Celebrating the American Home explores 50 of these significant homes, chosen by a panel of leading architects from more than 350 houses featured in recent Taunton Press books. Colonial to modern, East coast to West coast, you're invited into a wide variety of homes and will hear, in the architects' own words, why each house made the cut.

From the Introduction
What Makes a Great American Home?
Every year since 1992, over a million new houses have been built in the United States. Since that time, The Taunton Press has published over 400 houses in a series of books written by designers, builders, and architects. That's a lot of square footage on glossy paper, but a mere fraction of the total houses built. Most of us would drive right by the houses that have gone up over the last dozen years—maybe even our own houses—but there is something about these Taunton houses worth not only a second glance but also a detailed study. The published houses are all over the map—literally—and they also range in looks, size, materials, and cost. Their sheer variety begs the question, what makes a great house? And the second question is, of course, what is there about these houses that can inspire our own designs? After a lot of discussion, Taunton writers and editors unraveled a thread of core qualities that makes these houses stand out. This chapter will go over each of these qualities, but here's the list in a nutshell.

Each house has:

• A just-right response to site and context,
• A comfortable scale both inside and out,
• Livability that accommodates everyday life and special occasions,
• A deep respect for craft,
• and a distinctiveness that transcends the ordinary.

Context: Connecting with the Site
Connecting with the site is critical to good design; in fact, it's hard to find any part of a house design that doesn't boil down to responding to context. Context includes the physical characteristics of the site, the social and physical fabric of the neighborhood or community, and land-use requirements, such as setbacks and area restrictions. The physical site consists of topography, climate, and flora and fauna. The fabric of the neighborhood or community comprises scale, color, style, and rhythm—all elements that give a place character. For example, are all the houses set back from the street the same distance? Are roof slopes the same? Historical precedents add another layer of context, with vernacular materials and details providing a palette of options, if desired. Finally, land use regulations hold sway over where a house sits and how big it is.

All these elements of the site inform the design, and it's up to the architect, owner, and builder to interpret the information. But that's what can make designing a great house so exhilarating—it's a unique response to a unique place, as evidenced in each one of these 50 houses.

It will come as no surprise that many of the owners and architects of these houses spent months, even years, getting to know their sites. Ralph Rapson, architect/owner of the glass cabin in Wisconsin shown on page 7, camped on his 40-acre site for several years before hammering in stakes. Architect Cass Calder Smith and his clients visited their site many times, finally realizing that they always parked on one side of a majestic grove of oak trees, then walked under the canopy toward the sun. This informed the decision to position the house south of the trees, with the two major oaks framing the walkway to the house and space for parking kept north of the grove. The owner of the ranch redo in Washington state had lived in her house as a child, then with her mother's blessing, hired Drager Gould Architects to radically change the house. The architects reoriented the house toward the outdoors and gave the house a lake view it never had before.

Suburban and city dwellers have the same need to connect with their sites. Architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen wrapped a Florida house around a private courtyard with swimming pool and giant palms (photo facing page) to create a new context of an oasis in a hot, humid, not-so private community. A townhouse owner in Washington, D.C., lived 15 years in an end unit before he had the chance to buy the adjacent unit, which laid claim to a small rear garden. His only firm request of his architect Mark McInturff was that the new space provide views to the garden and allow for views from the older space, too. Those visual connections to the site give both new space and old a bright, witty style and luminous interior.

The particulars of a site shape a good house. For example, not every hillside presents the same set of challenges. When a client requested a single-level house on a hillside in Napa Valley, California, Eric Haesloop of Turnbull Griffin Haesloop scooped out a chunk of the treeless hillside to make a level field for a house with outbuildings. On a steep hillside in Santa Fe, architect Michael Bauer took inspiration from the Pueblo Indian tradition of building multiple, stepping-stone units and broke up the adobe house into wings that pinwheel down the hillside.

Certainly a waterside house does not have a blank slate to write on, but neither is it cast in stone. Which suits a coastal site better, a tall, lighthouse-shaped house or the hunkered down shape of a fishing shack? Of course, zoning regulations rightly have a say in matters of scale. This book showcases several coastal houses, each with a different take on scale and proportion, and all shaped in part by zoning. Stephen Blatt's design for a house smack dab on a rocky coast in Maine owes its comfortable, New England cabin proportions to a requirement that the house follow the footprint and envelope of the previous house, lost in a fire. A Martha's Vineyard cabin designed by Mark Hutker Associates was required to follow the footprint of the fishing shack that had been there, but raise the first floor 5 feet to avoid flooding. To keep the house low, architect Phil Regan split up the volume into two, single-story hip-roof shapes, which make for airy interiors but a relatively modest scale outside.

