When One Size Does Not Fit All: Rethinking the Open Office

Workplace design has undergone a radical transformation in the last several decades, with approximately seventy percent of today’s modern offices now converted to open plans. However, despite growing concerns over decreases in worker productivity and employee satisfaction, the open office revolution shows no sign of slowing down. The open office model has proliferated without regard for natural differences in workplace culture, leading to disastrous results when employees are forced into an office that works against their own interests. If we are to make offices more effective, we must acknowledge that ultimately, design comes out of adapting individual needs for a specific purpose and at best, can create inviting spaces that reflect a company’s own ethos.

The concept of the open plan had noble beginnings in architecture and promised natural light, flexible space, and freedom from oppressive walls and rooms. Many companies have adopted open office plans in order to promote the values this layout supposedly represents such as transparency, collaboration, innovation, and even egalitarian visions where the CEO shares a desk alongside his employees. But despite all of their supposed benefits, a number of studies have revealed the downsides to open plan offices. In one such study, organizational psychologist Matthew Davis found that “though open offices often fostered a symbolic sense of organizational mission, making employees feel like part of a more laid-back, innovative enterprise, they were damaging to the workers’ attention spans, productivity, creative thinking, and satisfaction.” Another study found even more extreme repercussions of the typology, revealing that as the number of employees working in a single room increased, employee attendance correspondingly decreased with those working in fully open offices out sixty-two percent more than those in single offices.

So why do open plan offices perpetuate in the wake of so much criticism and research-backed evidence against them? The answer first and foremost lies in their economic advantages. The purported benefits of the open plan office often mask their underlying function – to cut down on real estate costs by cramming the maximum number of employees into the minimum amount of space. As workers spend less and less time in the office due to the proliferation of mobile devices and the ability to work remotely, corporations are less willing to spend money on partially filled offices. Therefore, the shift to open plan offices could be a very smart decision on the part of employers in terms of saving on operating costs, but it raises questions about how work actually gets done in the office environment.

Airbnb’s European Operations Hub in Dublin. Image © Ed Reeve

In some settings, open workplaces may have a particularly positive impact if individuals can gain from increased social interactions. In creative environments that thrive on interaction and learning from colleagues, the positive aspects of open plans may even outweigh the negative consequences of decreased productivity. Many corporations seek to physically demonstrate their company mission and continue to believe that open layouts encourage employee interaction. Technology companies in particular often design their offices in the spirit of many startups, which have open flexible plans to accommodate rapid growth. Facebook’s mission, as stated by Mark Zuckerberg is “to make the world a more open place” and this ethos is reflected in their office designs, with their new headquarters designed by Frank Gehry expected to house the world’s largest open office. Google also has an office design that embodies their corporate personality and appropriately caters to the demographic of their young employees.

Google Campus Dublin. Image © Peter Wurmli

Many of the complaints arising from open offices may be due to the fact that the design has widely proliferated in the last decade with very little consideration to individual workplace needs. In response to an inflammatory article criticizing the open office trend supposedly inspired by Google, Kay Sargent writes “Any headline that says “Google got it wrong” is bound to catch attention. But we don’t think that Google gets it wrong. We think Google gets it right—for Google. The folks who get it wrong are the ones who try to slap Google-like space and policies onto their own organization without understanding what it is that they really need.” A company that thrives on collaboration and creativity would logically have a very different work environment than a more traditional business practice in which work can be completed independently. However, the enormous success and glamour associated with startups in recent years has driven even the largest corporations to mimic office designs of their smaller counterparts, regardless of whether or not it suits their workplace culture.

