Adapting the Townhouse to Modern Life
At one time in American history one could have justly reached the conclusion that the destiny of American housing lay in the suburbs. The living philosophy of post war America seemed to be to move people out of the cramped harsh urban environment and resettling them in leafy suburbs. The future of the country seemed to rest with the single family house and the car. Frank Lloyd Wright was an early adopter of this new scheme albeit by way of a more dramatic and elegantly proportioned variant he tirelessly advocated with his designs for ‘Broadacre City’.
For any number of reasons, in many areas of the country the single family home of the suburbs has given way to the multifamily dwelling. The acre of land and the free standing house Wright wanted every American to have has not come to pass. Whether owing to economic conditions, planning boards, or whatever the reason the future of housing for many Americans now appears to rest as certainly with the multi-unit structure as it once did with single family residence.
And for many of even the more affluent this means living in townhouses. There is of course nothing necessarily bad with townhouse life. Anyone who’s ever seen New York citys residential neighborhoods can attest to the stately grandeur of the city's many townhomes. The question turns more on the problem of adapting the townhouse to the expectations of the modern suburban family.
I have first hand experience with the life in the townhouse. I live with my family in a NJ townhouse suburb just outside New York. This townhouse does a credible job of adapting the urban townhouse design to the more spacious possibilbilites of the suburbs. It is 50% wider than the classic townhouse: 30 feet rather than 20 ft. It's shorter perhaps 45 feet rather than 60 feet. It has a driveway and a front and back yard. And it has a garage within rather than attached to the house. The house has four levels including a finished basement and unfinished attic withfunctionless dormers. Life in the home is pleasant enough and yet all too soon one aware of its deficiencies.
The garage is suited to only one car and is so narrow that getting into a car is challenging. The garage is the only bulk storage spot and begins to slowly fill up with suitcases, shoes, bikes, shelves and so on so before long you find yourself parking in the driveway. The driveway is short and narrow accommodating only a single car so its nearer the truth to say your wife parks there while you keep your car at the auxiliary parking lot up the street.
The front door of the house opens directly into the living room. The builders sought to have an open plan on the first level so anyone coming to the front door can see from one end of the house to the other. The powder room awkwardly opens onto the kitchen. The staircase is right in the middle, chopping the living space in half. Rather than one coherent lving space you wind up with two small living rooms a small dining area and a kitchen with a small breakfast nook. There is an outside deck on the back but it sits between the neighbors decks devoid of privacy.
The finished basement really helps, I provides an office space area, a play area for the kids, and has an enclosed spce for a washer and dryer. As well there is enough space for a projection tv and long sofa.
All things considered it's not a bad set up. And yet the amateur architect’s voice in my head pipes up often as to how things could have been much better without much extra expense. To begin with there's the question of parking. Stuffing a garage inside a townhouse really gobbles up space and seriously limits the possibilities with the floor plan. Following on Wright's notion that a carport is all that's needed, I refashion the townhouse with a double wide carport. I widen the driveway so it can hold three additional cars. I pull the sidewalk away from the street and put in right next to the house for soothing strolls buffered from street traffic. I pull what was the garage out of the house placing it to the side of the carport and make it the designated bulk storage area as well as function as a mechanicals rooms, in this case for hydraunic equipment offering the more efficient boiler and chiller set up over forced. And with hydrauncis the difficulty of fitting in complicating duct work is gone. As well the redesigned garage serves as the main entry way providing a separate foyer with a small powder room and mud/cloak room.
I've tried to incorporate Wright's ideas for the living space such as high ceilings, a long seating banq with low overhead decking and an open dining space at one end. Following the trend toward ever larger televisions I've designed the living room with the large projection tv in mind. It looks to me like advancements in projection technology will soon make possible movie theater like television and I’ve drawn the living space in anticipation of that eventuality.
The open kitchen has been all the rage for some time. Now there's no arguing it really opens the space up and seems to create a convivial drawing spot. The problem only arises when one uses the kitchen as a kitchen, as a place to cook. In the case of my own townhouse that means the whole house soon fills with the acrid scent of what's being fried, baked, or even microwaved. The chimney effect carries the scent upstairs and on many occasions the only way to restore the air is to open the windows. And so what I’ve tried to do is split the difference between a kitchen used for cooking and one intended to be a gathering spot.
For the basement I’ve kept things pretty much the same as in my own house. It's a little larger with a larger laundry, a more developed playroom for the kids, a spot for a projection tv, and a bar area and place for card games as a sort of rudimentary man cave. The basement connects to the
outside deck which I've given walls on either side for the sake of privacy. In my own townhouse the grade drops down from the main street which I've reflected in the deck design.
Ive put the stairs next to the entryway so you can come and go without traipsing through the living room. This change really opens and connects the living space. At the street end of the living space I’ve put in a little office area where kids can do their homework rather than spreading out their books and things on the dining table.
Not much change upstairs other than to make it four bedrooms rather than three. The master bedroom has its own bath and walkin closet along with a small sitting room area. On the way up to the bedrooms is an office/library space for quiet study which has a small sofa banq and bed so it can double as a guest room.
For the community I’ve tried to landscape it so that there's as many plants and flowers and trees as possible. I've had to lose the lawn but hopefully packing in flowers and trees makes up for it.
I've used hedges to separate the driveways and to also increase the sense of separation of the sidewalk from the street.
The dimensions of the individual townhouse lots are a little larger than those of the ones where I live with a density on the order of 8 units per acre. The effective density is perhaps higher given that supplementary parking areas are not necessary.
I expect these townhouses to be priced near the high end of the market. I think they would have great appeal to those who would perhaps prefer the spaciousness and luxury of a high end home but for whom present the local scarcity of land and the edicts of town planning commissions means having to settle for a townhouse.
The townhouses could be built with normal stick frame construction and sheetrock. The trim and cabinetry can likewise be built of sheet goods including mdf veneer. Stuccoed dryvit can serve as the exterior building material along with cultured stone uses to set off the stair tower. If possible similar such rock material can be used for dramatic effect with sidewalks.