Design Matters Most – Great Architecture is Theater | Hour 3

that's been great. I love the conversation today, but we probably need Dean and Tina standing in our home staring at the problem, well you can do that too. You can book an in home design consult with me and the t Just go to house Whisper dot design for more details. All right, it is time to return to our conversation about great architecture and great design being theater. And I'm not doing this just to you know, Ellude Sedate and wax eloquent on what great architecture should be.

I'm doing this in order to give you more handles to grab on to your home with because so many people when they think about home design, architectural design, they're like, I have no clue, I have no clue what I'm doing Dean. I don't even know where to start. And yet we're all fans of theater. We're all fans of cinema. We all watch TV, we watch movies, we go to plays at times, and so if you understand how theater works, then my contention is you can start to do a

better job of understanding what your house needs. It doesn't mean that you're going to be the creative idea that solves the problem, but for you to see the problem to begin with, to really identify what it is, that's where everything changes. So we've talked so much about things like how do we enter this space from where? What do we see right? Focal points? Focal points are what

you know in architecture we call hierarchy of elements. Focal Points are something that every great director, every great film, every great stage play has. In other words, we've got leading actors. We divide up the cast, we divide up the elements. We've got leading actors. They have the most lines and they are telling the lion's share of the story that's happening. We have supporting actors that come in

behind them. They come in and out and they help support that and undergird that story, and then there are, like in a film, extras, just people in the background giving atmospheric content. You know, you're in a cafe scene and there's people in the restaurant eating and laughing and enjoying their time, not competing for your attention, not taking your attention away from the lead actors who are telling

the main story. So now you start to understand that, and you understand that in a home, in any given space architecturally, there are these elements at play, and quite often the focal point that should be in a room is not. Quite often there are too many voices speaking too equally across the board, too many to tell a story effectively. Quite often we aren't giving people direction as to where they should look first and then second and then third in a room. And when it comes to

a visual art, you get about three hits. Generally speaking, you get about three hits. You get the first hit, and then a second hit and a third and then you kind of have to release people to sort of explore the space. But if you aren't taking advantage of the first three, now my mic just literally fell off of the mic stand. If you aren't taking advantage of those first three hits, then you aren't taking advantage of telling the story as completely as you can tell the story.

Does that make sense? I hope. So let's talk about I'm going to tell you a couple of stories. Now, I'm going to tell you a story of the house that does everything it can to frustrate me entering it. Okay, Now, this is not one particular house that I have in mind here. This is, in fact something that we see maybe I don't know how often, Tina, eighty percent of the time when we walk into a home, the entryway is one of those hits that is usually not working,

not firing on all pistons. Okay. So and you're like, well, I thought you were going to talk about my family room or my dining room. Team. Now we can talk about those, But here's the thing. How do we get into this story, the story that is your home. Well, we get into it usually if I'm your guest through the front door. Everything starts from the street, and we could talk about curb appeal, and that's a whole nother thing, but I'm not doing a landscape design show, so I

just want to focus on this. I arrive at your front door, I knock on the door, I ring the doorbell, the door opens to me, and whatever it is that I experience as I step into that entryway is in fact the very first element of storytelling that happens in a home. Okay, And the entryway is an important thing. It's an important thing no matter where you live. In fact, I would say the smaller your home is, the more

important a sense of entryway is. And why is that, Well, that's because most of us don't want to just go from outside to inside immediately. We like to be eased in. Okay, and entryways are in fact, both entryways and hallways inside a home are what we call transitional spaces. They are a part of the story that gets told while you

are transitioning from one environment to the next. This is why hallways are important inside a room, because the experience you have walking down a hallway is what is getting you out of where you were and setting up for you or where you're going. But an entryway is even more dramatic than that. An entryway is like an airlock.

When I step into the entryway of your home, hopefully there is an entryway, And like if you live in a condo or an apartment, quite often those areas struggle to have this, but hopefully there is at least some space where Yeah, technically I'm inside, but I'm not inside yet, right, I'm not fully in your home. I mean you'reway, I'm in the foyer. Okay, I am not fully inside, but I'm not outside anymore. It's this liminal space in between the two, right, And that's a very comfortable feeling, not

having to just go from outside to end. So here I am. I step into an entryway. And so this is the story of a house that does everything it can to frustrate my entry. And I'm just gonna set up the elements for you here and we'll talk about it after the break. But here it is. I walk up to a double door, lovely, beautiful double door on your porch, right, and immediately that double door disappoints me. Well, why is that? Well, we'll talk about it after the break.

