We recently received an email from a visitor to the website for the 2007 Denver Parade of Homes. He brought up some important questions regarding the size of the houses in the Parade and Sarah's association with them. We thought it would be helpful to share his email, and Sarah's response. See below...
"My wife and I are using your book, among other resources, in planning our new home and we are very much agreeing with the principles you put forth in it. It is helping us a great deal. Many thanks for this as a wonderful resource to us!
....that being said
after having visited the Parade's web site where you are, in effect, endorsing the works shown there and then looking at the individual homes represented there (with the smallest over 5,000 square feet and the largest almost 8,000), we have to ask:
Why did you decide to connect with this project? Yes, they paid lip service to some of the book's concepts; but, as a whole, it seemed to be the poster child for the kinds of homes you were arguing against in the opening pages of your book.
We both thought it seemed incongruent hearing you talking about an 8,000 sf "not so big house". What were we missing?"
Sarah's response:
There is some method to my madness, although it may not immediately be apparent. There is one house in amongst the five that really and truly exemplifies what the Not So Big House and Home By Design are all about, and it is 3,800 sf in size--the maximum allowable above grade square footage for this year's homes. They didn't finish the basement, and they didn't do any 18 foot ceilings I'm glad to report.
All the other houses sport the same amount of square footage below decks as the above grade area, which is why the sizes are so huge. But the interesting thing to see is that the mainstream has embraced the conceptual underpinnings of better design--ideas that you would normally never see in a parade like this. That is a big step forward. Even though several of the houses have much taller ceilings than I would normally encourage, many of the other design moves made are well worth looking at. I was pleasantly surprised at how much better these homes were than I'd feared they might be, despite the overscaled basements.
You have to look at this parade in light of what is normally shown to the public at such parades. They are typically gargantuan in every dimension, with very little to recommend them in terms of design. Each of these homes has a cozy corner or two, some thoughtfully crafted vistas, and lots of ceiling height variety. This is a definite step in the right direction.
Then there's the challenge of crowd control. Although these homes are intended to be lived in at some point, for this first month of their lives they are exhibitions and they have to be designed for a very different function as well as their long term role. I've designed show houses myself and the challenge is that when you have thousands of people walking through each day, you can't make them truly compact or visitors simply can't move or see anything as they walk through. So 3,800 sf was a number that met the needs of crowd accommodation without being too vast to illustrate the ideas underlying good house design.
I hope this helps, and I hope you'll be able to see the influence that my books have had on each of the designs. If you ignore the square footage, the ideas you'll see illustrated there are worth visiting. Thanks for writing.
All the best, Sarah
This message has been edited. Last edited by: notsobig,
