This House Enthusiast wishes you fellow house enthusiasts a delightful holiday season and brilliant 2012.

Cheers from Edgartown!

Read a bit about the Edgartown Light in this archived "Design snapshot", and find less bleary photos of it (than this one I took in yesterday's drizzle) on KHS note cards here.

Edgartown Light is a frequent and favorite subject.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

Finishing with the Top

In this final installment of the exterior edition of How to look at houses… (like an architect), we’re moving up from the base, beyond the middle, to the top of home. View the entire exterior-edition video series here.

You can also find this video posted to the Fine Homebuilding SquareOne blog. 

I hope you'll discover that the more you train your eye on houses, the more you'll see. Warning: house observation, analysis, and interpretation may be addictive.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast and SquareOne

"Small adobe house with basement" by Graham, age 9Find an introduction to this series here.

The title of Graham's sketch suggests it's a building section, but without the title, you might assume it's a building plan. This is one of the delights of the loose, napkin sketch. It's open to interpretation on both the part of the maker and the viewer. Perhaps one drawing is both section and plan.

Most architecture grads can remember at least one crit where a critic turned a student's model upside down or rotated a student's drawings 90 or 180 degrees, and remarked how much better a solution it was once overturned or rotated. Though exasperating for a student, such transformations can push us to see something anew, for better or worse. 

I would love to see a "napkin sketch of home" created by you, your family, and/or friends -- both young and old.

Please submit sketches via a scan or photo to Katie@katiehutchison.com for possible inclusion in the series. Include the artist's name and age, and a title for the sketch, if there is one.

Share your idea of "home" -- whether it's your cat, your porch, or your neighborhood; you decide what "home" means to you.

Let's get sketching.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast

Perhaps I’m over-reaching by placing The School of Life in the “web neighbor” category. I suppose House Enthusiast is more of a wannabe web neighbor of The School of Life, the brainchild of Alain de Botton and a few of his colleagues. For one, The School of Life broaches the broader topic of living a fulfilling life, while House Enthusiast wanders the narrower topic of engaging with a fulfilling home. Secondly, The School of Life presents most of its offerings in person in London, as opposed to House Enthusiast’s virtual offerings in the form of online commentary. Still there is a modicum of overlap. According to De Botton in an article in Varsity (the “independent student newspaper for the University of Cambridge”), The School of Life “has big ambitions to define a new, more practical approach to culture.” Bravo. As a fan of culture’s charms, I, too, aim to make it more accessible.

The “tiny institution” (De Botton’s words) of The School of Life offers a variety of evening classes, weekend intensives, events, meals, services and more.  Each offering, the website notes, has been envisioned “in collaboration with leading authors, artists, actors and academics.” Some upcoming class titles include: How To Have Better Conversations, How To Realise Your Potential, How To Make a Difference, and How To Change Your Mind. As a student of human behavior, each sounds intriguing to me. The School of Life’s online presence includes a blog and videos of the School’s Sunday sermons.  How I wish the School offered online workshops and podcasts of the events, too.

If you’re not familiar with De Botton, he’s the best-selling author of books ranging in subject from philosophy, to status, to, yes, architecture. You may have read my House Enthusiast post about his thought-provoking book The Architecture of Happiness. I find his work inspirational. So much so that his school and a few other entities and organizations, which likewise foster life learning, have prompted me to ponder creating my own school.

Click to read more ...

The color combination of orange doors trimmed in white within pale, green, exterior walls drew me eye to this tableau. (See House Enthusiast logo/button colors.) Three granite risers and an elegantly bracketed door visor set off the striking doors, which feature square and rectangular panes of colored glass bordering clear lites. Bottom wooden panels, picture-framed by moldings and featuring applied panels with diamond-shaped accents, further render these doors unique.

Though they may have once functioned as primary entry doors, they now appear to be acting as storm doors or secondary doors. Today, immediately inside them, a newer, single, French door sits in what is presumably an insulated wall. This is a very clever way to preserve an antique entry while simultaneously reducing air infiltration. It’s win-win; such a solution retains architectural character and improves energy efficiency. If you’re renovating an older home, keep an approach like this in mind in lieu of replacing unique, antique doors with contemporary alternatives.

by Katie Hutchison for House Enthusiast