Scale: Fit and Proportion, Inside and Out
A house worth celebrating is not only a good neighbor but a comfort to its owners, and scale has a lot to do with both. Having a handle on scale means understanding how a house fits into a neighborhood or a landscape, how people fit into the house, and how details sit into the overall design. In other words, scale applies at every level of a house's design, whether viewed from the curb or from the couch.

Proportion is a critical aspect of scale and one that's too often overlooked. For example, when a family outgrows a house, the easy solution is to tack on more space, but a too-big addition can ruin the scale of a house. Some people shed houses the way a hermit crab sheds shells, moving up to a larger house each time the family grows. But a prime location allows a house with good bones to grow, if the addition is made with a sympathetic eye to the scale and proportion of the house.

Today's houses tend to be larger in scale than their ancestors not only outside the house but inside. Great rooms, or open plans that connect several spaces, make sense with busy families and more stuff to accommodate and share. This open space makes a skillful use of scale critical to how comfortable a house feels. A large house can be a comfortable scale if rooms are scaled to match the function, and if large rooms have differentiated spaces in them, such as niches and areas with lowered ceilings. A kitchen can handle a tall ceiling, if that's desired, as people stand and move around in it, whereas a dining room may be more comfortable if the ceiling isn't too high, or, if the ceiling is high, a substantial chandelier shapes the light over the table in an intimate way.

As architect Sarah Susanka shows in a Minneapolis house, a soffit at the edge of the room or over a built-in seat, can provide intimacy in a large room. This doesn't mean that for a room to be cozy it must have a low ceiling. On the contrary, a high ceiling can provide a sense of serenity, as seen in the lovely 20-foot-high screened porch that's the center of family life in a house in the New Hampshire forest, designed by Charles Warren.

Finally, the best-fitting details are designed with a nod to scale and proportion. Several of these 50 houses were inspired by the Shingle style, including Estes Twombly's Rhode Island house (bottom photo p. 14) and Michaela Mahady's Minnesota house (top photo p. 14). The Shingle style featured tall, slim windows clustered in ribbons of three or five, and while individual windows in these new houses are actually larger than their ancestors, they follow the proper Shingle-style proportion and look right at home.

Livability: How a House Works and How It Plays
A house with a high degree of livability makes staying home on Friday night the best option. On the surface, livability is a subjective notion, considering that one family's open plan may be another's idea of bedlam, but everyone agrees that comfort is high on the list of necessities in a livable house. Comfort doesn't require luxury but it does require attention to spaces and adjacencies that make it easy for inhabitants to work, socialize, and rest. One key to making a livable house is to provide sheltered outdoor space where owners can take in the view in relative comfort. Architect Peter Bohlin tucked an intimate, wisteria-entwined terrace between the main house and a new space so to allow for a northerly view of sunlit fields and pond without the discomfort of westerly winds. And, of course, a screened porch magnifies the livability quotient in any house, anywhere; a good many of these 50 houses bear witness to that fact.

Indoors, the livability factor banks on a comfortable mix of private and public spaces, with a natural progression from one to another. Duany Plater-Zyberk's design for a coastal Florida house weaves both public and private outdoor spaces among enclosed spaces to make a variety of experiences. Privacy is in the eye of the beholder, and the neighbor. Houses with close-by neighbors, such as Susanka's Minneapolis house, Duany Plater-Zyberk's island house, and the canalside houses of Jacobson and Glenn Irani, all have side walls that are largely opaque and openings that are obscured by shades, landscaping, or translucent glass. Privacy in the wild is a different matter. Rapson's glass house is open to sky and woods all around, with only bathroom and kitchen shielded, and the most private wing of Wheeler Kearn's Prairie house has windows floor to ceiling, with roll-up shades built in only to shade the sun, not the view of wandering foxes and wild turkeys.

The livability factor depends on transitions, too, including moving from outdoors to indoors, summer to winter, and work to play. It's always been a necessity, but today the mudroom takes a rightful stand as a prime space, and many of the best houses feature mudrooms of substantial size and fine design. Seasons are accounted for in the livable house, with landscaping providing shade in the summer, such as in Ted Montgomery's energy-friendly house, which made room for a tree growing through the greenhouse roof. And work and play each have designated space in a well-designed house, with accommodations for quiet and entertainment, solitude and community.

