THREE, THREE, THREE

People love things that come in threes, from musketeers to little pigs to stooges. Compelling arrangements of three also show up in more hifalutin’ places: A symphony has three movements, a play has three acts, and a novel has its proverbial beginning, middle, and end.  

The peculiar power of three-part compositions appears in architecture as well.  Take, for instance, the division of the classical column into base, shaft, and capital--a sort of beginning, middle, and end in three dimensions.  In one form or another, this same vertical composition appears in everything from classical temples to skyscrapers.  It also appears in the individual parts of buildings, such as the way interior walls are divided into base, wall, and crown, and even in the design of moldings, whose profiles are often built up with three elements of different hierarchies, more or less like miniature buildings.

What makes three-part compositions so effective?  One answer may lie in the way we think.  Our brains strive to find rational patterns in everything we experience, yet paradoxically, they also seem to get bored when things fall into place too easily.  What the human mind really seems to crave--and what may even constitute the very essence of beauty--is a comprehensible pattern that contains unexpected variations.  Three-part arrangements seem to furnish the ideal venue for this delicate balance.

Visually, groups of three also provide just the right degree of complexity without losing clarity of composition.  Consider an arrangement of windows:  A group of two can’t quite get a rhythm going, while four or more can start to look redundant.  Not so a group of three, however:  Like Goldilocks’s porridge, they’re not too little, not too much, but always just right.  

Three-part arrangements can also be easily tweaked to create visual movement without destroying their symmetry.  For instance, the Palladian window, named for the sixteenth-century architect Andrea Palladio, is a classic three-part design featuring two side elements flanking a larger central portion with an arched top.  The simple addition of this dominant central arch creates movement while still retaining the inherent calm of bilateral symmetry.  

Three hundred years after Palladio came the Chicago window, first used in early skyscrapers, but better known for brightening the living rooms of countless bungalows of the Twenties.  It featured a pair of double-hung sash flanking a large central picture window--another unbeatable dot-dash-dot arrangement that creates more visual tension than would three equal-sized openings. 

Beyond such aesthetic subtleties, though, there’s a practical reason why tripled windows, doors, or archways work better than ones with two or four elements:  They have an opening in the center instead of a mullion.  This seemingly obvious advantage is routinely overlooked by architects, which is why so many people at kitchen sinks end up staring at a mullion instead of a beautiful view.

There you have it, both the mystical and the mundane.  If you’re looking for a timeless basis for design, maybe all you need to do is count to three.

CLOSING THE MAGIC PORTAL

Suppose a developer wanted to advertise the name of his subdivision by building a sign five hundred feet long on a prominent hillside that was visible for miles.  Suppose each letter was going to be fifty feet high and built out of telephone poles, pipes, and sheet metal.  And suppose the whole thing was going to be lit up by ten thousand or so unshaded forty-watt bulbs, so it couldn’t be overlooked even at night.

A design review board’s nightmare?  Not really.  In 1923, a pair of developers named S.H. Woodruff and Tracy Shoults proposed--and built--just such a sign in a sleepy hamlet near Los Angeles.  It advertised their 500-acre housing development, which was called Hollywoodland.  In 1949, the sign’s last four letters were removed by the local chamber of commerce, leaving a landmark now famed the world over: the giant hillside sign reading HOLLYWOOD. 

The point is that our ideas of what’s aesthetically right or wrong can change drastically over time.  During the 1920s, no one gave a second thought to outlandish structures like the Hollywood sign--they were considered a natural expression of an exuberant era.  Today, however, conventional planning wisdom frowns mightily upon any structure that dares call attention to itself and thus potentially upsets the equilibrium of the mundane.  Today, a developer proposing a 500-foot long advertising sign would either be run out of town or politely referred to a psychiatrist.   

The Hollywood sign and other ebullient structures like it--including some of America’s most beloved landmarks and icons--could never come to pass under today’s withering regulatory scrutiny.  Imagine the hurdles faced by someone today proposing to build a 305-foot high statue on an island in the middle of New York Harbor.  It’s almost too easy to predict the ensuing litany of objections:  Construction on the island could adversely affect nesting seabirds; rain could cause the statue’s copper skin to shed toxic sulfates; the statue could obstruct Bayonne’s view of Manhattan; a statue promoting Liberty might offend those favoring alternate forms of government.  

In today’s ultra-deferential planning climate, simply mitigating or refuting such objections might take decades, if it ever happened at all.  A modern-day Statue of Liberty would no doubt look quite different--not because the risks have changed, but because we have.

Just about every state in the Union has manmade structures that are the product of eccentricity, obsession, megalomania, or just plain shameless commerce.  They range from Mount Rushmore to the Watts Towers, from Sam Hill’s Stonehenge replica in southern Washington right on down to the Big Duck of Flanders, New York.  Such icons are a part of any vibrant culture, yet practically none of them could have arisen under the crushing heel of today’s regulatory bureacracy.  

