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Door Frames - Arches - Symmetry & Signals

"If you're to design and build a fine home, then finely design and build it in every detail."  AG

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From: Before The Architect, Cumming, GA

Re:      Arches

Date:   August 12, 2003

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This note is about the arches, as recently raised by you; namely, at issue is the relationship of several arches at L1 to available interior portals at L1.  More specifically, having designated three portals at L1 for arches – Foyer-Kitchen, Kitchen-Family Room, and Kitchen-Dining Room – you have inquired about the suitability of these arched portals to the portal between Kitchen and Back Hall which due to its narrowness seems unworkable as an arched passage.

 Our reply follows:

The arch motif  - Roman, high at the corners, open - distinguishes related spaces , individuated or specified with arches and attendant walls, but still associated with their relative openness (not doored) and common home designing – the arches. 

 The layout from the front door is home-designed to move the entrant’s eyes forward and left – forward passage directly ahead at left of facing wall, 45° wall up on the right, stairs not straight-line accessible from the front door, lots of space and light directly forward and suggested to the left of forward - along with the rest of the visitor.  The commonality of these spaces – Foyer, Kitchen, Dining Room, and Family Room – is that they are community spaces.

 The space to the right and through the Kitchen-Back Hall portal is not community space.  In other words, even if the doorway was wider, we would not suggest arching it similar to the others.  An unarched door, trimmed as is none of the other portals in sight, signals that past there is some other space than the community space in which you find yourself.

 Mrs. AG notes and respects your interest in not trimming the open arches, and suggests in regard to the Kitchen-Back Hall portal -  

Ø      Leave the door frame squared.

Ø      Widen the portal 2”, letting forward to a 3’-0” opening.

Ø      Trim the door frame.

Ø      Hang a single-swing door on the opening, swinging right and away toward the Back Hall dead wall.

Ø      Consider, if it suits you, a sympathetic but unique and differentiating home design treatment of the over-door area either with an arched pediment or the like (could be too classical, she thinks) or a low-arced transom.

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