Pixar Headquarters Atrium. Image © Esto/Peter Aaron; Courtesy of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson

There are numerous ways to achieve the purported benefits behind open offices in ways that simultaneously create positive workplace interactions, inviting offices, and even act as metaphors for a company’s vision. Steve Jobs, for example, was one of the earliest proponents of designing the offices of Pixar to enhance spontaneous collaboration. Designed in the late nineties when cubicles were still very much the norm, Pixar’s headquarters includes an expansive atrium which acts as a central hub for a building that includes offices for computer scientists, animators, and others. Making the decision to move employees from all different departments into a single building was important to Jobs as he believed that the chance encounters prompted by the atrium space could prompt innovation, a sentiment often heard about the open plan office. The Pixar headquarters differs from many of today’s offices, in that most of the offices are private and arranged in a U-shaped plan around a central meeting area. Pixar had experienced the distracting environment of cubicles in their previous headquarters, and thus had chosen to create private offices for their new building while effectively creating a collaborative environment. CEO John Lasseter declared the inherent success of the building when he stated “…I’ve never seen a building that promoted collaboration and creativity as well as this one.” This building may serve as an example which successfully embodies a corporate ethos and enhances collaboration, all while managing to avoid the difficulties with open offices.

Wieden+Kennedy NY. Image © Raymond Adams

Creating common circulation spaces that encourage or even force workers to interact on their way to their desks is another means by which companies attempt to enhance workplace culture. Similar to the strategy of the atrium in Pixar’s office, the Bloomberg headquarters in Manhattan establishes an area called “the link” through which every worker and visitor must pass to proceed to the other floors. Additionally, elevators do not stop on every floor, which forces employees to take stairs through parts of the workplace they may not otherwise see and encourage interactions with those in other departments. Unlike Pixar, however, Bloomberg’s offices employ a completely open floor plan with glass conference rooms to create visual continuity across the entire space. Their office design thus acts as a physical metaphor for their corporate goal of creating more transparency in the marketplace. According to an article by Seth Stevenson, the employees at Bloomberg are surprised at how often they bump into their colleagues throughout the day and this increased interaction prompts individuals to gain a better sense of everything taking place at the company. Additionally, as Bloomberg invests in and works with the founders of many startups, they have found success in adapting the open plan to a larger scale thanks to the ways in which it allows people to collaborate across disciplines and easily check in with colleagues about upcoming deadlines.

Square Headquarters. Image © Matthew Millman

Other workplace design strategies include bringing places and activities present in many people’s daily lives into the office itself, possibly to encourage people to work in the office rather than at home in an age of online meetings and mobile connectivity. Google offers areas for yoga classes and other recreational activities within their offices, whereas Square’s new San Francisco offices are designed to work like a city, complete with “avenues” and a “town square.” Their wide hallways feature large tables and restaurant style booths for collaborative work or informal meetings, and a coffee bar in the middle functions to draw people from the entire office together for casual meetings. Taking the metaphor of a city a step further, Square has even been experimenting with bringing pop-up stores and artisan merchants into their offices, a feature which references the kinds of businesses that employ the company’s mobile payment system. Additionally, their office design varies across cities, with an office in Japan incorporating tatami rooms for meeting places and giving each office a unique sense of “place” – and thus further adapted to fit a specific workplace culture.

Pandora Media Inc. New York Office. Image © Durston Saylor

Instead of working to perpetuate mundane offices that copy each other with row after row of desks, designers should promote greater flexibility within open plan environments and adapt workplace design to a company’s individual culture. Gensler’s 2013 Workplace Survey reveals “Across industries, we found that balanced workplaces—those prioritizing both focus and collaboration—score higher on measures of satisfaction, innovation, effectiveness, and performance.” This could explain the emerging trend of “hybrid” workspaces which often utilize movable furniture systems and couches that offer comfortable environments for workers to meet in small groups or individuals to retreat for focused work. This is one step towards designing offices that offer a greater variety of spaces, but in too many cases these hybrid designs are simply a formulaic application of three or four different types of work area, which still don’t take into account the specific needs of each office.
True hybrid offices should be informed holistically by a company’s workplace goals and go beyond the implementation of simple furniture systems. In the case of Pixar and Bloomberg for example, their desire to increase spontaneous employee interaction was addressed through architectural decisions such as defining unique circulation patterns and designating gathering spaces to bring everyone in the office together at various times throughout the day. These offices in particular do not attempt to implement the open plan as the only way of encouraging communication and transparency, and rather, these ideals are visible throughout the space and speak to corporate identity and unique ways of working.
For too long office designs have adopted a singular model, and if modern work environments are to truly be successful they must adapt to a multitude of working styles present in an increasingly digital age. Office designs such as Google’s become synonymous with a specific corporate culture unique to Google, while Square’s offices seek to create a dynamic workplace inspired by the urban culture in which their products thrive. These designs distinguish themselves through purpose-driven strategies that create engaging environments with varying spaces, thus ameliorating many of the issues stemming from uniform and faceless open plans. Most importantly, the new workplace ideal should not rely on a collection of buzzwords to foster innovation, because ultimately, design with intent is the only way to save the modern workplace from becoming a place of dread.

