Building beautifully - Where do you find your inspiration?

I admire architects and interior designers and other builders. They spend their career trying to make the places where we spend our time both functional and beautiful.

I have a lot of thoughts about the functional aspects, but I have a really hard time designing beautiful things. Maybe I'm just a harsh self-critic. I do like some aspects of the aesthetics of the things I've built and spaces I've designed, but I have rarely felt that they were artistically inspired.

When I look at cob homes with their curves and eccentricities I think, wow! So many roundwood buildings also seem to have an intrinsic beauty to them, but also an intentional one.

Where do you find your inspiration when you're building a home, or workshop, or designing an interior space? Or building things to use in those spaces?

This is a good and important question, because good architecture has to be built from quality materials, has to be functional and beautiful.

I think that most of projects shown here are not beautiful to say the least. Basically I find it interesting that on regular building forums (in USA) the aspect of beauty will be incorporated into design, but the materials they use are subpar. Then permies try to use good materials but lack in beauty factor. Then there is Europe, where materials and design are usually the best and these two worlds are connected in harmony.
To design something beautiful one has to study, study and study - analyze old buildings, their proportions, decorations and reason for specific solutions and material selection. Masonry, urbanism, small architecture, parks, sculptures, stonework, and so on. Then some taste will develop.

I usually start with a simple cube that is providing function. Then focus on interfaces: beautiful structures NEVER change one surface to another without some socle, cornice, frame, moulding.
This is a good start. Then I focus on openings - archwork and stonework and dive into their detailing. Then some architectural features - consoles, niches, shelves.
One has to be very careful to not create something pretentious, kitchy, eclectic in an ugly way, especially with inappropriately selected materials.
For example the most obvious factor that makes alternative homes ugly is the lack of cornice - the roof looks like someone slammed 50 cm thick board on the walls. The insulation can be hidden in a graceful way - the designer has to spend 100 hours on it not 10.
I love designing - I use AutoCAD and do everything in 3D - down to every detail. Then I can analyze if any object is not interfering with the structure in an unwanted way.
Whenever I design some ornamentation, I always push myself and ask - why is it so primitive what I just made and then I add another dimension and another layer of complexity and so on, till I know that I exhausted the capacity of my brain.
When I was designing stonework for my home (that are structural parts of the walls) I spent over 500 hours.
At the end I have to add that in a similar fashion to mcdonaldization phenomenon, where quantity=quality, for me the most beautiful structure built from disposable and low quality materials can not be beautiful, no matter what. The beauty has to last for future generations...

I like spending time over at Pinterest.

I like to put in different search terms to see what feeds that Pinterest will give me.

There are pictures of almost any decor from fancy to country.

And there are ideas for home decor that are beautiful.

Before finding the permies forum I spent a lot of time at the forum  mentioned here:

https://permies.com/t/94658/opinion-tiny-house-website#779583

I learned a lot of different things like building foundations, bathrooms, etc. at that forum.

Since finding the permies forum I can generally do a search and find just about anything I want to know about right here at the forum without going anywhere else.

Of course, our house has been built though it will never be finished as the house still needs most of the molding
that goes around the ceiling.

My house used wood harvested and sawn into lumber on the farm, so I was
Limited on the variety. Since I had plenty of pine I decided it was best to use that, but in ways no contractor ever would.

So my baseboard in my house flows all around the rooms, sweeping and rising like in the corners, with cutouts as it does so it’s very organic: like
On some high end yachts I saw.