And then when I stare down at the flooring underneath my feet, I quite often see flooring planks or lines of flooring that are set perpendicular to me as I walk in. Okay, lines set perpendicular to my path, and it really gives me paw. It halts me right, and it doesn't draw me, and it halts me. And we'll talk about that too. And then of course, again, what do I see? What do I see from here? Normally? Well, I would not say normally. I often will look for it.

I'll see a wall. There's a wall in front of me. Now, I don't want you to move the wall if and maybe I want you to move it, but I'm out assuming you're going to move the wall. The question is what's on this wall? Because it is straight ahead of my face, it is the most natural focal point, it's usually dark, it's usually underutilized, and quite often then the view that I see from the entry away could be if it's sort of an open plan, could be of

many many different things. And the question is is there one of those things that is directing me? No, no, no, look here first, I'm the main view versus seeing, for instance, the living room and the kitchen and the set of stairs and who knows what else all at the same time. Now, if that house sounds anything like your house, then you hang tight because we'll talk about why those things are important to change. But we'll do it.

All right, let us continue this conversation about great design being theater, and right before the break, I set you up with this house that does everything it can to frustrate my entry into it. Okay, So the double entry door is a frustration, usually, the bare wall on the other side of the entry a frustration, the flooring planks that are going perpendicular to my path to frustration, and the view an equal view of the living room, the kitchen,

and the stairs. Okay. So there's a particular house that I'm actually drawing this from that has all of this going for it, I should say, all of this working against it. But you can pick out elements of your entryway that are the same and I'm not just picking on entryways. But it is the very first beginning of the story, is it not. When you enter into somebody's home, what's going on in the entryway sets you up? Or you know who lives here? What are they like? What

is this house all about? How does this make me feel? What do I see? These are all the things subconsciously that people are picking up on, even if they're not consciously asking the question. So this is where the story begins. Double entry doors. You've probably heard me talk about this before, and if you haven't, then very quickly, here's the thing about double entry doors that I don't like. I like the fact that they're grand and they're lovely and they

look good on a floor plan. But we all know, we all know that a double entry door is not a double entry door. We know that a double entry door only opens on one side and that other side, that other door. It stays fixed except for the day that you move in and the day that you move out, and anytime you change out the furniture or bring in a large appliance. Okay, that's when that door gets opened, otherwise for cargo purposes. Otherwise it remains shut. And so okay,

Dean so what's your beef man with the entry door. Well, my beef is that a double entry door is centered on the entryway, and it may be a relatively small entryway. In most homes, it's modest. It's centered on the entryway, and in the entryway, maybe there's a chandelier hanging down, maybe there's a light fixture hanging down. Maybe the entryway is not so large, and it's just nice to stand

in the center of your entryway. And yet the double entry door puts me in all the way to the left or all the way to the right, depending on which door opens. In other words, it makes me a promise that it doesn't keep, and you should be aware of that too. So so often when when a client will ask, well, what do we do with this double entry door, Let's change it out to something else, And I'm like, great, let's change it out to a single entry door set in the center of the entryway with

maybe some sidelights to the left and the right of it. Why, well, it can be big, it can be elegant, and yet most importantly, it lets me in to the center line of your entryway, so I don't have to immediately dodge or step left or step right. That's the way to tell the story. So first problem with this home, double entry door into a relatively modest entryway. So I'm coming in all the way on the right and that's not impressive.

Second problem, when I get in, I look down at my feet and there's no nothing on the floor that demarcates me standing in the entryway. It looks like I've walked in on a hallway that's crossing me and the flooring planks. In this case, it was a hardwood floor. The flooring planks are running perpendicular to me. In other words, there's just line after line after line confronting me, saying, you know, halting me because I In artwork and in architecture,

we have these things called lead lines. A lead line is any line or any linear element that, basically, because it's moving from where you are away from you, it leads you in in okay, it leads you into a property or down a pathway. And in this case, all the lead lines are perpendicular to me. They're all saying stop, stop, stop stop, nothing exciting happening here. They're going the wrong way. Okay.