Reference: http://www.archdaily.com/595033/when-one-size-does-not-fit-all-rethinking-the-open-office/#more-595033

Design Workshop: How to Borrow Light

You can save energy by using glass walls, windows and skylights to bring sunlight into dark areas of your space...

In 1915 the 38-story Equitable Building in New York City was the largest office building in the world. Containing 1.2 million square feet of office space, it consumed nearly every available square foot of its diminutive lot and cast an equally large shadow on its neighborhood in lower Manhattan. Its construction inspired the enactment of the city’s 1916 Zoning Resolution, which was designed to preserve access to light and air at the street level. The resolution prescribed specific limitations for a building’s envelope — its outer walls — and would go on to shape the stepped forms that you see today on many of the iconic towers in the city.

This underscores the importance that access to daylight had in shaping even the largest of cities, the individual buildings that make up those cities and, more broadly, sensible building design. With an increasing focus on sustainable design practices, the smart use of natural daylight in our homes is no longer a luxury — it has become a necessity. At the heart of any good daylighting strategy is a concept of “borrowed” light: the capture of light falling on the exterior of a home and transporting it to the spaces where it’s needed.

The sun delivers an incredible amount of light energy to us each day. To get an idea of just how much, it helps to understand the standard by which we use to measure light intensity: the foot-candle. The light from a full moon is roughly 1 foot-candle, while the sun’s illuminance on a cloudless day is roughly 10,000 foot-candles. Of course, clouds and the filtering effects of glass can reduce the actual amount of light that reaches the interiors of our homes by 50 to 90 percent. But 1,000 to 5,000 foot-candles is still an amazing amount of light, given that we need only around 35 foot-candles to comfortably read by.

Harnessing this light energy isn’t as simple as placing a window on an exterior wall. Interior rooms without access to an exterior wall or spaces oriented in a way that restricts access to adequate daylight are common problems, each with a unique solution. Here’s a look at some solutions.

Walls. Interior walls built to collect and disperse light rather than restrict it are one solution. The wall shown here gathers indirect light from an adjacent light-filled bathroom and capitalizes on the reflective nature of the bath’s wall surfaces to diffuse it into the bedroom. Clear glass will transmit the greatest amount of light into adjacent spaces. And because the glass here is positioned above eye level, the bath remains private and sound-isolated.

The white walls of the same bathroom act as the indirect light source for the nearby bedroom. Bright, neutral colors work well for an indirect borrowed-lighting strategy.

Good solar exposure is borrowed by the bedroom simply via the glazed upper wall.

Because translucent materials reflect, absorb and scatter light, they make great walls for borrowing light. The degree of translucency will affect just how much light is scattered. The effect is similar to obscuring direct sight but preserving the passage of daylight. Diffused light is comfortable and limits eyestrain.

Translucency can be achieved in a variety of ways. Glass can be sandblasted or acid etched. It can also be textured or laminated. With laminated glass, a plastic interlayer lends a translucent effect similar to that created by sandblasting but without the marking characteristics. There are applied films to consider too.

