People change, but the houses they live in seldom do, except with a great deal of construction dust.
That would not have to be the case if builders and designers would put more thought into planning a home that can adapt to the changing needs of the occupants over a lifetime, according to a new school of thought on home design.
Southern California architect Aram Bassenian, one of the leading proponents of the fledgling design movement, calls the type of dwellings he is trying to fashion “flexible” homes.
“We buy a house thinking we are going to live there forever, yet most of us move within five years. One of the reasons people move is if their needs change,” Bassenian said.
Flexible homes, though, are built with a variety of uses in mind to address different life stages. Bassenian calls the notion “predesigned potential for change.” The idea is to have bearing walls, heat, wiring and door frames already in place, making it easier to expand into new space or configure rooms differently as needs change.
Immigration patterns alone in the United States make a case for flexible housing, said Anthony Downs, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, a Washington think tank.
“Since a single unit may be occupied by persons from many ethnic groups over the lifetime of that unit, this diverse set of tastes can be accommodated by building a certain planned flexibility in the unit’s basic design and structure,” Downs said.
Skeptics, however, doubt that the home-buying public is ready to look beyond their immediate housing needs.
Flexible houses are not to be confused with those that merely sport “bonus rooms,” a design that started showing up in new homes early in the last decade. These were unfinished spaces within the main home, often in the basement or attic, that still needed to be drywalled, trimmed out and painted before becoming fully functional.
Nor is a flexible home merely ripe for remodeling.
“If a designer thinks about things from the beginning, he can come up with 3 or 5 or 10 different alternative configurations for that home without ripping the roof off,” Bassenian said. “The intent is to minimize the impact of remodeling by prepping a house for change, and that information is given to the buyer upfront.”
To architect Chris Lessard of Vienna, Va., a flexible house is a way of thinking about the future.
“You change the way you view housing if you consider it more long term than just as an investment,” he said. “Now you are dealing with value and affordability.”
The transformations made possible by a flexible home are achieved in a couple of ways. Some builders bestow flexibility by creating a room over a garage with its own stairway and entrance, said Washington architect William Devereaux.
Lessard has taken the concept further in the design of an idea home sponsored by the local home building association. The home’s library not only has its own entrance and bathroom, but also a built-in wall unit with a pull-down bed, pull-out desks and hidden shelves that readily can change the function of the room to an in-law suite or office.
One device Bassenian likes is a two- or three-car garage. When a new need arises, one of the garage bays is sacrificed. The transformation is aided by the extras built into the original garage: insulated walls, framed-in doors and roughed-in plumbing and electrical wiring.
Californian Brian Catalde, vice president of Paragon Homes, which is building Bassenian-designed homes with excess garage capacity, said 40 percent of his buyers are opting for flexible spaces.
“They do not want and will not need that space for two to three years, but they have the flexibility to use it if a family member moves back,” he said. “Ten percent of our buyers are divorced parents with weekend custody.”
To accommodate future upward expansion, Bassenian strategically locates load-bearing walls and frames for stairs. He also favors “lock-off” features, which essentially amount to locking a connecting door to isolate space from the main house without tearing down or putting up walls.
The emphasis on flexibility makes sense, said Washington demographer Martha Farnsworth Riche, given that individual Americans are living longer, eschewing the traditional family configuration and going through an increasing number of life stages as a result.
“We are marrying later, divorce rates have plateaued at a high level, and fewer people, especially middle-aged people, are remarrying after a divorce,” she noted. “We are having an average of two children, not three or more, and many are raising them alone or in blended families with children from a new partner’s earlier marriage.
“And we are living alone before, between and during marriage,” Riche said.
Yet, housing still is being designed for Mom, Dad and two or three children, Riche said.
There are any number of ways a family’s housing needs might change over time, according to those familiar with flexible housing. Newlyweds become parents, and suddenly a play room or an au pair suite becomes a high priority.
Then divorce strikes, as it does in roughly half of all marriages, Riche said. The ex-wife might keep the house but wish she could rent out part of it to help defray the home’s upkeep. That would work if she could partition off an area with a separate entrance, bath and kitchen facilities.
If the ex-wife shares custody of the children, she needs bedroom space that is only used half the time. Perhaps her aging mother moves in for a few years to help with child care, and needs private space.
Or she remarries, and the household must now accommodate a new husband and possibly the children from his previous marriage.
As the last of the blended family’s children reach their teenage years, the idea of separate master suites to give each generation added privacy becomes appealing. Two smaller rooms are combined into a second master with a secondary bathroom.
In another scenario, one of the family’s adults wife decides to go into business; a home office is in order. A separate entrance makes it possible to separate domestic and professional lives when clients visit.
The couple’s advancing years finally force them to hire a live-in caretaker to allow them to remain at home.
“People have been discouraged from changing their homes to suit their own needs on the grounds they would be limiting its resale potential,” Riche said.
“What they did not realize is that there are smaller numbers of people that fit the traditional household configuration.”
