Great Compositions: The L-Shaped House Plan

How do houses connect to their sites? It has less to do with style and a lot to do with the plan. An L-shaped house plan is inherently a fragment of something larger — an incomplete enclosure around the outdoor "room."  <a href="http://www.houzz.com/">Photos: Browse 200,000+ Inspiring Home Designs</a> The inside corner of the exterior walls form an edge that extends like open arms in two directions preparing to embrace. The landscape can be contained and amplified by the supporting backdrop of the family home, serving the reciprocal relationship of interior and exterior space, one setting off the other. This simple and efficient vernacular form opens to the private yard with a framed view of an old growth tree. A large hung sliding "barn" door opens the entire wall and living space up to the view and connects to the adjacent porch providing a covered place to sit. This house achieves very big ideas on a budget. <a href="http://www.houzz.com/">by Houzz</a> (Stuart Sampley Architect)

Two traditional wood shingle clad domestic forms are connected by a modern glassy L-shaped loggia defining a stepped lawn and patio. The use of contrast as the linking element here with a lighter color extends the light of the sky to the ground and allows the "two houses" to remain deferentially scaled to the outdoor room. Now imagine for a moment if a linear reflecting pool was added on axis at the center of the lower lawn merging the earth and sky at the connecting loggia. <a href="http://www.houzz.com/photos/exterior">More: Thousands of Home Design Photos</a> (LDa Architecture and Interiors)

Large windows and openings permit a direct connection between indoor and outdoor terrace living space with a mix of hardscape, planting beds, pools, and trees. As the previous example, the two wings in this house are each scaled appropriately for the outdoor space they serve, and material contrast is used to distinguish living space from sleeping space. <a href="http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/905186/list/Home-Building--8-Ways-to-Stick-to-Your-Budget">Guide: 8 Ways to Stick to Your Building Budget</a> (Ziger/Snead Architects)

Smaller single story plans are also well suited to define an outdoor room. The size of the outdoor space is a function of the height of the house. A lower roof line here works well with the intimate proportion of this dining terrace. The soft plantings and translucent glowing patio doors are a nice compliment to the hardness and mass of stucco walls. (Bud Dietrich, AIA)

And, it doesn't get much better than this! Who doesn't dream of a sunken fire pit? There is nothing to add or take away from this composition. Every major space in the house has a view to this private sanctum made possible by the L-shaped plan nestled into the site. <a href="http://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/906903/list/Great-Compositions--The-L-Shaped-House-Plan">Full story: More ideas for L-Shaped homes</a> (Think Design Office)