10.31.2006

RULES FOR HOUSES IN ANCHORAGE ALASKA

In design, all rules must be broken occasionally. The important part is to know when you are breaking a rule.

When you go to buy a house – see if these aspects are present.

TO MAKE EFFECTIVE USE OF THE SUN

Extend the house east to west instead of north to south so as to maximize south walls. When we need the sun the most, it is only in the south.

Create high space and high walls on the south – this allows low angle sun to penetrate deeply into the building.

Provide open spaces on the south, enclosed spaces on the north – this allows the sun to penetrate more thoroughly into the building.

Provide sit down spaces on the south, stand up spaces on the north – don’t want the standers to shade the sitters.

Provide decks with sun doubling – places where the sun hits you and also bounces off the wall behind you and hits you again.

Know when you want to be outside and where the sun is at that time and put the decks there.

Make sure breakfast spaces and bathrooms face east and have east facing windows – good morning sunshine.

Locate houses on the north side of the lot so you can be outside south of your building.

Make sure that the windows provided are not required to be covered because of privacy concerns. A curtained window is often worse than no window at all.


TO DEAL WITH THE SNOW

Know that gutters do not work. Gutters require serious maintenance and even then rarely work in winter. They fill with ice and then the glaciers and icicles flow right over the gutter.

Never slope the roof so that it drains above the front door (or the back door either)!

Never slope the roof so that it drains above the garage door!

Never use a hipped roof – hipped roofs drain to all four sides – that is never the right answer.

Never create a roof with a valley! Valleys are impossible to adequately ventilate and they concentrate drainage. That means they generate glaciers and icicles. Not good for the roof, not good for anything beneath the icicle.

Never use a skylight. Our sun angles are low so south windows are better than skylights. Skylights melt water on the roof that becomes an icicle below.

Given the difficulty of plowing and shoveling, make walkways and driveways as short as possible.

Ugly is in the eye of the beholder. I don’t have the energy for the debate about what is beautiful or ugly. I care about the appearance of my buildings. I must satisfy my clients that they will be pleased with the appearance of their building. After that, well, everybody else can have their opinion. Everybody involved with the design of our city, at every scale, has much more important tasks than appearances. If the building drips on you or is dark or puts you in the shade, my guess is, you will think it is ugly. There are many examples around town of prettification. These are attempts to directly beautify the city. They mostly fall on blind eyes. Think about the circles incised in concrete on Northern Lights or the Concrete Blobs on 15th or even the various pieces of sculpture along C Street. Some of these are nice and all, but I can’t imagine that anyone really believes they are going to turn the tide on our ugly city. The wide sidewalks on 4th Avenue downtown on the other hand have allowed the street vendors to flourish and its fun to be there. The speculative house builders are always struggling to make a more attractive house – they seem to add another roof to their compositions every year – do any of us think they are succeeding? But if we could buy a house that doesn’t have ice on the front walk and where the sun shines in the family room – now, that might be a beautiful house.

I think my first task is to convince people that things can be better. My impression is that most people think all houses, all buildings, all cities are more or less the same so don’t worry about it. Buy something stupid, like everybody else, and then make do as best you can. Its not true. Houses, buildings and cities can be better! If we think of them as tools to support our lives and demand that they be designed and judged as tools, instead of debating about their ugliness, well, I bet we will end up with a beautiful city.

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