Third thing is after I look up from there, I'm looking straight ahead, about five feet in front of me. Six feet in front of me, just a flat wall, dark, unlit, no artwork, no nothing, just a flat wall. That's about twenty five percent of my viewing angle in this home. And it's right in front of me, which means its importance is greater than twenty five percent. Because it's right in front of me, it is in fact the most natural focal point. And since there's nothing to look at there,

then I kind of scan from left and right. And because of where things are set up in this home, and this is where I would want to move a wall or at least a doorway. I am literally standing and by the way, this is a lovely home. This is a nearly five thousand square foot home with this entryway. And when I'm standing in it and I haven't even entered in fully to the house, I can see the living room, the dining room, I can see a set of stairs to the upstairs that isn't the main stairs really,

They're just sort of off to the side. And I can see in through an open doorway into the kitchen

and see the toaster oven. I can see the toaster oven from the entryway of the house in other words, I have equal view of a utility space and your groceries and your keys and your purse sitting on the countertop, and your most formal, beautiful living room area and your lovely dining room and then a set of stairs that go up you know, and so, and they're all speaking equally, and that, I hope you know at this point is

the whole point of what not to do. Okay, they all have an equal voice, and I don't know where to look. And the formality and the beauty that is the living room and the dining room area of this house is overtaken by this bare flat wall and a view of the kitchen all at the same time. You see what I'm saying. So there is such a thing as an open plan being too open, but that's not so much the issue. It's not about open plan versus non open plan. It's about focal points in a scene

and whether anybody has given any thought. And the funny thing is, these folks have lived in this home for thirty plus years, never once have thought about what it's like to walk in the front door, because they actually come in through the garage. They park in the garage, the groae, they always enter the house into the kitchen anyway,

because it's their home. Never given any serious thought to the experience of a neighbor or a friend or a guest coming in through the front door, and how it either begins to tell their story or fails to tell their story. You get it. You see what I'm saying. All right, when we come back, I'm going to give you an example of one of the most brilliantly well told stories in our country. It's not a house, But like I said at the very beginning of the show, I don't think there's a house I can pick that

everybody will immediately identify with. But everybody can identify with the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, d C. Let me tell you how it tells its story and how that theater. Not that you're going to have a you a thirty foot tall statue of Abraham Lincoln sitting in your home, not at all, but how the method of telling that story via theater is what we apply to your humble home. That makes all the difference. We'll do that.

be a very, very different thing. But take me seriously when I tell you that you can learn some things about your home if you apply the concept of theater or good cinema to the spaces in your home. Now, I promise you. I was going to give you an example of this, and it's not a home, okay, Because I was racking my brain this week thinking what house can I refer everybody too that everybody has seen the inside of. And I don't mean stuff like rooms in

the White House or something. I just mean, really understand the flow, and I wanted to keep it simple. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible, but tell allow you to see what a dramatic storytelling can do. So I'm going to give you an example from a national monument that we are all familiar with whether or not you've ever visited the Lincoln Memorial. You know of the Lincoln Memorial, you've seen it. All you have to do is pull out a five dollars bill and look

on the backside and there it is. Or a penny and look on the back of a penny and there is the Lincoln Memorial. Okay, But what most people don't realize is that Lincoln Memorial in the architectural community is one of the finest examples of storytelling that there is all of the elements of approach to the payoff at the end. Okay, So let me just le set that scene for you. The Lincoln Memorial is sitting on the

National Mall in Washington, DC. It is positioned at the western end of a one hundred and sixty seven foot wide by two thousand foot long reflecting pool on the National Mall. You've all seen it. You've seen it. You've seen it in Forrest Gump, you've seen it in news clippings, You've seen it all the time. The reflecting pool. At one end of the reflecting pools the Washington Monument, whose

gigantic obelisk you can see beautifully in the water. If you're standing at the Lincoln Memorial, and if you're standing at the end of the Washington Monument, you see the Lincoln Memorial in the reflecting pool. Mostly though you heard me talking about lead lines when it comes to the entryway of your home, the reflecting pool is a massive lead line. It draws you out and says, follow me down this path and look at what's at the end, and what is at the end, arguably what has been

