Architect's Toolbox: Roofs that Connect Earth and Sky
There are many important functions to get a roof. Though its primary purposes is to shed water and protect us from the elements, a well thought-out roof does so much more. It can tether us to the landscape or allow us soar up and away. Along with the best roofs may do both at precisely the identical moment.
Roofs may also act as programs and foils for chimneys and cupolas and weather vanes and all that other stuff we might have up there. And roofs may become terraces, lifting us all.
From the traditional inverted”V” of a gable roof to the horizontal slab, roofs come in many different shapes and forms. The gable roof of the farmhouse relays a different story compared to ground-hugging hip roofing of the prairie style. Along with the apparently non-existent roofing of a modernist house tells us a different story all together.
Bosworth Hoedemaker
Some roofs hug the property and reach to the skies. This roofing aspires to what’s previously while, like a tent, it is tethered to the broad prairie. Not having a shadow in the gable ends emphasizes the simple geometry of the roof shape. Along with the thin slit-like shed dormer is like an eye half open, not very awake nor asleep. See more of the Home
Some roofs step out and up, reaching higher as they lift us. The roofing, starting as a simple gable, follows the geometry of this shape below. The roof extends here, gets subtracted there. All the time it pulls us to the clearing and rewards us with a little bit of sky.
Kenny Craft, CNU LEED AP
An easy roof shape could be powerful against all that skies. A minimum of detail in a monochromatic palette keeps us focused on the important stuff, just a simple yet powerful contour that reads all the more definitely against that crispy blue skies.
Helios Design Group
A roof could be a platform to get a cupola that illuminates the night skies. Whether cupola or chimneys or some thing different, these elements on the roofing continue all that vertical motion, pushing our attention ever upward. Even the ubiquitous and frequently undersized weather vane may attain the identical effect.
Box architecture
Even a humble roof could bridge earth and skies. An easy roof form with simple doors and windows keeps the house cozy and humble while both brick chimneys ensure we don’t overlook the skies above us.
Tracery Interiors
Sometimes we conceal the roof. Here the wall takes over and dominates, such as in a Dutch streetscape. Even then, the wall reveals the shape of the roof behind it to continue that upward motion.
ZAK Architecture
Sometimes we allow the roofing take over. We stretch the roof beyond the walls and allow the sun create deep shadows. And we emphasize the inverted”V” by making it a motif.
Hanrahan Meyers Architects
The apartment, modernist roof keeps us anchored. Our spatial expertise is all horizontal or Euclidean. It is like the skies no longer matters.
Feldman Architecture, Inc..
Sometimes, however, that horizontal roof takes flight. Not always satisfied with just the earth, the apartment, modernist roof bends and slopes and finds its way back to the skies. It starts to carry us like the wings of a jet plane.
Inform us: What’s the roof just like on your Property? Does it lift you upwards? Does it tether you to the earth? If you can, do you change it?
Next: More devices in the architect’s arsenal
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