This article is meant as a reference toolbox for home plan design harmony and proportion. The author prefers to deal with the practical how-to of it subsequently. The author, a custom home designer, suggests that there’s a place in designer home plans for age-old Western notions of unity, harmony, order, proportion, even Classicism.

Noteworthy, virtually all of these means and motives potentially applicable to designer house plans have been addressed in the literature and elsewhere principally to public or very large private structures – coliseums, churches, huge bank buildings, and the like - rarely to home design.

The author has begun applying some very old ideas of design to some very new houses with success and surprises.

SUGGESTED READINGS

There’s a lot of reading on architectural design proportion and Classical design. Most of it’s not especially interesting – clinical mathematics, nautilus shells and phyllotaxis, irrelevance borne of style, size, etc.

In the author’s opinion, these works are some of the better:

1. The heady, heavy-going: Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism by Rudolf Wittkower, W. W. Norton & Company, 1971.

2. The intellectually entertaining and well-written The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, The World’s Most Astonishing Number by Mario Livio, Broadway Books, 2002.

3. The commanding presentation of the Orders, their making and remaking in The Classical Language of Architecture by John Summerson, The MIT Press, 1962.

4. Of methods and materials, Traditional Construction Patterns: Design & Detail Rules Of Thumb by Stephen Mouzon et al., McGraw-Hill. 2005.

5. The thoughtful, The Old Way of Seeing: How Architecture Lost Its Magic (And How to Get It Back) by Jonathan Hale, Houghton Mifflin, 1994.

6. The overarching [but not over-reaching, not hardly], A Pattern Language: Towns, Building, Construction by C. Alexander et al., Oxford University Press, 1977 and its companion The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander, Oxford University Press, 1979.

FAVORED HOUSE DESIGN HARMONIES AND PROPORTIONS

As to proportion and proportions alone, here are those presently favored by the author, mostly for their simplicity of expression:

1. Golden Mean, or Golden Section or Golden Ratio, or Mark Barr’s Ratio of Pheidias (a/k/a Phidias), or phi.

2. Lambda in Plato’s Timaeus plus 5 & 7.

3. Regulating lines (ou tracés regulateurs à la Auguste Choisy et Le Corbusier)
Subjectively, this is about balance, rhythm, symmetry, a sense of schema from illusive to hard rock.

PERSPECTIVE

For perspective, “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” Sidelight on Relativity by A. Einstein, translated by G. B. Jeffery and W. Perret, London, 1922.

The practical use of these metrics so far for the author mostly relates - a) positive integers from 1-9 exclusively, b) plus Phi and phi, c) generally apparent and usually symmetrical lines of relationship.

PRACTICAL OBSERVATIONS

Comment: The practical use of these formulations is to relate these numerical values and physical relationships –

1. Whole, positive integers from 1-9

2. Plus Phi and phi

3. Generally apparent and usually symmetrical lines of relationship

4. The Fibonacci series in aspects of progression

Comment: In this designer’s opinion, you can get almost anywhere from here with ordered proportions using a matrix relating 1-9 to 1-9, keeping it simple. You know, 1:1, 1:2 . . . 9:8, 9:9. This home designer has also leaned into Phi=1.618, phi=0.618, and early entries in the Fibonacci series 0, 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, … Vesica Piscis, logarithmic spirals, dodecahedrons, and the like are fare for others for now.

Comment: Rule of thumb (not this designer’s, but he cannot recollect whose sentiment this first was, and he thinks that, though the first guy was talking cathedrals or the like several centuries back, the point is a better reference for home design than for larger constructs): attend mostly to ratios between 4:3 and 7:1 as the range of casually observable size distinction.

Comment: If you’re simply in the hunt for numerical relationships, knock yourself out: “music theory online: pitch, temperament, & timbre; lesson 27″ by Brian Blood, dolmetsch.com/musictheory27.htm, supporting (among others) Julien Guadet’s proposition, “Les proportions, c’est l’infini.” Eléments et théorie de l’architecture by J. Guadet, Four volumes, first ed. 1901-1904, fourth ed. 1915, Vol. I, p. 138 ff.

Forming home design in a framework of proportion, the author finds that –

1. It’s way easier to begin drawing with proportion in mind as a design premise than to attempt its imposition later on.

2. Complexity can overcome order or at least leave the practical realm when proportions proliferate beyond the 9 chosen integers and the 2 chosen irrationals, a/k/a while rigorous in harmonious design does not mean slavish, it also does not mean sloppy or obtuse.

3. Getting obsessive with this stuff can make you crazier. Enjoy.

4. There is a tendency to momentum, a propensity herewith in that proportional opportunities can present themselves sui generis with proportional precedent.

5. There arise practical limits particularly on interiors whereat function can rule.

6. There is no escaping a community’s inattention to these matters when a client demands the project must necessarily conform to sometimes hideous design choice points in keeping up with the Joneses, e.g., outsized windows, cascades of gables, unbalanced segments, predetermined clad and trim, etc. [a point which is mirrored in client or community insistence in ignorant or insensitive departure from well-expressed style], a/k/a give it up, the horse won’t drink; you hauled the water.