It was easy, cheap but still unique and tied the whole house together without being to eclectic

Great topic L!
Here are two strategies that work for me in designing for form plus function:
1. Pay homage to the vernacular traditions of the area
Instead of imposing my will upon a space, I try to grow the new creation out of the local context. It doesn't have to match the other buildings but it must somehow relate with the experience of place. The easiest way to achieve integration is to look beyond the immediate property and repeat some of the area's defining patterns using locally sourced materials.
2. Attend to the "ideal relationship" between big and small
Whenever I make a choice about a space, I try to integrate the "golden ratio" or the "golden spiral" (both of these terms are described in Wikipedia for reference). Practically speaking, when I look at a space, such as the length of a rectangular room in relation to the width of that room, I nudge the dimensions to achieve the proportions that enable the long side to be 1.618... times the length of the short side. This can apply to room dimensions, or ceiling height relative to the length of the room. In an existing space I've also divided up a large room with low ceiling by building a short interior adobe wall to make a separate dressing area so that the space "feels better." I slip the golden ratio into most creations: doors, windows, steps, thresholds, porches, and gardens.

L. Johnson wrote:I admire architects and interior designers and other builders. They spend their career trying to make the places where we spend our time both functional and beautiful.

I'm sure we've all seen examples of this *not* working also! Even the experts misjudge things occasionally, so let's not beat ourselves up if we don't get things perfect!

I tend to agree with Cristobal Cristo in that doing a design to match beauty and functionality takes time and effort. I can't rush that process, because often the solutions/improvements come after several days of just letting my brain fiddle with a problem.

I agree with Amy Gardener that the Golden Ratio is a great fall-back position. I was replacing windows in an older home and making decisions based on what other people with similar homes had done. I actually knocked on a lady's door and asked her permission to measure her window! That was my introduction to the Golden Ratio and the reason her window looked so nicely balanced. However, often permies are trying to build with maximum efficiency and function wins out. A cube is a more efficient space to cover and heat than a rectangle. Sphere's are the most efficient, but have their inconsistencies with human needs! However, ancient European humans built round houses for a very long time, and several North American Indigenous groups did the same or similar.

There are ways to integrate the two. For example, if you build a square shed, but put a trellis with a bench to visually extend the length of a side in a functional way, you may be able to trick the mind into seeing a Golden Ratio for the whole even if the parts on their own aren't there.  I've heard it said more than once that rectangular buildings are more pleasing (and if done right, absorb more passive solar heat) than square buildings. However, I live in a rectangular building done wrong and it's a nuisance to heat because it's too long for it's depth. I home I lived in in Ontario had too much length for its width, but they were able to get a variance to put a single car garage on one side - the side that the north-west wind would hit, so even better - which really helped to balance the look of the building. Covered porches can do the same to enchanting effect!

I think that in some ways, today's society is in too big a hurry. We want everything *now* and *cheap* and business wants to make the most money they can with the least input, and all those things, along with advertising everywhere we look, has not helped develop the sort of patience that many parts of traditional Japanese culture have recognized for a very long time. I would certainly look towards traditional building in your adopted land for plenty of good ideas for melding beauty and function!

Amy's mention of vernacular is spot on. Forms and functions meet in a place and culture of building. This is where pattern language comes in. Chris Alexander is the go-to for me when I start thinking about this stuff.

Phil Stevens wrote:Amy's mention of vernacular is spot on. Forms and functions meet in a place and culture of building. This is where pattern language comes in. Chris Alexander is the go-to for me when I start thinking about this stuff.

Yes, "The Pattern Language" is a great read for anyone thinking about building because it so wonderfully covers the social and livability aspects that so many buildings I've been in, seem to ignore but which other building seem to embrace effortlessly.

I think sometimes things just have to "fit", and I can often struggle with that.

Trust me, I am different than most people, and I thrive on that in personality and in culture, but with building... sometimes fitting in just works better. It is a balance for sure.

Yesterday I bought an older Victorian Home and the back of the house just is not working as it currently is. Space wise, I know a set of circular stairs would make access to the second and third floors work much better. but that is not really a prominent feature in a Victorian Style Home. I know how well circular stairs work and don't work, as every day at my job, I traverse a four-story set of circular stairs, but part of being a responsibly homeowner is trying to be creative, and yet being style-appropriate too.

Sadly, it is hard to define actually what is appropriate or not in creative building practices, because while it cannot be defined in words, people can just tell when it doesn't.