"Designing for Our Human Scale"

An excerpt from Susan Susanka’s  

More Not So Big Solutions for Your Home

It’s obvious that houses are built for people, but what’s not always so apparent is that good residential architecture is designed for our human scale. What exactly does that mean, though? Human beings come in a variety of shapes and sizes, so in home design a “one size fits all” approach won’t work. But sadly, in residential construction today, with our love of bigness, houses have become vast in almost every direction. While these houses are impressive in a photograph, they are difficult to settle into because they’re simply too large. It may be desirable to design a public building so that its visitors feel insignificant and awed by its scale, but that’s hardly what we want for our own homes. Before you start building or adding on, it’s important to understand how to design spaces that will allow most people to feel comfortable. There are some standards and conventions with respect to the heights of things inside the house that can help us to tailor interior spaces to fit our bodies. The heights of windows, countertops, doors, and ceilings are all perfect examples of how we can customize our spaces to better fit our needs.

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