Full-height glass walls offer auditory but not visual privacy. When there’s limited access to exterior window space, they’re an obvious choice.

The perceived dimensions of our rooms are naturally increased when we use the borrowed-light concept too. This means it works particularly well for spaces with floor-area constraints.

In this project the concept of borrowed light has been applied to the overall ordering system in place. There’s a logic to the order of solid and void, and it offers plenty of light to the bedroom space. The pattern on the glazed wall has been achieved with a custom film; the design was created from a sketch by the architect.

The vaulted ceiling and clerestory take advantage of reflected light from the entire volume of space.

Stairs. Another option and an efficient vehicle for borrowing light in a home is the stairway. It’s a natural conduit for illuminating an often light-starved lower level. If the stair can be positioned to capture and reflect light from above by either fully glazing it or using a skylight, it’s even more effective.

The combination of glass guard and white walls has made this stairway a light source for the surrounding rooms. A solid wall used here would have changed this space dramatically.

Interior windows. Whether they’re clear or frosted, there are plenty of functional incentives to borrow light using interior windows. The ones here bring in light from the adjacent living area while preserving the nursery’s acoustical privacy.

Interior windows aren’t subject to the same weathering and insulation restrictions as exterior windows, so they’re less expensive to buy and install. Making them operable, especially in a stairwell where natural convective flow is greatest, can help to passively ventilate a space too.

Functional reasons aside, interior windows can offer unexpected delight. Why connect a bar and a powder room? I don’t have a good reason, but I don’t need one. I love the idea that the powder room will look different based on what’s on the top shelf and the time of day. In the bar too, the differences that the powder room renders to its backsplash can be appreciated. It’s these connections that make architecture interesting. Linking spaces doesn’t always have to make sense, functionally or otherwise.

Skylights. Because the sky dome above is a giant light source, it’s hard to find a more efficient means for borrowing light here than the skylight. On tight urban lots, a skylight can be used in conjunction with an interior atrium or light well and be surrounded by reflective walls to increase its efficiency.

This project utilizes a light well of sorts, allowing the lower level to borrow light from the upper skylights. The second floor hovers in the space instead of being extended to the full width of the gable, and the overall effect is lighter and brighter. The more we open up our interior spaces, the easier it becomes to bounce daylight around from areas with good solar exposure to areas with poor exposure. Painting the surfaces with a higher-sheen paint further helps distribute the light.

This luminous shower is an example of how a light well and skylight can transform a tight space into a pleasant one.

Additions to existing structures often compromise the amount of daylight the original building receives. Not here, though. The skylight ensures that the existing home borrows daylight at its perimeter.

Transoms. Similar in concept to the ideas seen in the first images in this story, a glass transom extends the dimension of a space and introduces light to a room without compromising its privacy.

Light tubes. Simple-technology solar tubes channel light to where it’s needed using highly reflective, flexible tubes. They’re especially effective in private spaces or spaces where a lot of glass isn’t desirable.

Although short tubes are used in this project, the concept is similar. Six large tubes light this otherwise dark space, a bold and considered element. The choice of multiple solar tubes rather than a single one not only feels more intentional, but as you can see, it’s also exceptionally functional. A grouping of three is usually a good starting point, but the more, the better.

Eric Reinholdt

Houzz Contributor, Residential Architect, Founder 30X40 Design Workshop... More

The Essentials: Key Measurements to Help You Design Your Home

Let's help you take the guesswork out of room planning and design. 

The kitchen. A well-designed kitchen makes meal preparation and dining more pleasurable. Randel offers measurements and advice for storage areas, prep and cleanup spots, and cooking and baking centers.

Tip: To get your kitchen cooking, store pots, pans and baking sheets around the burners and oven. You can put your toaster and coffeemaker here as well to keep prep areas free. Seasonings, breadboards and potholders should go in nearby drawers and cupboards. Allow 21 to 36 inches (53 to 92 centimeters) of counter space on either side of your cooktop, and locate a wall oven next to an open countertop so you have a place where you can set down hot food.

