Smaller and Smarter

Changing public spaces in new homes

Photo Credit: Lanterra Homes Smaller and Smarter

Photo Credit: Lanterra Homes

In the McMansion era of home building, bigger definitely seemed better, especially in the public spaces where family and friends gather. But while soaring foyers and family rooms looked good, they didn't work so well in terms of energy efficiency and practicality, as anyone who ever tried to change a light bulb 14 feet off the floor will tell you.

Today, those spaces are being redefined. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, Pulte Homes, Toll Brothers and K. Hovnanian all reported that buyers are opting to replace cathedral ceilings with additional square footage on the second floor of the house. Pulte has seen a 70 percent jump in demand for such options among families with young children since 2006, according to the article. That additional space provides families with a host of functional options, including additional bedrooms, kid's hang-outs, more-convenient laundry rooms, more or larger bathrooms, or dual master suites.

"We don't need the cubic space we used to design," says Leigh Overland, a Connecticut-based architect who designed a Victorian-style "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" house. "In the typical 2,000-square-foot house, you can get a feeling of openness with south-facing glass; it makes it feel open and brings passive solar in."

The operative word today for the public areas of the home is "flexibility," says Cheryl O'Brien, president and lead designer of C. O'Brien Architects in Bala Cynwyd, Pa. The fewer rooms in a home, the more flexible the space can be.

This is in direct contrast to the notion of room count, which O'Brien describes as "houses with 2,000 to 2,200 square feet having a living room, dining room, kitchen, breakfast nook and family room where none of the rooms functioned well." Instead she prefers what she calls "sensible design: floor plans with a nice-sized kitchen; one gathering space for eating; a great room; and a flex room that can be used as a home office, a play room, an in-law suite, a formal dining room, or whatever function best fits the family's needs."

One reason for the shift away from several separate rooms, O'Brien says, are young buyers who don't want and can't afford to furnish all those rooms. "For people who are 30 years old, starting their families or single, I don't think the Ethan Allen dining room set is on their list of dreams," she says. "It's the big-screen TV or the laptop - the technology. The design of the house needs to reflect what those people really want."

Carlos Bazbaz, president of Houston-based Lanterra Homes, sells to those buyers. The biggest battle his company faced when it designed affordable, starter patio homes for first-time buyers was convincing them that 1,300 square feet was big enough to meet their needs. He did it by essentially making the public spaces of the house - the first floor - a kitchen and a flexible dining and living space. "It's good for entertaining, which is good for the younger crowd that is our market," he says. "There's lots of natural light and we have 9-foot ceilings on the first floor. That provides an open and large feel."

There are no foyers or corridors; those are wasted space that he put toward additional square footage in bedrooms, bathrooms and storage, Bazbaz says. "That's primarily our idea on the use of space," he says. "Every single corner, where there is dead space, we analyze it. You don't live in a foyer or a corridor."


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