called America's temple, the Lincoln Memorial. Okay, one, because it's a classical Greek temple. It's designed that way. It's covered in white marble. It's ninety nine feet tall. It is surrounded or the roof is supported by thirty eight doric columns, each of these columns forty four feet tall, seven and a half feet in diameter at the base, massive, massive columns. That massiveness is made to make you feel something. Quite honestly, it's made to make you feel small. It's made to

make you feel small. So are the eighty seven steps that you have to walk up to reach the level of what we call the shrine. Okay, So you walk down this long pathway and you arrive at this Greek temple that looms up above you, and as you walk up eighty seven steps, you have to pass between these massive marble columns, and what is sitting just inside these massive marble columns a statue of a sitting Abraham Lincoln rising twenty nine feet above your head. Okay, that is

amazing storytelling. By the time you arrive at that moment where you're standing there in front of Abraham Lincoln's likeness, you have gone through a journey that has affected you emotionally, whether you have considered it or not. There's just simply no way to walk up a series of steps and in between those massive fillers and not feel subject to that which is sitting there on the throne. And it's not because we're deifying Abraham Lincoln. You know this intrinsically,

he is the focal point there. And you know it intrinsically that it's not about Abe Lincoln that we've blown up out of proportion, but it is about some visceral experience of the spirit or the story that transcends the image that is sitting on that throne. Whether it's equal rights, whether it is freedom, whether it is unity of the Republic. I mean whatever the case may be, there's something so human about that experience. So, okay, why did I bring that up? I brought it up as an example of

storytelling in architecture. The fact that this long lead line that leads you to a very specific focal point, the fact that there's a journey to take that you literally have to walk up these steps, and that you're being affected by it. The fact that you walk in between these two massive or these these in between these massive columns to arrive at your destination, and when you get there it has the impact on you that it has.

We're not talking about you having the Lincoln Memorial at your house or you turning your house into the Lincoln Memorial, but if you can appreciate the storytelling elements there focal point, every step is taken into consideration, every vista is taken into consideration, Every experience that you have as you transition from outside to inside is taken into consideration. All of this is theater, and it's the same rules of theater that can apply to your home. And there you go.

All right, when we come back, I will tell you not a Lincoln Memorial story. I'm going to tell you a story of a project that I'm working on right now, and what I want to achieve out of one particular element of that project. Just to underscore this whole conversation yet again, we'll do that right after.

you didn't. Just go and listen to it anytime you wish wherever, however many times you wish on demand the House Whisper podcast. Just search for Home with Dean Sharp or the House Whisper on the free iHeartRadio app or Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever your favorite podcasts are found. I am there waiting for you. And again, if your home is in need of some personal House Whisper attention. If you're like yeah, I get it, Dean, I get what you're talking about today. Still need some creative input on

how to solve the problem. Well, you can book an in home design console with us. Just go to house Whisperer dot design. All right, I told you we talked about all sorts of art today because the theme of today's show has been that great design, great architecture is theater. I've talked about stage plays, I've talked about how movies get made and how directors control the scene. Not to get all fanciful, but actually to bring it home to you so you can understand home design in a new light,

right and maybe get your arms around it. Everybody knows when they watch a film that there are lead actors, and then there are supporting actors behind them, and then there are extras back there, and then there's the scene itself. And everybody intrinsically in the twenty first century understands how those things happen. It's just that when it comes to their home, you don't think of your home in those sense, and so you're staring around your living room and you're like,

I don't know what to do with this thing. I don't know anything about home design, you know more than you think if you think in terms of theater, because the impact of telling that story and the process is very, very similar. And that's why I've brought those metaphors to you. I'll give you a real life example of a project that we're currently working on, an aspirational element to this project. It's a home. I'm not going to tell you where it's at or what it's got to just know this.

It's a lovely home. But the most significant thing about this home is that it's got a big old backyard that rolls out and out and out and out, and then it just drops off the end of a hillside. And as a result, what you see from the rear yard is a panoramic just big beautiful view of mountains and canyons. I mean, you just see it is a view.

It's a view lot. Okay. Now why do I mention that, Because everybody needs to evaluate the property they're sitting on in terms of storytelling, and in terms of focal point, and in terms of hierarchy. What's the most important thing? And this is the big backyard. And we could go crazy with all kinds of things in this backyard, and we probably will have all sorts of elements in this backyard.