The bathroom. Whether you install a single, double, pedestal, floating or braced sink will depend as much on your available space as on your needs and desires. And that’s just one element of the bathroom. This story examines your options for sinks, toilets, tubs, showers and towel bars.

Tip: Want to extend your countertop over the toilet tank, as seen here? Counter heights vary from 32 to 36 inches (81 to 91 centimeters), so you’ll need to consider whether your toilet will fit comfortably underneath. You also must be able to lift the lid without obstruction.

The living room. Is your living room large enough for a sectional, or would you be better off with a smaller sofa or love seat and chairs? Randel provides measurements for these seating options, as well as for other furnishings and accessories, to help you decide.

Tip: Just as important as the furniture is a living room’s flow. Circulation paths that enable people to move to seating areas and exits need 30 to 36 inches (77 to 91 centimeters) of clear width. Coffee tables can be as close as 12 inches (30 centimeters) from the edge of the seating. Other furnishings might need at least 24 inches (61 centimeters) between pieces.

Front porch. Many people fantasize about having a front porch where they can linger and relax, visit with neighbors and greet guests. But it’s not just a home’s architectural style that sets the tone of the space. The dimensions of a porch — along with those of its columns, steps, doors, railings and more — play a key role in making it comfortable and inviting. This story gives all the details.

Tip: Though 6 feet (1.8 meters) is a desirable depth for porches, 8 feet (2.4 meters) is even better.

Bedroom. The design of a bedroom starts with the bed. Randel lists the standard sizes, along with the dimensions of benches, nightstands, dressers, chests, chairs and more.

Tip: If you want a sitting area in your bedroom, like the one seen here, you need space for tables, chairs and love seats, as well as the circulation area to make it work. Allow an area of at least 8 by 8 feet — 10 by 10 feet is better — in addition to room for the bed, dressers and chests.

Laundry room. This guide describes the space needed for cabinets, washers and dryers, drying racks and counters. It also touches on how to integrate gift wrapping and pet stations into the room.

Tip: A laundry room can also double as a mudroom with a bench, hooks and cubbies, as seen here. If you go this route, make the bench height about 14 inches (36 centimeters) above the floor. Set hooks 54 to 60 inches (137 to 152 centimeters) above the floor and allow enough room to hang coats.

Dining room. Traditional, contemporary, urban open plan, suburban open plan: Every style of dining room has different space requirements. This story looks at what’s needed for each of these styles, as well as the space needed for each dining table shape.

Tip: Round tables encourage lively conversation and family-style meals. A round formal dining table needs to be at least 60 inches (152 centimeters) in diameter and can easily be 72 inches (183 centimeters).

Powder room. These popular rooms pack a lot into a small space. Randel outlines typical dimensions for powder room doors, toilets, sinks, outlets, windows and accessories.

Tip: The wall behind the toilet, and sometimes the sink, needs to be thicker than a standard wall framed with 2-by-4s. A 2-by-6 construction allows for plumbing 3 inches (8 centimeters) in diameter to pass through the wall space, which is necessary for sewage.

Home office. Get your office layout right with this guide to the space needed for various desk setups, filing cabinets, seating and electronics equipment.

Tip: Though printers vary in size, plan on a footprint of at least 18 by 24 inches (46 by 61 centimeters). Be sure to allow room for opening printer doors to change ink cartridges and add paper.

Stairways. Careful attention to staircase design is what makes stairs easy to climb and descend. Building codes set standards; configurations also are guided by average human proportions. Read Randel’s guide on stairway measurements to learn the ideal dimensions for staircase width, risers, treads, head clearance, railings, landings, balustrades and more.

Tip: A rule of thumb for planning stairs is that two risers plus one tread should equal 25 inches. For example, you might have stairs with 7-inch risers and 11-inch treads (7 + 7 + 11 = 25).

