Who doesn't like presents? Someone hands you a wrapped object and the excitement begins. The anticipation, then the surprise – it’s a pleasure we all share. What if this same feeling could be created in home design?
One clue encouraging this feeling begins with the containment. Unlike products for commercial sale where clear plastic wrapping keeps the object fully visible and protected from damage, we wrap gifts in paper that conceal them from view. The gift giver keeps a secret from the recipient until the act of opening reveals the present. Once the gift is opened, a line is crossed and the secret disappears.
Front doors or garden gates also have this power. Approaching, one evaluates their status as the returning inhabitant or welcome visitor or unwelcome sales call trolling for donations. The curved walk, low steps, a covered arbor or expansive porch, they all provide what A.J. Downing called ‘a note of preparation.’ Like a good book cover, your eye and hand touch it as you settle into a comfortable chair preparing yourself for reading and thereby leaving this world for the next. In a home, the front door is the book cover. Glass doors, like clear plastic product wrapping, reveal everything without restraint and any sense of anticipation slips away. Solid doors hold back. A door that is a little heavier than usual, a little wider, or with the handle a little higher as Frank Lloyd Wright sometime did, all help to create a sense of wonder while crossing from public places to private homes. The added effort draws attention by its weight and the extra force needed to move it, or by the handle height and the extra reach required to touch it. The bodily sensations wake up the mind alerting it to pay attention and appreciate the created event of a home opening itself to you.
And then there is the act of crossing the threshold. From the word ‘thresh’ as in beating grain to separate it from the shaft, threshing is a violent word. Think of giving someone a thrashing: it’s noticeable! Unconsciously crossing from outside to inside will likely produce little effect or generate any sentimental reaction beyond a small measure of relief. Beyond this impoverished feeling, design is able to generate feelings with far greater impact. A need for safety and security, and a desire for comfort are basic human instincts that are satisfied with reasonable shelter, but what of affection or contentment, optimism or cheerfulness? These are also emotions that we long to satisfy. For example, a visit to a New York apartment building began when I stepped off a crowded and noisy street into a large lobby, not with a vacuously high ceiling intended to impress and intimidate me, but with several wide halls with turns that lead me eventually to the elevator. The openness and generosity of space instantly caused me to relax and to turn my attention from the street to the friend I was visiting. The changes to my feelings altered the tone of the entire experience and opened me to the pleasure ahead. What more do we require of design?
I am amazed at the variety of entries I have experienced in houses. At one end is the carefully calculated entry of almost any Frank Lloyd Wright house, with their typically low and dark entry followed by the opening into the living room. At the other extreme is when you walk into the middle of a living room - no entry at all. Luckily most of the houses I've lived in have had entry halls typical of center-hall colonials. A great place to take off you coat and decide if you: 1) go to the dining room; 2) turn into the living room; 3) walk upstairs; or most commonly, 4) proceed into the kitchen down the hall. All great entries.
ReplyDeleteJohn Livengood
On element of the processional process you are describing is thinkness, the sense of passing through a membrane [?] with some substance. This sense is lost in many modern buildings because there's a sense that thickness or materiality costs money. So much of what used to have mass, weight and presence in buildings (especially homes) is now just a thin layer of gingerbread smeared across the fron of the building.
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