#howarchitectsthink

How small can an architectural move be and still make a difference? I’ll show you a tiny one in a simple stucco house in Berkeley: an eave that arches up, ever so slightly, above the second-story window over the entry. Let’s see what it might do.

Here’s how I think about this little arch:

First, it emphasizes the entrance, making it a little grander, a little more formal.

It also echoes the arch above the doorway; in fact, one way you can think about it is that the lift of the arch over the doorway has pushed the eave up, as if the wall were a contour gauge: you push up on the bottom edge, and the top edge rises to match.

That may not be how the person who designed the house thought about it, and the average person probably doesn’t think about walls this way. But it’s how I think about them, as plastic things, things that can be pushed and pulled and shifted and stretched.

I think of roofs the same way, so to me the eave is like the edge of a blanket, lifted up the way a child might lift one, to peek out from under it. I think, too, of a raised eyelid, because I also think of façades as faces. Either way, it suggests someone in the house, or the house itself, looking out, an eye on the street.

Does this eye, this little arch, deter crime? Maybe. Small gestures sometimes do. Years ago, one Sunday afternoon in Providence, Rhode Island, I walked past the RISD Museum and saw the director, Frank Robinson, cleaning the molding around the front door with his handkerchief. He explained that tidiness deterred theft.

With that sense of looking outward comes a suggestion—ever so slight—of the window coming forward, not actually, of course, but a feeling of it coming forward, as the doorway actually draws backward into the house. Without the complication or expense of a bay, the window gains something of the force of a bay and deepens the shallow niche of the doorway. And these two movements together—reaching out while stepping back—are gestures of greeting: one hand outstretched, the other guiding you in. Welcome.

And then there’s the gate, with its curve mirroring the arches of the door and the eave. Together, the three gentle curves—gate, door, and eave—deepen and extend the approach to the house. They instill a sense of anticipation, a greater awareness of the threshold, the moment of greeting. They enforce a sense of dignity—let’s say even an expectation of dignified behavior. Maybe the visitor is moved to straighten his tie before he reaches the door.

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