Recreation room. Rooms with pool tables need a lot of elbow room — at least 5 feet — around the table. Table tennis also needs a roomy space. Foosball and game tables for cards and for chess will fit into a more compact space. Learn the typical game table sizes and read Randel’s advice on seating, clearance, lighting and table weight in this story.

Tip: A pedestal design is best for game tables for cards, as it offers plenty of knee space and room to move around.

Entrances. Entryways are high-traffic areas that help you transition into your private life, and they are the first and last room guests see. This guide looks at their size and scale and offers dimensions for common elements, such as doors, sidelights, transoms, archways, ceilings and walls.

Tip: The ideal foyer has a coat closet in it or nearby. The closet should be 24 inches (61 centimeters) deep and at least 36 inches (91 centimeters) wide.

Garages. Randel notes that garage dimensions have remained roughly the same since the time of the Ford Model T: about 9 to 10 feet wide and 18 to 20 feet long per car. The difference is, we store a lot more in our garages now. This story discusses the dimensions of various vehicle types, one- and two-car garages, garage doors, cabinets and heating systems.

Tip: Details around garage doors often stand out because of their scale. They should complement the architecture and be in line with other elements on the house.

- Anne Colby, Houzz editor and writer

Design Workshop: The Shed Roof

This popular — and versatile — form straddles the divide between contemporary and traditional styles.

There are few architectural elements in a home that suggest “traditional” or “contemporary” as strongly as roof shape. Ask a child to draw a house and you’re likely to get a box capped with the classic gabled roof. So too the flat roof and its association with contemporary architecture. The shed, or single-slope, roof lies between. Neither entirely contemporary nor completely traditional, it brings to mind images of the woodshed or toolshed — classically informed, but contemporary in its utility.

For an architect, the selection and design of a roof form has less to do with signifying modern or traditional and more to do with determining what that roof can do for the interior space, how it can actively respond to the local climate and site conditions, and the specific requirements of the homeowner. The shed roof happens to be a particularly adaptable solution — and here’s why.

Structural Simplicity

Shed roof forms are inherently simple from a structural standpoint. The roof loads are transferred to the exterior walls, which either act as load-bearing walls or, as in this example, are supported by simple beams and columns. Depending on the interior room shape desired, the shed roof can transfer these loads to the bearing points using trusses, a combination of beams and purlins, or simple roof rafters spanning from eave to eave.

Each variation offers more or less interior detail. A series of regularly spaced rafters (spaced roughly 24 inches apart on center) across the ceiling here displays the structural logic and lends a richly textured cap to the room. It’s also great for a room’s acoustics.

Here the architect has hidden the structural framing to create a clean, minimalistic aesthetic that helps to maximize the amount of reflected light.

Choosing whether to express the structure inside has an impact on the insulation too. In this example the depth of the framing members can be filled with insulation, and it’s concealed by the ceiling finish. Exposed framing requires the insulation to be placed above the plane of the interior ceiling, resulting in a thicker roof build-up.

Site Responsive

When architects talk about a building being site responsive, we mean that its shape and layout are informed by the particulars of a given place. Depending on the site, that can mean many different things. A sloping topography, distant views, a significant boulder or tree, the climate and solar exposure are all things to which we can respond, and the shed roof offers unique opportunities for each.

Topography. Mirroring the surrounding topography with the roof form, as this project does, reduces the scale and visual impact of a home on the site. It fits an overall idea about fitting a home to a place.

Using the roof form to oppose the slope distinguishes the building form and opens up different spatial opportunities. Here it’s used to insert two full floor levels on the downhill side.

Passive solar. The shed shape is an efficient means of addressing a given latitude’s solar concerns. In northern climates, positioning the low eave of the shed toward the north minimizes the building’s surface area and heat loss on a cold exposure. The tall wall — the shed’s peak — would face south to collect the sun and passively heat the space.

In hot climates the shed can be oriented to minimize heat gain from southern and western exposures while still permitting plenty of indirect daylight.

