The Chicago Tribune is Rethinking the Bungalow
During a late night run to 'the Jewel' to pick up some milk, I decided to glance through the Chicago Tribune on my way out. We don't subscribe and it was late enough in the evening that my first assumption was that all the interesting news had already happened for the weekend--probably not worth a buy.
To my surprise, the insert copy of Chicago Tribune Magazine just happened to be speaking directly to me this weekend: "Renovate!" was the cover story. Even more interesting, one of the cover stories teased "3 Architects Rethink the Bungalow." Realizing I was squarely in the middle of this week's target market I decided to pick up a copy.
For anyone interested, the full content of the article is located here (registration required). Rather, I should have said the full content of the article minus pictures is located there. For an article specifically featuring floorplans, I've got to take a minute to say that's a major oversight by any publisher these days. I'm sure an automated computer program made that decision somewhere deep in the bowels of the Tribune building, but come on.
Anyway, three floorplans are featured in the article by three Chicago-area architectural firms. They were each thought provoking in their own way, so I thought folks who follow the bungalow renovation we're doing might also find these of interest so I'll blog each of them here...
First up was a radical redesign that turned out to come from a firm--Farr Associates--managed by a friend of ours. The design imagined Chicago in the year 2100 and updated the standard Chicago bungalow accordingly.
The design assumes a society that has led residents to a fairly radical self-reliance on home grown foods, 'off-grid' power sources and, most notably, no cars. As a result, their bungalow of the future included featuress like a storm drain cut off from the city sewage system so that rain water could be reycled for use on site. The glass atrium provided an appealing year-round connection to the upgraded garage that had been made over to serve as a greenhouse/coach house. My main disappointment with this design was that there wern't additional floorplans detailing how the traditional interior might evolve to compliment these exterior changes.
The second submission was radical in two ways: the center chunk of one side was carved out (to provide more light to the interior--a problem our own bungalow does indeed suffer from) while the grade at the rear of the house was reduced to allow for a walk-out basement.
These exterior changes enabled a shift moving most of the bedrooms to the basement level, opening the main floor to expansive multi-use rooms. I'm not really sure what I think about this idea--in my opinion much of our bungalow's charm is closely wed to the intimate floor plan. Could the 'great room' concept undermine that cozy feel?
The final design presented an even more radical "modular" interior in which walls actually moved on a motorized track to allow the main floor to evolve for different purposes. Each mobile wall slides to either display purpose-specific accessories (the obvious example--a TV-centric entertainment wall) or slides flush to hid it's contents away. Again, more permenant sleeping quarters were moved below ground to accomodate the first floor concept.
To my surprise, this idea actually seemed more reasonable to me after thinking about it for a while. The main reason was displayed in the third wall configuration--a small sitting room in the front with a socially-oriented art gallery taking up the larger part. This idea preserves those intimate spaces while also providing the opportunity to really stretch out for that big annual Super Bowl party. (I just wonder if the Bears will be back in the big game by the time this thing is ever built.)
So, three interesting designs worth drawing inspiration from. Personally we'd love to have the greenhouse back yard concepts integrated in to our own place.
If I have any beef with these designs it is that I really don't think they fulfill the article's premise of "rethinking the bungalow". While they certainly bring new ideas to the traditional floorplan, they seem to reflect the interests or specialization of each respective firm more than they reflect any new conception of the key Arts & Crafts principles like creation of intimate space or a preference fine craftsmanship that spawned the early American bungalow movement.
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Comments
Thanks for sharing an interesting article I never would have seen otherwise. I was pleasantly surprised to see the second option: When we lived in Denver I saw an amazing bungalow whose basement had been finished very early on--in the 1940s or so--with high ceilings, quartersawn hardwood floors and deep window wells allowing in lots of sunlight. This "buried" living area got me thinking about earth-bermed houses and the fact that heating and cooling are much easier when you take advantage of the earth's temperature.
I almost had my husband convinced to finish our high ceilinged basement in a similar way, with period trim. I wanted to move our bedrooms downstairs (with deep window wells) where they'd be naturally cool in the summer and not too difficult to heat in the winter. The main level would remain as living, guest room, and office area.
We ended up moving.
Posted by: CatM | February 20, 2007 7:19 PM
Thanks for sharing - good to see some interesting and contemporary takes on such a classic piece as the American bungalow.
Posted by: Timothy | February 27, 2007 8:05 PM