From porch to box

We continue to trace how living now takes place more definitely “inside.”

Last week we described a process of evolution in domestic architecture, by which an area that started out being “outside” the house (a deck or porch) became an interior room.  First came the mosquito netting, then the glass, then the heating in winter.

It would be entirely in keeping with the way people do things that the next step would be building another outdoor deck or porch, to recapture the original idea of living part of one’s home life outside.  We’ve not seen that happen often.  Instead, the whole of the old house is demolished and a new one built, large enough to contain the old one and more besides; indeed, often extending as close to the property line as local regulations allow.  There are few porches or decks, though possibly a balcony in an upper story.  We can think of two types of reason for this, the economic and the thermodynamic.

By the time an owner is in the position to build a porch-outside-porch, the question of resale value has become important.  Two layers of apparent improvisation just doesn’t look as valuable as a unified bit of architecture.  Also, the porch-turned-room rarely has the structural strength to support an upper story, so it becomes a less efficient use of the area of the lot.  So a new structure bigger than the old one comes into being.  And because by now the land itself has risen greatly in value, there is a push to use it as efficiently as possible, by converting as much into multistory inside space as the law allows.  We admit the possibility of simple ostentation (“look how big a house I have!”), but we wouldn’t want to say how important it might be.

The thermodynamic reason comes from the fact that heating or cooling a former porch or deck, not well insulated, is more expensive than taking care of a regular inside room.  This was less important before the widespread availability of air conditioning, when the porch was where you went to cool off, and was left unheated in winter.  When you expend energy to keep your inside at the right temperature, it’s more efficient to have proper rooms and insulation.

The end result of these understandable forces can be, to our eyes, decidedly unattractive.  In an expensive suburb that shall remain nameless, there is a house in an excellent position at the top of a hill.  It has a magnificent view to the west over a lake to a distant range of mountains.  It is a fairly perfect cube, with a few windows on the west wall.  The people who live there watch the sunsets, if at all, through the windows, as if they were photographs on the wall.  However, they must often have the screens down then, so the sunlight doesn’t overload the air conditioner.

We would much rather have a porch, even with mosquitos.