"A treasure that will allow many to create for themselves a truly welcoming home."
-Sarah Susanka, FAIA, architect and author of The Not So Big House series and The Not So Big Life
Some homes seem to speak to us, saying hello and welcoming us into their sheltering arms. Identifying the characteristics of such places is an essential aspect of designing and creating a home.
In Welcoming Home, architect Michaela Mahady explores how humans experience built places in order to identify those characteristics that make us feel welcome, protected, comforted and happy. She examines such elements as welcoming entryways, sheltering roofs, handcrafted details that convey personality and tradition, and materials and colors that create comfort and warmth.
Welcoming Home is the essential guide to creating dwellings that truly make us feel at home.
Michaela Mahady, AIA is an architect and artist and is a principal in the firm SALA Architects, Inc. She has designed homes and art for public spaces throughout the United States. Her architecture and glasswork have been featured on PBS and in magazines such as Fine Homebuilding, Life Magazine, Cottage Living, and American Craft. She lives and works in Stillwater, Minnesota.
These buildings seem to have lost the connection to our human selves and bodies. Yet we crave this connection and find something sorely missing in buildings that lack it. We need to rediscover and understand the links between our bodies and buildings. We can then use those discoveries in the design of our homes.
This volume is a study of how houses speak to us, what messages they send, and how we can come to better understand what they are saying. We will examine how human beings experience space and built form, with an eye to understanding the spatial experiences that form our own preferred personal patterns.
We can use these lessons to create homes that are more responsive to all our needs for shelter-physical, psychological, and spiritual. And we can become more aware of our roles in caring for the earth, as we build and dwell on it.
8 PREFACE
10 INTRODUCTION
14 THE PERSONA OF A HOUSE
24 A HOUSE THAT SAYS HELLO
40 A HOME WITH OPEN ARMS
58 THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR
80 MY HOME, MYSELF
100 THE WINGS OF THE ROOF
116 THE HANDCRAFTED HOME
134 MELDING WORK AND HOME
144 COLOR, LANDSCAPE, AND DWELLING
162 THE RIGHT FIT TO THE EARTH
178 WELCOMING COMMUNITIES
194 HOME AND MEMORY
208 FINDING THE HOME INSIDE YOU
221 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
222 RESOURCES
223 BIBLIOGRAPHY
224 PHOTOGRAPHY AND ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Overview
"A treasure that will allow many to create for themselves a truly welcoming home."
-Sarah Susanka, FAIA, architect and author of The Not So Big House series and The Not So Big Life
Some homes seem to speak to us, saying hello and welcoming us into their sheltering arms. Identifying the characteristics of such places is an essential aspect of designing and creating a home.
In Welcoming Home, architect Michaela Mahady explores how humans experience built places in order to ...