The Chinese have no such qualms about building with exuberance. Just across the river from Shanghai’s famous Bund, they’ve built a 1,536-foot-tall broadcast tower that looks like something straight out of Buck Rogers.  Called the Oriental Pearl Tower, it’s the tallest such structure in Asia.  Every evening, this amazing colossus is lit up by animated cascades of colored lamps, making it impossible to overlook by anyone within a ten mile radius.  In the span of a decade, the Oriental Pearl has become the instantly recognizable symbol of Shanghai, and in a sense, of China’s renaissance itself.

As for the United States, the nation that turned exuberance into an art form, we have for the most part turned off the lights.  What our aesthetic tiptoeing and whispering has gained us is a way to ensure the least offense to the most people.  What it has cost us is our magic portal to the offbeat, the extraordinary, the insanely great.

SPOTTING THE SIGNATURES

It’s human nature to crave the fresh, the new, and the fashionable, and that goes for remodeling as much as anything else.  The quest for the mythical “updated look” of magazine lore has long tempted both owners and architects to graft trendy additions onto older homes just to make them ever-so-briefly fashionable again.  Alas, you need only leaf through a twenty-year-old copy of Better Homes and Gardens to see how such “updates” have stood the test of time.  Most would elicit groans,if not laughter.  

The lesson is simple:  Given the ever-shifting sands of architectural taste, the only kind of addition that’ll be permanently in fashion is one that respects the original architecture. 

But how to do this?  It goes without saying that the overall proportions of any new addition--wall heights, window styles and sizes, and the roof style and finish--should be in keeping with the original building.  Beyond these basics, though, the real trick to making an addition “lock” into the original house is to identify and repeat the designer’s signature details. By sussing out these characteristic traits--and incidentally, every house, new or old, has a whole raft of them--you can pretty much make any addition look spot-on original.  Typical candidates include: 

•  Porch railings and columns.  Repeating these often charismatic details will go a long way toward knitting an addition into the original building. If the original railings don’t meet the current building code, find a workaround--don’t just use an entirely different design.  For example, if the old railing has openings larger than the current 4” maximum, install a heavy wire mesh on the inside face of the new railing.to make it comply.  

•  Window muntins (the narrow divisions between the glass) and window trim.  Every home style has its own characteristic trim and muntin patterns; look for them and repeat them in the addition where possible.  Muntins are less common in postwar homes, but if they’re present, it’s doubly important to echo them in the new work.  Avoid using the two-dimensional “sandwich” muntins found in most modern windows unless that’s what you find in the original building.  You’ll pay a premium for true muntins, but they’ll make a huge difference.

•  Roof edges.  The strong lines of roof eaves are a central element of any home style, so it’s imperative to get them right.  It’s not enough just to match the width of the overhang--you also need to match the fascia (the board behind the gutter, if any) and the gutter itself.  If you can’t find the original gutter style, consider replacing all the gutters with a close match to ensure that the new work ties in flawlessly with the old.   

•  Attic vents.  Here, look for characteristic shapes: Did the designer use rectangular, pointed, arched, or circular louvers, or perhaps round or square clay pipe vents?  It’s small flourishes like these that visually lock the addition into the existing structure.  Again, if the original vent design won’t meet current codes, include it for appearance and provide additional venting elsewhere, out of sight.   

•  Lastly, if you have trouble coming up with a detail that has no direct precedent on the existing building, ask yourself:  What would the original designer have done?  Would he have used paired french doors, or a sleek aluminum slider?  Would he make the chimney skinny, stout, or asymmetrical?  In short, what would he have recommended?  With the original designer guiding you, your addition can’t help but fit. 

A LETTER TO PAULINE

Dear Pauline,

It’s me, Arrol, the kid who grew up next door to you back in the old neighborhood in Concord.  You used to babysit me, and in a way, over the years, you became the grandmother I never had.  

Anyway, I dreamed about the neighborhood last night, as I still do now and then, even though the whole place is of course long destroyed.  But there I was back home again, and in that aimless way that dreams develop, I thought I’d stop in next door and say hi to you.

I crunched my way down our long gravel driveway out to the sidewalk, past the hedge, then onto the narrow concrete walk between the twin green lawns and up the steps to your creaky old front porch. You weren’t sitting in your big green rocking chair--the one with the wicker seat--so I knocked on your screen door. 

The funny thing is, every detail on that porch was there as plain as day:  I  could feel the three slanting brass bars of the screen door grille through the screen, and the gray-painted porch floor, with the joints between the planks ridged up a little. Next to your rocking chair was the smaller wooden rocker where I used to sit and listen to your stories about the old days. There was the same old porch light with its frosted globe in the middle of the beadboard ceiling, strung with cobwebs and dead gnats, and of course your black ashtray full of stubbed-out Salems on top of the wide banister, the filter ends stained with bright fuschia lipstick.

