Last week I revisited the concept of Freedom Layouts. In this post I want to continue that theme by exploring the architectural design process and the insights it holds for layout design.

In high school, I had ideas of becoming an architect.That didn’t work out but I never lost interest in houses or residential design. This came in handy when, in the late 1990s, Susan and I started a complete remodel of our home. As we considered our wish list of desirable features and directions to pursue, I discovered the work and writing of architect Sarah Susanka and as a result, our remodeling plans changed overnight. Fortunately, we hadn’t started the actual work, so the change in plan wasn’t a setback. To the contrary, her design principles enabled me to see and appreciate the diamond in the rough that our house already was and saved us from making some very expensive mistakes.

Ms. Susanka is best known for a concept she calls The Not So Big House, which she has outlined in a series of books under the same title. She advocates that people build only the amount of space they actually need, and that every space built is used in day-to-day living. In other words, no rooms that are seldom, if ever, used. Over the years she has refined her ideas and her books are filled with examples drawn from houses large and small, showing how the application of simple design principles can greatly impact the livability of a space. It was, let’s say, a revelation for me.

Finally, the connection you’ve been waiting for
Architectural and model railroad design practices have much in common. Both involve finding creative solutions to problems driven by outside and often fixed criteria. Both involve efficient space planning around a wish list of desirable features that are influenced by the triangle of quality versus quantity versus cost. Both also have a set of standard practices and an established language.

Language illuminates or obscures
How we define ideas greatly determines our understanding and acceptance of them. The language of residential design articulates the key principles involved and terms such as layering, sight lines, and borrowed space are easier to understand once you know what they mean and how they influence your perception of a room. Layout design has a language that revolves around curve radii, turnout size, scene composition, layout height and so on. Where the two practices differ is in the broad knowledge of multiple disciplines that architects bring to a project, as opposed to that of a typical modeler.

To build even a modest layout, people inexperienced in the practice of design are expected to clarify their desired outcomes and embrace planning concepts they may never fully understand. Whereas architects bring outside objectivity to projects and are fluent in the language of design.

A frame of reference
Speaking from experience, it is hard to be objective about what you want from a layout. On the surface it seems easy enough, but all the internet bandwidth devoted to the topic draws a different picture.

What concepts like The Not So Big House provide is an easier to understand frame of reference for lay people to grasp advanced design principles without the arcane minutia of the process. In model railroading we have the conventions of point-to-point, continuous run, multi-deck and so on; however, these are merely broad categories comparable to building styles like Early American, Tudor or Victorian, and are just terms that give no clue to the wide range of choices available within each form. Here’s an example.

In planning a home, people often express a desire for a space where the family can gather and a dedicated family room is often the first solution considered. But a family can also gather around a big table where games are played, meals shared and family bonds are strengthened. An architect may explore questions about the intended activities envisioned for the space to determine the best solution among a range of design options. Such questions may open the homeowners’ eyes to possibilities they hadn’t thought of. So is a dedicated room actually the best solution or will an alcove off the kitchen sized for a generous table do better? Do you see how the way you frame your thinking about a problem influences the solution?

Layout design bogs down for many because people can’t separate the form (point-to-point) from the intended function (realistic operations). As fledgling designers, we’re not trained to make these distinctions or to see how the intended function can be achieved beyond the conventional solution. So we default to the popular magazines or the opinions of others, rather than doing the critical thinking needed to clarify our real wants. For me, such clarity is the heart of a Freedom Layout. Clarity is the result of understanding one’s true goals.

What do you really want?
Just saying you want realistic operations is too ambiguous. What does realistic operations mean to you: mainline running, working a yard, industry switching, something else? Once defined, will you actually need other elements that don’t directly contribute to the main objective? If industry switching is the true goal, do you really need an around-the-room mainline with a yard (the family room in the example above) or will faithfully modeling a single industry on a larger scale that is fed by staging serve you better (the big family table)? As modelers, we’re not encouraged to think of such solutions because we’ve been conditioned for decades to believe we have to represent the whole railroad in model form.

Admittedly, this subject is too big to cover in a single blog post or even a series of posts but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. The discussion continues next week with making choices around that quality, quantity, cost triangle mentioned earlier. We’ll also discover that for us, it’s actually a square instead of a triangle.

Regards,
Mike