Craft: A Respect for Materials and Workmanship
The celebration of honest materials and fine craftsmanship may seem at first like icing on the cake compared to how well a house works and what it looks like from the curb. Imagine a house that's beautifully sited, nicely proportioned, and perfectly laid out. Then imagine giving it a closer look and finding that details are skimpy, materials are shoddy, and workmanship is lackluster. Crown molding with gaping joints, electrical outlets and switches positioned with no forethought, out-of-plumb framing and other aesthetic and functional annoyances can knock points off the fanciest house. Although the bones and guts of a house may not grab immediate attention, that's where craft is the most vital. No amount of caulk can permanently plug a leak caused by improper flashing.

When things go well, fine craftsmanship brings satisfaction to everyone involved. The beautifully crafted concrete countertop that tops the kitchen island in a rural California house is art in the hands of designer Fu-Tung Cheng but also utility to the owners who prepare dinner and take meals on the silky-smooth surface. The Craftsman-style detailing in Curtiss Gelotte's Seattle bungalow is a celebration of joinery, wood, and physics—and the spaces within are a delight to live in.

An understanding of and respect for the particular qualities of materials is fundamental to good craftsmanship. Building materials that are traditional to a region, such as adobe to the Southwest, are good choices because they respond directly to availability and climate. Yet the adobe house in Santa Fe, designed by Bauer, Freeman, McDermott Architects, has a completely different scale and ambience than the adobe house tucked into a Mexican hill town. House + Houses Mexican retreat is urban, brightly colored, and dazzling with contrasting materials such as wrought iron, concrete, and glass (photo facing page), while Bauers design is cool, elegant, and classical, yet both pay homage to traditional building materials and methods.

Good craftsmanship doesn't necessarily mean always using materials in a traditional way. Sometimes thinking outside the box can create a joint, a component, or a finish that's just the right touch. And don't despair that a big budget is key, either. The creative use of salvaged items can be the brainchild behind a design. One example is the cottage in Kansas, built for $50,000 from salvaged fink trusses, corrugated steel roofing, among other salvage-yard finds (photo p. 20). No hodgepodge of found objects, the design is a symmetrical, graceful, and well-crafted tribute to architect/builder Dan Rockhill's ingenuity and skill.

Distinctiveness: The “Wow” Factor
So, here's a house that should fit its site and owners like a glove and that was designed with an understanding of craft. Just one more step will take the house design up that last notch, from house to home, from being admirable to being loved. Whether it's a cottage or a compound, the house that wins affection always distinguishes itself with a personality—not a particular style but a sense of style. That distinctiveness, or “wow” factor, can relate to any of the other core qualities. The way a house is designed to fit in the landscape can provide the punch, such as Ralph Rapson's glass cube in the Wisconsin woods, where layers of structure and off-the-shelf windows and glass doors are composed to frame a view that's spectacular during storms and soothing at sunrise. The Napa Valley compound designed by Eric Haesloop draws on symmetry and proportion to guide not only the site plan but floor plans, elevations, and structural elements, with Douglas fir and stone providing the palette that transforms each space. The Shim Sutcliffe house, which hovers over a lake in Ontario, is a breathtaking composition made up of finely crafted wood, metal, glass, wrought with such finesse and rhythm that the house looks ready to set a course for the opposite shore.

Certainly a spectacular view of water, woods, horizon, or city skyline does make it easier to build in “wow” factor. In fact, the insightful use of light and view are hallmarks of every great house. But there's more to making a distinctive house than going for a home run. Details, finishes, and the configuration of space can add whimsy, elegance, mystery, serenity—whatever quality is right for the space and place. And the smallest of details can add spice, such as the careful balance of color and line found in the mantel design of a Massachusetts house designed by Paul Lukez Architects.

Great Houses Are Everywhere
Studying these 50 great houses could lead to a sudden urge to pull up roots, or can lead to a discovery much closer to home. Northwest readers may be inspired by the houses in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, which range from a suburban Seattle bungalow painstakingly rendered in the Craftsman tradition by Curtiss Gelotte Architects to a very small but perfectly proportioned in-town house designed by Howard Davis. The farmhouse aficionado has a bushel of vernacular-inspired houses to study, among them Wheeler Kearn's sprawling rural compound with a view of Lake Michigan, Steve Atkinson's dog-trot cabin tucked in cool shade in Louisiana, and, in a historic town in Virginia, a white porch-trimmed house designed with new bones but an old heart by Versaci and Neumann.

Although geographic spread wasn't a constraint as the houses were reviewed, the “nifty fifty” came from all over North America, from coast to coast, and from forest and prairie to city center to suburban street. The wealth of variety in location—not to mention shape, size, and style—offers concrete proof that if the design is inspired, a great house can be built anywhere, including your own neighborhood.