As usual, I couldn’t really see into the dark front room through that big wooden screen door--just a glimmer of gold from the starburst-shaped clock on the back wall.  You came to the door, and in the dream I called you Pauline, which of course I never did as a child: You were always “Mrs. Meese”. You were glad to see me, and we talked a little bit about this and that, and I told you that we all missed you. Still, I had the feeling that you needed to get back to whatever it was you’d been doing.  

As I was turning to leave, you said “Love ya,” in that offhand Oklahoma way of yours.  “We love you too,” I said.  I don’t know why I said “We”; I suppose I was speaking for my family, although as good stolid Germans we never even said “I love you” to each other, let alone to the neighbors.  

We went out on the porch again, and I gave you a hug.  Something welled up in me, and over your shoulder, I began telling you how I missed the neighborhood, how everything had changed, how when I drove through town I didn’t even recognize what road I was on anymore.  And I felt tears welling up in my eyes.  That’s when I began to wake up--not all of a sudden, but little by little, the familiar surroundings seeming to slip further and further away without my having budged from that spot.  I remember staying very still for a while after I awoke, afraid I’d break the spell of having just stood there with you, Mrs. Meese--Pauline--on that comfortable old porch, in that long-vanished old neighborhood.

Anyway, I had a nice visit, and I guess I just wanted to tell you about it.  I know that we can never really go home again, but it seems I can’t help but try it now and then, in spite of myself. 

STREETJACKETED

Near my office there’s a stretch of sidewalk that typifies what passes for urban landscaping these days.  It’s a laser beam-straight ribbon of concrete almost a quarter-mile long. Trees--all of the same species and all spaced exactly the same distance apart--  march rigidly along one side, seemingly poked into the ground like so many Tootsie-Pops.

Granted, it’s a fine thing that developers and public works departments have begun cooperating to guarantee our city streets some kind of natural relief.  But it’s also appararent that we could do a lot better, at the price of little more than a bit of careful thinking.

It’s been said that the essence of beauty is a recognizable pattern brought to life by unexpected variations.  In other words, the human mind is comfortable with basic patterns that are familiar and easily grasped, but it also gets bored when it doesn’t come across a surprise or a challenge in these patterns now and then.  

Nowhere is this more true than in landscape design.  The human brain is not at all used to seeing mind-numbing sameness in nature--and why should it be?  There’s no such thing to be found there.  In even the most outwardly uniform forest or expanse of desert, Mother Nature is nevertheless teeming with variation.  Hence, when we see a line of trees rigidly arrayed and spaced equidistantly like points on a number line, our minds rebell.  Well, mine does, anyway.

What’s most puzzling about this sort of rote design is that making it less oppressive costs next to nothing when it’s done in the design stage.  There are plenty of simple and inexpensive ways to relieve the usual row-of-lollipops landscaping scheme, for example.  Tree spacing can be varied--oh, the shock!-- a few yards this way or that.  A different species can be introduced now and then as an accent, and the sidewalk inflected a bit to acknowledge it.  And once the streetscape is a little less daunting, a simple bench here and there might be welcome for people to sit down and enjoy it.

In landscaping, as in so many other facets of architecture, blind habit, laziness, and hurry are the archenemies of good design.  Especially with today’s computer drafting programs, it’s much easier to fire off a perfect row of identical trees on a landscape plan and call it good, than it is to introduce the sort of small variations that are the hallmark of all human endeavor.  And while precision can be a wonderful thing, it can also stultify the spirit.  Our world, like ourselves, is always a little bit off-center, unpredictable, and imprecise, and I suspect that most of us like it that way.  At least, we’d like it even less if it were otherwise.

In an era increasingly running at the pace of electrons, we have to be especially wary of what we stand to lose in worshipping speed and precision above all else.  Urban landscapes aren’t printed circuits, and planners ought not treat them as such.  It’s ironic that despite--or perhaps because of--our technical wizardry, we have to try even harder to do what Mother Nature does with ease.  

   

FABULOUS FAKES

If you think fake finishes only go back to Z-brick and Formica, think again.  Architectural fakery has been around as long as architecture itself.  When the Egyptians began building with stone instead of plant stalks, they nevertheless carved their walls to look like reed matting and shaped their columns to mimic bundled papyrus.  Likewise, many of the details found on classical Greek temples are traditional wooden details merely copied in stone. And even after those fun-loving Romans started making walls out of concrete, they contrived to embed special slabs of fired clay in them so they’d look more like the brick walls they were used to.  

