In one part of our fruited plain – Texas, especially Texas hill country – there is a home design style – Spanish/Mediterranean – that thrives
And it’s Texas hill country where this house is going
WHAT’S IN A STYLE?
Design elements come from each - Spanish and Mediterranean, selectively.
While there’s overlap in some aspects – roof slope, stucco clad, basic shape – among ‘em
There are differences
Spanish stylistic distinction between interior and exterior; classical features, etc.
Mediterranean ease with interior-exterior flow; stone clad, etc.
The Spanish/Mediterranean house design style
It’s Spanish –
Spanish Eclectic, occasionally with touches of Greek Revival
Spanish Colonial Revival
It’s Mediterranean
It’s more
Home Design Characteristics
Massing
Central form
Big
Symmetrical
Rectilinear
Otherwise, irregular
Multi-story
Roof
Low-pitch
Red tile
Clad
Stucco
Stone
Fenestration
Muntins
Medium to large size
Arches, principally Roman, no key
Shutters
Deep-set exterior spaces
Balcony
Windows
Doors
Veranda
Columns
Arcade
Colonnade
Smooth, not curved
Can be elaborated
Apparent exterior-interior openness
WHAT'S IN A HOUSE PLAN?
This Spanish/Mediterranean house plan in its original form was a stock plan, the exterior drawings of which appealed mightily to our clients, with lifestyle-based reservations
The clients were smitten with the front façade and it was left almost entirely intact
So…if Before The Architect agreed to leave the front façade more or less as designed what did take attention?
Of major merit
The original's garage area was converted to a guest suite with
Substantial increases to storage capacity in the house (on a slab, remember, this is Texas) and
Improved traffic circulation between inside and out
The His closet was made to double as a safe room using prefab steel parts assembled on-site
Way more economical on space relative to thick, placed walls
A Florida Room lounging area was added, including a light well
To take in the mountain view and, again
Improve in-out traffic circulation
One large dormer and window wall were added to advantage mountain views from the L2 balcony
Layouts on L1 and L2 selectively altered
To improve on safety and convenience and
To adapt structure to multiple functions
A foundation is newly aimed at holding steady the expensive tiles that were to finish clad the main floor
A Computer Room was made to double as a ¾-bath (concealed after inspection) for potential need down the road if the poolroom and bar ever gets converted to a fifth bedroom
An oversized, 3-car garage and workshop were added
Attached by an arcade breezeway
The garage designed to look as though it had been there forever – low-slung adobe-like primitive appearance, timber butts sticking out, windows narrow and deep-set, etc.
It’d take a loonnnggggg article to cover all of these major design changes
BEGINNING AT THE END
Still, one design stands above the rest to our minds – the large dormer and taking in that view
Let’s have a look
We’ll begin the tour with a view of the backside of this house
Noting that this is the last place Before The Architect addressed in regard to this element and not the first
You might think of this tour as forensic
Spanish/Mediterranean Back Of House
The litany of Spanish/Mediterranean home design characteristics gets demonstrated one-by-one
Just remind yourself of the checklist above that distinguished elements and features and mark ‘em off
The chimney caps’ home design style reference is not immediately clear – sort of, kinda like, maybe Greek Revival (but not really – theses cap rooflines are hipped, not gabled) suspended caps meets Italian Revival bearing leftover stumpy Tuscan columns for suspension
Call it whimsy
So Texas hill country, he guesses
It’s the dormer to which we attend – above the veranda
Before The Architect added it, in order to glimpse far-off mountains from L2’s balcony which we’ll get to in a moment
The dormer is as big as could be had, given proportion, conformance, and conflicts avoided
Comment: As an aside, you can glimpse the Breezeway arcade on the left.
WHERE IS THE DORMER FROM THE INTERIOR?
L1, Plan View, Excerpted
Back Of House is at the top.
Front-to-back spaces
Covered Porch
Grand Foyer
Great Room
Florida Room
Veranda
The dormer we’re about is atop Florida
The window wall we’re near to seeing to seeing in two aspects is between Florida and Great
The Balcony we’ll be witnessing a little later is entirely above the Grand Foyer
WINDOW WALL
Florida was the clients’ notion
Before The Architect’s notion was
To distinguish that space from Great and
Still benefit Great with Florida’s daylight and
Also benefit Grand Foyer and Great with added depth of interior
Hence a window wall between Florida and Great
It’s a wall of windows because
There’s not only a slew of French doors and panels separating the two spaces
There’s also a slew of windows above to let us view from Balcony through the Great-Florida partition and out the dormer
Window walls challenge
A lot of holes in common structure means you’ve got to makeup new structure
Window walls that rattle for being flimsy in the face of doors closing or minor changes in interior air pressure endure as inconveniences
Before The Architect goes to lengths in fortifying such walls.
Window Wall Framing, Section in Elevation
The notes to follow referred to the illustration Window Wall Framing, and should help clarify whassup
Window Wall Framing Notes
Taken together, Before The Architect tried every which way to stabilize that wall full of holes, with confidence of complete success
The trickiest aspect was hanging structure from header down to bifold track with steel rods
That was this designer’s idea, ok’d by the door manufacturer’s engineering department
ENDING AT THE BEGINNING
Now you know where we’ve been, except Before The Architect’s journey started here, with this drawing, and progressed up this page – window wall restructure and finally elevation at Back Of House
Whole-House, Excerpt of Section in Elevation
This illustration is of a piece of a whole-house section through the middle, front-to-back
There’s the Balcony at L2 on the right, which opens to the 2-story Gallery
The window wall separates Gallery from Florida
The dotted lines indicate the most probable eye level range of both men and women looking straight out, based on Architectural Graphic Standards, 10th Edition, The American Institute Of Architects (Ramsey/Sleeper), John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2000, "Anthropometric Data: Adult", p.2.; Eye level range of 70.3" & 56.6"
Note that source data are adjusted upward 11/2" for rough and finish flooring at Balcony
From this drawing, Before The Architect set the midpoint of windows in both the window wall and the dormer. All else followed.
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