With large amounts of south-facing glass, special care must be taken to prevent overheating. This is true for all climates, as these windows can introduce great quantities of heat into a home year-round.

Adding louvered slats to the exterior, as in this project, can thoughtfully modulate the heat gain. The slats here are designed for a specific latitude to cut off the high angle of the summer sun and admit the low angle of the winter sun.

Using an interior light shelf with a shed roof is an excellent means of controlling both daylight and heat gain. The shelf helps to diminish the scale of the tall exterior wall and provides a comfortable frame of reference near eye level inside.

Overhangs are another passive design element that can help keep the heat from reaching the interior. They can be sized to shield direct heat gain during the hottest parts of the day while allowing light in and views out. This large overhang with expressed framing is a thoroughly modern, honest and functional aesthetic.

Daylighting (clerestories). With its raised peak, the clerestory window band is one of the most common types of glazing used with shed roofs. They make passive solar heating and daylighting strategies possible.

With floor-to-ceiling glass, the roof appears to hover and the entire room seems to be a part of the outdoors. The more daylight we can capture, the less we have to rely on artificial lighting sources.

Weather protection. While we can design any roof to adequately keep out the weather, the shed has a few benefits that other shapes don’t. The wedge shape has a clear front and back side that can be used to buffer prevailing wind patterns, and to direct water and snow away from walkways, entry points and gathering places. In this way the roof form delivers on its name, shedding the undesirable elements from the places we use most often.

The depth of the roof overhang affects just how much weather the nearby interior spaces are subject to as well. Deep overhangs can help mitigate the risk of water infiltration, especially at the more vulnerable large glazed areas we see in many of these examples.

Rainwater harvesting. While the roof protects, it can also provide. It can efficiently gather rainwater and direct it to a single point of collection to be used for irrigation, or can simply channel it away from the building’s foundation.

Directional (views). The form of the roof as viewed from inside naturally directs our eyes up and outward. Here the roof is used as a dynamic directional element, focusing us toward a spectacular view. Contrast this with gabled and flat roofs, which are inherently more static and inward looking.

This directional effect can be leveraged to refocus interior spaces away from less desirable views (or neighbors) and toward more optimal ones.

Roof Slope
The slope of the shed roof has important design impacts. For any given horizontal room dimension, there’s a delicate balance between the shorter structural members required for a lower slope and the longer structure required for a steeper slope. Longer spans require deeper framing members, heavier sections or both. When the roof plane becomes thick, it can feel too heavy and hat-like. This project maintains a lean section befitting the proportions of the thin architectural elements used elsewhere.

The roof slope affects the headroom at the high and low eaves inside, as well as how grand the space will feel.

It’s good practice to consider the slope alongside the building’s latitude to achieve the optimal solar exposure, as discussed earlier. Steeper pitches are better in higher latitudes; lower pitches in lower altitudes.

Steep sheds require careful planning inside to maintain headroom clearances at the eaves. In snow country very steep pitches will shed snow even if they’re shingled. Remember to take this into account and use the shape to do the shoveling for you.

With this shed, attic space has been traded for living space, opening up some opportunities, like the loft seen here.

Materials
The roof slope has a direct effect on the materials a shed roof can be covered with. Any slope less than 2 inches in 12 inches is considered flat and must be waterproofed as such. Slopes between 2:12 and 4:12 are generally considered low slope, while those between 4:12 and 12:12 are considered conventionally sloped. Each roof material has its own limitation with respect to roof slope, beyond which it’s either not advisable to use, or special procedures must be followed to install that material. Having said this, with the right budget, (almost) anything is possible.

Modern and Traditional

The formal ambiguity of the shed roof can be a real benefit to those who prefer the look of a more modern aesthetic but aren’t willing to fully embrace the idea of the flat roof. The shed form has both a traditional identity and a contemporary feel, which is why it’s such a widely embraced and versatile design element.

Eric Reinholdt

Houzz Contributor, Residential Architect, Founder 30X40 Design Workshop