{"id":875,"date":"2011-02-01T13:56:55","date_gmt":"2011-02-01T13:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markstephensarchitects.com\/?p=875"},"modified":"2011-02-01T13:56:55","modified_gmt":"2011-02-01T13:56:55","slug":"chapter-2ascale-proportion-contd-rural-housing-handbook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markstephensarchitects.com\/chapter-2ascale-proportion-contd-rural-housing-handbook\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 2a~Scale & Proportion contd… Rural Housing Handbook"},"content":{"rendered":"
We\u2019ve had a look at the principles of scale and proportion but how do these apply in the \u2018real-world\u2019? As well as the proportions of individual elements such as doors and windows it is also imperative that the proportions between elements are understood; the percentage of openings to solid elements in a wall for example is critical when adopting Irish rural principles and the distances between elements such as the head of a window to the underside of the roof eaves go a long way in defining whether your house is perceived as a \u2018cottage\u2019 or a \u2018barn\u2019.<\/p>\n
For example, the Cork Rural Housing Design Guide is excellent in pointing out that rural houses were traditionally much lower and therefore of a much more human scale (remember from the last section, this was due to higher buildings requiring more material and time which would have cost more and taken longer to build \u2013 something we have forgotten in recent times). If houses did increase to a second storey, the rooms would have been placed in the roof space. The problem is that to meet current Building Regulations, habitable rooms need to be a minimum height (generally recommended at 2.4m) and therefore, inevitably houses will need to be higher. One way to meet Building Regulations is still to place the habitable rooms in the roof space but to use rooflights in order not to break the line of the roof with the rooflights at a height to meet the Building Regulations. The example below shows a recently completed new house where we did just this:<\/p>\n