But what needs to control where we put these elements, how we place them, and where they're pointing the view in this yard. It's the view. The view is the reason this piece of property is what it is. It is as they say, the money shot. It is the thing. It is the focal point. And so everything that I intend to design into this home, on the backside of the home, looking out and in the yard itself, is all going to answer to the view, because that's the

story that we're telling, and that's the main line. You understand, there has to be that focal point of importance and other things, you know, significant but less important in this case, just so you know, give you a little view of how the sausage is made. I can't see this view from the front door. I wish you could, and I'm not going to change the house so radically in this case because there's multiple layers in between the front entry

door and that view. But the front entry leads you into this lovely part of the back of the house. And once you get there, and there are other places to stop along the way, but once you arrive, and what is going to be this family room. The family room right now takes virtually zero advantage of that view. Is it is the room in the house that is poised to take the best advantage, and it's not. And

so we're changing that for sure. Okay, we're changing the backside of that family room so that it can embrace when you're sitting in the family embrace the view. But what do I want out there? I want to get you out there, okay, and the view is not enough. I actually want to draw your attention to it. So currently my plan is to get out there right on the edge of the hillside, right out as far as we can go with the with the yard, and I'm probably going to put a destination, well I know I'm

going to put a destination out there. It'll probably be a deck or a platform or some kind of area to sit and to experience something way out there on

the precipice, on the edge of the view. And I'm going to make that destination very visible from the family or in fact, I'm probably going to do a pathway right up the center of the yard leading straight out to that destination, a lead line that carries you out, a lead line so that you see that there's a pathway to get to this place, and I'm probably going to emphasize the view by putting some kind of a framed structure out there, a couple of posts or columns,

and a big beam across some kind of rectangular frame. Literally, like you see directors sometimes they hold up their fingers and they're like they're trying to frame the shot. I'm not going to frame the entire view, but I'm going to frame the most significant part, central of that view, so that there's something there that draws you out. And so in my mind, you wander into this part of the house and you're going to see this lovely family room, and you're going to be enchanted by what's going on.

That's where the trees are going that I mentioned in the Aldic Home spot the trees are going. It's going to be a lovely family room. But wait, right as you get start to get settled in this family room, like a captivating woman who steps into view, just moments after you begin to feel settled, she's going to walk out onto the lawn and you're going to want to follow her. You're going to see that simple outline out there,

arresting your attention. Without blocking the view and the pathway that leads you to it, and you want to follow that path, you must follow that path out to that experience. That's the kind of theater that I'm talking about. And at the end of the day, what did I just describe? Well, I'm going to build a thing out there and a deck and a pathway to it, and maybe a window looking out on it. You, so you can reduce it

to those elements. Those elements are very very simple. But if you put them all together and you imagine the sequence of experiencing it, boom, it's theater. Do you see that in your mind? Walking out along that pathway, just getting closer and closer and closer to that panorama, knowing that you're being drawn out there because there's a destination

for you to visit. What if I put a fire pit out there at night so that there's a flame right on the edge of the what you know, on and on week ago, good architecture and good design is theater. And you know what, here's the thing. And I'm just going to leave you with this simple thought today because it applies now not only to just architecture, but all things. If any of this seems groundbreaking to you, and I hope it does feel that way to you. It's not

because these ideas are new. There's nothing here that isn't a well established design fundamental. Okay, What gets taken is groundbreaking is simply my unwavering commitment to consistently sift the projects that I take on and my own design solutions for those projects through the filter of these storytelling fundamental and maybe also for the sake of our show. Here what may be groundbreaking is that I have the audacity of insisting that you do the same, whether you live

in a condo or a cottage or a castle. It's all about the fundamentals, it really is. Isn't life about the fundamentals as well? I think it is. It's always been the case for me that at the end of the day, our lives are just built brick by brick, east by piece out of the bed. The best lives are built out of the best fundamentals, bit by bit by bit, with all that intentionality. And so here we are, and uh, there's a beautiful weekend, uh Sunday afternoon ahead

of you. The question is what are you going to do with it? I hope that you decide to get out there and get busy building yourself a beautiful life, and we will see you right back here next weekend. This has been Home with Dean Sharp, the House Whisper. Tune into the live broadcast on KFI AM six forty every Saturday morning from six to eight Pacific time and every Sunday morning from nine to noon Pacific time, or anytime on demand on the iHeart Radio app