There are not many architectural motifs that can be used in designing the small house, and the ones which are employed over and over again are fundamentally a part of the construction. The plan must build up into block forms, because of the requirements of construction, and the designer has only a handful of shapes that make good roofs, for the same reason. The varieties of dormer-windows that he can put on the roof are limited to a few that are capable of being reasonably constructed. He cannot be original in the forms he selects, for they have all been thought out before. He should know them as he does the alphabet and build with them as he builds words with letters.
For example, take the plan of the small house. Can there be much room for originality here? Usually there are at the most four rooms which must be arranged on the ground floor of the small house: the living-room, dining-room, kitchen, and pantry. On the second floor are generally placed the bedrooms. Does it not seem reasonable to assume that all of the best combinations of so few rooms must be quite limited in number, and that the chances are that they have already been thought out? Many a young designer has labored enthusiastically upon what he believes is his original layout for a small house, only to find later that his solution has been already worked out and perhaps a trifle better. When an inventor tackles any particular problem, his first step, if he is wise, is to consult the patents which have previously been issued along this line, and then he will know what has been done.
| Square Plan | Rectangular Plan | “L”-Plan |
| Rectangular Plan with Small Extension | T-Plan |
| Combination of “T”-plan with L-plan | U-Plan |
Try as hard as he will, no designer can get away from the fact that the cheapest arrangement of rooms in his small-house plan makes a square unit and builds a square block house, but that such a plan is one of the most difficult forms to make pleasing to the eye. For this reason the room arrangement, which gives a rectangular-shaped house, is more often adopted. But we often tire of too much repetition of the rectangular house, and designers try to vary it a little. There is not much leeway here, however. By adding a wing at right angles to the main rectangle of the house, we can have an L-shaped plan which is easier to give architectural variety to, but very uneconomical, for the number of linear feet of exterior wall for a house of this shape is just as great as that for a house which is a rectangle in plan, as long as the L and as wide. This also holds true of the U-shaped plan and the T-shaped plan and the combination of the T and the L shaped plans. In fact, as soon as the designer tries to get away from the simplest rectangular shapes in the small house, the economic reins pull him back, and he must go slow in selecting too picturesque plans. Limited, therefore, in his possible scope, the real work of the designer should be one of perfecting the acceptable solutions which have been already worked out. Only once in a generation are absolutely new arrangements stumbled on.