While these ancient cultures usually imitated older materials for the sake of tradition, economics soon became a more compelling force.  Craftsmen of the Middle Ages were already using plaster as a cheap stand-in for carved stone, and gossamer-thin gilding to masquerade as gold.  In the mid-eighteenth century, the Italians invented an imitation marble consisting of gypsum mixed with glue that was good enough to earn its own name--scagliola, or “little chip”.  

The Victorians were even bigger fans of fakery.  Many Victorian “marble” mantelpieces, for example, aren’t even scagliola, but merely cleverly-painted wood.  Another favorite fake of the period was Lincrusta, an embossed linoleum-like wall covering that was originally varnished in brown tones to resemble tooled leather.  Likewise, stamped metal ceilings--that ornate staple of Victorian store interiors--were simply a cheaper, faster, and lighter substitute for cast plaster.

The revivalist architecture of the 1920s used a whole host of cheaper stand-ins for the opulent originals.  Among these was cast stone, a fine cement that was cast in molds, which could imitate carved stone detail with stunning fidelity.  When more deeply modeled forms were required, architects turned to terra cotta, which could be glazed and fired to produce a spot-on imitation of granite and other stone finishes.  Building interiors of the 1920s also made spectacular use of painting techniques like graining and stencilling to mimic expensive woods and inlaid detail.  Even the humble bungalow homes of the era used graining to make cheap cabinets look like fine hardwood.

After World War II, architectural fakery relied more on advanced technology than artistry.  Various newfangled exterior finishes, from asbestos-cement shingles to aluminum, vinyl, and pressboard siding, sought to displace solid wood--though only with middling success.  Inside postwar homes, a new technique of laminating plastic sheets with photographic reproductions of wood or marble (as well as a number of weird patterns not found in nature) gave us materials like Formica and Micarta.  Later on came Corian and its successors, all of which sought to give a more convincing imitation of marble and other types of stone.

Among today’s most popular fakes are flooring materials such as Pergo (a variation on plastic laminates), as well as yet another generation of granite and marble imitations such as Silastone.  And of course, vinyl windows, with their hokey two-dimensional muntins, do their darndest to look like the pricey wooden kind.  

Ironically, some of the materials once used as cheap substitutes are now themselves being flattered by imitation:  For instance, various plastics are now commonly used to mimic cast stone or cast plaster details.  And no doubt it’s just a matter of time before we start seeing imitations of “genuine” plastic ornament. 

POSITIVE, NEGATIVE

Positive space, negative space.  They sound like some kind of flaky New Age terms.  But actually, they’re one of the oldest and most basic concepts in design.  Nothing could be more deeply-rooted in the human psyche--yet both amateurs and architects routinely ignore their implications.

Simply put, positive space represents space that we want, while negative space is what’s left over.  To draw a simple analogy, imagine cutting out cookies from dough.  The cookies represent the positive space, and the pointy scraps left over are the negative space.  In architecture as in baking, the idea is to maximize the number of cookies and minimize the leftover scraps.  

As it happens, maximizing positive space is even more important in architecture than in baking, since you can’t ball up the leftover scraps and roll more dough out of them.  You’ve pretty much got to cut things out right the first time. To stretch the analogy even further, it also happens that architectural forms that are roughly circular--like cookies--provide a much stronger sense of comforting enclosure than do those nasty angular scraps left over from cutting them out.

As basic as this principle seems, you’d be surprised how often architects violate it.  Acute angles, with their jagged, knife-like shape, are inherently dramatic, and we architects are nothing if not suckers for drama.  But there’s a price to pay for this kind of cheap effect.  Acute angles inside buildings can’t be comfortably inhabited by anything other than gnats and spiders, and it’s not too much to say that they also have an unsettling effect on the human psyche.  Deep in our primitive brains, converging angles still give us an uneasy sense of walls closing in, of entrapment--not exactly the ambience you want for your living room.  

The Chinese design principles known as Feng Shui have long warned against acute angles--”secret daggers”--which are thought to generate malevolent forces.  It’s just another way of saying that sharp angles creep people out.

For their part, Western psychologists might allude to the womb to explain why humans gravitate toward rounded spaces and shun angular ones.  To be sure, more-or-less circular shapes are one of nature’s favorite forms, appearing in practically every living thing from the cell on up.  

Now, none of this implies that rooms should be literally round--a pretty impractical idea, what with all our relentlessly linear building materials.  But it does suggest that rooms shouldn’t contain wall or ceiling angles sharper than ninety degrees, and that they shouldn’t be more than half again as long as they are wide.  Nor should they have sharp angles intruding into them, or far-flung, dead corners with no through traffic.  This applies to outdoor rooms as well, except that here, you can use landscaping to produce a pleasingly positive space for people to inhabit.  

In short, the closer you come to approximating a circular shape--whether using architectural features, furniture arrangements, or planting--the more comfortable your rooms will be.  Whether we call the result intimate, auspicious, secure, or just plain cozy--we all know positive space when we feel it.