I DO THINK THAT WE WILL CONTINUE TO SEE SMALL GETTING BIGGER

Is small the new big? As I’ve been traveling throughout the West, I’ve noticed that more and more people are questioning how much built space they actually need to live in happily. I remember being in the Rockies recently, taking a tour of a beautiful large house (probably more than 8,000 square feet). The owners were very pleased with their new home, of course, but their eyes lit up when they led me down a path to the 1,000-square-foot guesthouse, which was situated amid a grove of cottonwoods on the bend of a river. This is where they really liked to spend time, they confided. And I could see why. It was meticulously detailed and smartly laid out, and each room was closely connected to the landscape in ways that are harder to achieve in a large house. And then there’s the matter of conservation. A small house takes less material to build, covers up less of the landscape and requires less energy to heat and cool. In fact, for those reasons it has been suggested that, going forward, smaller houses may wind up being more valuable than larger ones in the marketplace. Whether that’s true or not, I do think that we’ll continue to see small getting bigger.

The six features in this issue show that one needn’t give up luxury and style in a small space. What strikes me about these projects is that none of them feels small. Using different strategies (color, scale, floor plan, materials), the designers and architects have imbued each residence with a sense of spaciousness, comfort and ease. I should note here that my wife, Margo, and I live in a small house (just under 2,000 square feet), which suits us pretty well. My son, Ryan, is home from college for the summer now, so every room is being fully utilized. We’ll gain that longed-for guest room when he leaves again in the fall, of course, and the house will feel a little bigger. But it will also feel quite a bit emptier.
 

Michael Wollaeger, Editor-in-Chief

Photo: DENNIS KEELY