opening windows. Pick those which are easy to get to, and choose the ones which open onto flowers you want to smell, paths where you might want to talk, and natural breezes. Then put in side-hung casements that open outward. Here and there, go all the way and build full French windows.
The connection to the outdoors is even more direct when we use our deck as an Outdoor Room (163):
- Problem: A garden is the place for lying in the grass, swinging, croquet, growing flowers, throwing a ball for the dog. But there is another way of being outdoors: and its needs are not met by the garden at all.
- Therefore: Build a place outdoors which has so much enclosure round it, that it takes on the feeling of a room, even though it is open to the sky. To do this, define it at the corners with columns, perhaps roof it partially with a trellis or a sliding canvas roof, and create ‘walls” around it, with fences, sitting walls, screens, hedges, or the exterior walls of the building itself.
Our deck is just such an outdoor room. Enclosed by the building and a rail, it is a pleasant place for sitting and relaxing, reading, or cooking and eating a meal. Of course, it wouldn’t work so well if the details weren’t right, so we made sure to have a Six-foot Balcony (167):
- Problem: Balconies and porches which are less than six feed deep are hardly ever used.
- Therefore: Whenever you build a balcony, a porch, a gallery, or a terrace always make it at least six feet deep. If possible, recess at least a part of it into the building so that it is not cantilevered out and separated from the building by a simple line, and enclose it partially.
At 10′ x 12′, our deck is about the same size as our living room, and we have just enough furniture to make it really work as an outdoor space.
All of this together leads to a space where Jeff and I can do things together or do things separately while still being together. We have privacy when we need it and companionship when that is what we want. By being sensitive to how we use our space and by taking advice from A Pattern Language we were able to design a space that works well for two people. As the next post will show, it works just as well for ten or twenty.