My own home will be on the upcoming Homes by Architects Tour and I’ve been feeling very self-conscious about it. My husband and I love our little house, and are no strangers to sharing it with the interested public in writing, photographs, and on previous tours, but in the context of the Homes by Architects Tour, I struggle not to see its century-old shortcomings. The floors squeak and slope; the windows and doors stick; the foundation is bowed and cracked. I imagine the architecture buffs and the design-curious public touring my house, and then moving on to a new multi-million-dollar home where they will walk through a pleasingly hefty front door into a space of orthogonal lines covered in a single, unblemished coat of paint, and I hold my breath.
At least that is how I had been feeling. Earlier this week, a client asked if I had read a book—How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built. When I told him I had not, he sent it with me. The book was written by Stewart Brand and published in 1994. That was the year I graduated from high school and started my education in architecture. It was also the year my future home turned 70.
How this book evaded my attention until now is beyond me?! Perhaps I just needed the perspective of living in an old house, or more importantly, renovating one, to be prepared for its relevance. Essentially, the premise of How Buildings Learn is that the best buildings are adaptable—and adapted by their users—through space and time. My client is considering an ADU, an emergent building typology steeped in flexibility. No doubt he was aware of the book’s relevance when he handed it off, but it caught me by surprise!
Since buying our house, our recent renovation is the biggest project we’ve done and second only after renovating the kitchen in 2017, which had previously been remodeled in the 1990’s. Our primary goals in this round were increasing daylight, repairing a failing roof system, and improving function and flexibility.
Brand’s book builds on the work of British design theorist, Frank Duffy, to identify six layers of building components that include: site, structure, skin, services, space plan and stuff. We’re all familiar with our stuff—how it comes and goes, and forever multiplies. At the opposite end are site and structure, the slowest and most difficult or costly to change. In between is where are homes and buildings are most adaptable: the kitchen and bathroom remodels; material and envelope improvements; spatial and functional transformations.
This year is the first in a pilot program to include “small projects” on the Homes by Architects Tour. My home is one of three that qualifies with a project area under six-hundred square feet. The other entrants feature an expanded kitchen renovation (think services and space plan) and an energy-efficient retrofit (see skin) with new mudroom (stuff) and porch.
I invite you to attend the Homes by Architects Tour and consider not just the small projects, but the full range, in the context of adaptability and learning, as Brand might. Take in the varying sites, note how their structures are expressed in shape and form, and imagine where they may be—or what they may be—in the next century.
