Addition’s Ultimate Goal Is Its Invisibility

Travel down any residential street, and here and there you’re bound to find a few homes that scream, “Addition.”

By most yardsticks, a good addition is one that’s invisible--that looks just like it’s always been there. A detectable addition, on the other hand, is generally a botched-up job.

It’s one of architecture’s little ironies that if you design an addition well enough, no one will ever notice it. While this may seem like a pretty sad reward for a job well done, it’s still better than the alternative.

But how to produce an invisible addition? It’s not that difficult. Here are some guidelines to the fundamental decisions:

* Don’t add on to the front of your house. Chances are its facade--literally, “face”--was carefully composed by the original architect.

Take an addition commonly seen on the California ranch, in which a couple of extra bedrooms are expediently packed into the crook of the L beside the projecting garage. The resulting U-shaped plan gives the facade a pug-nosed profile and also reduces the entry approach to a dark tunnel. In most cases, adding onto the back or side of the house is a better alternative.

* Beware the old myth that adding a second story is the cheapest and easiest way to add space. It’s hogwash. On constricted sites where no reasonable alternatives exist, second-story additions can provide a fine solution. In most cases, however, it’s preferable to build at ground level.

Here’s why:

Second-story additions often require reinforcement of the existing foundation, making them no less expensive and frequently even costlier than ground-level additions. They’re also inherently less space-efficient, since both levels lose appreciable floor area to the staircase.

But wait, there’s more: It’s also much more difficult to integrate the towering bulk of a second-story addition into the design of the existing house, especially a quintessentially single-story design such as a ranch or bungalow.

Last but not least, second-story additions are far more disruptive, since they involve the temporary loss of a rather crucial part of your house--the roof.

If you weigh all these factors and still think a second-story addition fills the bill, push it as far back as you can to avoid a towering effect from the sidewalk.

* Take care to locate additions so they won’t cut off light to other parts of the house. Consider where and at what time the sun currently enters the windows, and make sure the addition won’t throw crucial windows into permanent shadow. An extra bedroom or bath is no bargain if it makes other parts of the house unlivable.

If you can’t avoid covering up a window, make sure it can be regained on another wall. Don’t figure on replacing windows with skylights--they won’t provide the same quality of light. And don’t resort to trading away east, west, or south-facing windows for north-facing ones--you won’t get the sunlight or comfort level you had before.

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Arrol Gellner is an architect with 23 years experience in residential and commercial architecture. Distributed by Inman News Features.