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Introduction
You, too, can design your own custom house, remodel, house renovation, house addition, or building plan change with characteristics of a Craftsman Style home, especially Craftsman Style home exteriors. Bob Vila and an army of others show you how to build. Now, you're going to learn what to build and why.
Here comes your house design guidance in characteristics of a Craftsman home plan. Specifically, here comes your Craftsman house plan exterior design guidance. The author knows of nothing else in print that encompasses, as the following does, a designer’s and builder’s nitty-gritty views of Craftsman Style architecture.
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Today, we’ll work with the physical exterior, architectural design characteristics of a Craftsman Style home from the Arts and Craft Movement in North America.
What is style?
- Style is an identifiable architectural design.
What is an architectural design?
- An architectural design forms and shape structures in space and ornaments them. For us, it's the superhighway to construction.
The exterior? Why not go inside, too?
- We have to start somewhere.
- Most characteristics of a Craftsman home plan exterior design that you witness day-to-day, you witness from the outside. It’s that with which you’re most familiar. You'll see.
- Craftsman Style interiors are not de rigueur — too dark overall to qualify for the common clamor these days for "open and airy," albeit that the style’s treatment of interior light in its limited, intensive pooling remains of interest on its own merits, notably less so for aging eyes.
- This old boy gets approached for Craftsman Style home plan exteriors' looks; however, when you get inside, the design and decoration are modern-day.
- Whose story is this, anyway?
Why in North America?
- Well, it’s where I live and work.
- The European versions of the Arts and Craft Style involve materials some of which are not readily, economically available here in North America. And the European Movement developed along design paths distinctively askew from those in North America.
Why the Craftsman Style?
- It’s an easy style to envision, draw, and construct. Indeed, hands-on, handcrafted, individual labor is a fundamental precept of this style.
- Its materials can be among the least pricey to buy and use.
- It’s everywhere. You see it every day. While it’s unusual to come across this design style purely on its own in any given structure, it is widely represented in structures with other styles to complement it. In my opinion, the Arts and Craft Movement was the single most influential North American building design style of the 20th century. Particularly in its most common example, the Bungalow Style, you will soon come to realize from your life experience that you have seen characteristics of a Craftsman home design in building structures virtually every day of your adult life.
How is it so easy to design?
- First of all, whose house is it, anyway? You know your house better than anyone, because you live there, and use it hour by hour, day by day. Remember: Form follows function. Function is the result of life. Form is the result of design. Figure out what you need and want the house to be to enable and encourage your living there, then design a structure (including ornamentation) to satisfy those needs and wants.
- Assuming that you are not any more artistically gifted than I (and I am not so gifted), there are many inexpensive, off-the-shelf, retail drawing software packages from which to select to help you on your way, among them, seemingly Punch! Software being the most oft used by our clients in their initial presentations to Before The Architect. Or, perish the thought, you can eschew modernity, and buy an inexpensive laptop drawing board and square. (That’s what I used for most of my days as a designer and builder.) To begin drawing, you need to focus on plan views - looking straight down upon an area - and elevations - looking straight across at an area - all in two dimensions, all in black line drawings called wireframe where only 2 lined dimensions count.
- The design concepts of the Craftsman Style home exterior need not be complicated; moreover, that’s an essence to the style: it should not be complicated. Within it, fancy adornments are virtually nonexistent. Almost always, you can draw in straight lines, not curved. Ceiling heights are not high and haughty. Roof pitches are summarily shallow, in order to moderate thrusts on walls hand-framed by carpenter novices. Roof slopes need not be consistent – a blessing for the beginning framer. The same goes for window placement. Bigtime roof overhangs shed a lot of water from exterior walls that might not be tightly sealed to weather. Stone columns of diminishing dimension on their rise make the masonry work a lot easier than strictly vertical configurations. Symmetry is not an obsession, not even a watchword of this style; therewith, symmetry’s higher-skill demands are set aside.
How is it so easy to build?
- Now as never before, you can purchase or rent the spectrum of superb, low-priced hand and power tools with which to work. There are more materials virtually every day with which to make your work more attractive, safer, simpler, and more durable. There is advice galore – and much of it pretty good - for free from TV shows, radio shows, books, counsel at retail sales outlets, the Internet. The ceilings aren’t going to be high in most cases. The roof pitches will be low by contemporary standards. The outlines essentially are rectilinear. No frills and fancy stuff.
So what are the basic elements with which to design with characteristics of the Craftsman Style home?
Several elements are almost exclusively the indicia of the Craftsman Style. The list of design elements to follow is based largely on personal observations as a designer and builder.
Alert your mind's eye to these design elements, Craftsmanish elements, as you move around your neighborhood or travel here or there, and you will see this style all over the place in residential, commercial, and even industrial buildings. Most often, when you find one of these elements, others will almost surely follow.
- Chimneys - often of natural or dressed stone exposed or centered within the structure.
- Roof planes - of only gable, hip and shed configurations; mixed configurations, including, clipped gables; extensive overhangs, often of 2' and more; overhangs supported by triangulated, unadorned brackets; overhangs really or falsely supported by exposed beams and rafters; planes themselves angled symmetrically for any given gable or hip, but not necessarily between them, nor necessarily symmetrical even within any given gable or hip in regard to rafter length; shed roofs not necessarily angled the same between any given two; shed roofs applied as awnings; characteristically lower-pitched, i.e., almost always not more than 12-in-12, frequently under 6-in-12 for secondary roof elements.
- Trimwork - of closely similar widths for rake, fascia (rarely applied), and exterior casings - by current standards narrower at rakes and fascia, wider at casings.
- Exterior clads - of the same or similar natural materials in different, orthogonal orientations; clads of different materials, usually native.
- Porches - full width; often with streetside-facing gable within the porch roofline; covered.
- Windows - often grouped in same sizes; asymmetrically arranged on wall planes; of (often widely) different sizes between separated windows or groups; often larger to streetside; very characteristically with small, symmetrical glazes over and large open glazes under.
- Posts and columns - usually heavy in appearance; always with right-angled corners; often flared downward; often of mixed materials with natural or dressed stone or stucco under.
- Steps and stairs - always appear solid; frequently fore-posted.
- Foundations - usually of masonry; often flared downward.
- Visual planes - angular; usually orthogonal; very rarely rounded or curved; emphatically horizontal.
- Ornamentation - virtually nonexistent, rarely even shuttered; isolated wood carving on trimwork.
- Orientation – as you like it. Often seen with main roof gable-end to streetside.
- Metaphysics - de terre; de natura; a disciplined forming and shaping of nature's bounty distinctively with man's hand.
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