7. Whimsy accounts well now and then. So does artful, or creative; a little divergence is a good thing.

8. Don’t ever be telling yourself that those who have gone before you were slacking in architectural design efforts of pattern. Your barren ignorance would be showing. Even jobsite tradesmen not all that long before your time were steeped in knowledge of sacred geometry and Classical style [would that you are doubtful, sit down sometime with the photographed front elevation of a fine example of some well-know residential architectural style of, say, the late 19th century, and layout that elevation using a basic knowledge of harmonious design and the parts fit over and over and over again], those designers and builders being at the tail end of millennia of practice, practice, practice and respect, respect, respect for the craft.

Before The Architect designs and drafts custom home plans nationwide. Its principals Ralph and Jean Pressel have worked hands-on together since the ‘60s in custom home design, drafting, consulting, plus building and repair in every major trade. The e-book Home Design Standards - Home Building Standards and the website

Limewire and all other file-sharing software is not actually illegal. It is called a “file sharing” software so you can share files - just not ones with copyright on them. E.g. you can listen to a song your friend might have put on the file sharing software as a little joke - but you can’t download one of Eminem’s songs. I will show you why it not only can affect yourself, but how it affects others too.

Nothing in life is perfect. When you want to do something there will always be something in your way. In this case when you are trying to download music it is not only illegal, but you could face much more severe consequences than a £1000 fine if caught.

As you may already know, the world is crawling with hackers who try and ruin your computer for fun or as a “business”. A business? Yes, they can exploit your account and blackmail you. They do this via the following way:

If you wanted to download your favourite music, say a song by Eminem, you might go onto Limewire to download it. So what these hackers can do is infect all these music files with spyware (a bug that hackers send out to spy on your computer) and trace your IP address (computer’s identification) back to their own system. From here they can easily exploit your bank accounts, crash your systems and if you own your own website, corrupt your server. They could then email/phone you asking for a hefty sum of money ( in the hundreds of thousands) and blackmail you by demanding a ransom and then they say they’ll stop hacking into your account. For them it is a win - win situation. All this could be caused by downloading just one song. Crazy when you think about it.

Pornographers on the internet do the same thing. They promote their websites though and are not too interested in the account exploitation. However, if they get hold of your IP address, they could flood your desktop with pop-ups and eventually causing your computer to crash to a point that it can’t be fixed.

These are the two MAIN ways in that your computer could be affected by illegal downloading. I think you would have learned by now the consequences that affect you. However there is one more consequence that could make your favourite singer to go out of business.

Imagine that you download a smash hit new single from Eminem of Limewire. He loses about $4/£2 profit. What is £2, it is a very nominal amount of money, isn’t it? However, because the song is so popular, 1 million people download the same song for free. This means that Eminem would lose out on about $4 million or £2 million. If this kept happening, he would become broke, and you would be able to hear any of his new music ever again.

So, there is a way to listen to music for free, WITHOUT the financial consequences. The two main ways are:

1. If you have BT Yahoo Broadband, you can listen to your favourite songs of Yahoo Music.
2. You can go to the fansite of that artist and usually they have 3 of his/her main hits on the website that you can listen to for free.
3. Sometimes you see those annoying popups asking you to pick a ringtone of your choice for free to put on your phone. Well actually, it is FREE. They will send you that ringtone/ real sound for free if you have a phone and give them your mobile number.

This is not illegal AND it is free.

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When Jimmy discovered plans for a row of executive townhouses on his street, he wondered if his new neighbors would attract burglars to the neighborhood.

So Jimmy installed a surveillance camera that calls the police department during break-ins. Staring at the sensors and the controls, he wondered if it was enough.

He mounted his surveillance camera facing his front door and his bay window and set it to capture an image every fifteen seconds.

Months later, Jimmy took his family to the movies. They drove right past the construction site, where a backhoe had severed a fiber optic cable. Jimmy didn’t know it then, but his entire neighborhood had lost their phone service!

Meanwhile, a plain white van parked in front of Jimmy’s house.

Three men wearing hooded sweatshirts sauntered up the lawn. One produced a crow bar from his sleeve and smashed right through that beautiful bay window.

Before Jimmy’s neighbors heard the alarm bells, those felons had vanished. With no landlines, the alarm system could not contact ANYONE.

Giggles turned to gasps inside Jimmy’s station wagon when they pulled up to their home behind two police cars. Never losing his cool, Jimmy led the detectives to his television, it had been too heavy for the thieves to snatch’and activated the remote control
for his surveillance camera.

Even with no lights on, the infrared lens captured everything: the broken window, the first thief climbing in and opening the front door for his companions… everything.

It even captured all three of them, taking off their hoods, staring DIRECTLY into that lens.

Not only did the cops know exactly who they were dealing with, but the surveillance camera Jimmy was using put a time stamp on each frame. Now the investigators knew exactly WHEN the crooks made off with Jimmy’s things.

That date stamp came in handy the next day, when Jimmy’s insurance adjuster looked at the tape Jimmy made by connecting the surveillance device to a VCR. The agent always hated tracking down receipts and evidence for homeowners’ insurance cases. This time, he could see who was aking what items and when.

Jimmy got even more good news that week. One of the ringleader’s so-called friends saw his picture on the evening news. That friend wanted the small reward from the neighborhood watch association, and he told police where to find the burglars.

Even the fanciest lawyer could not talk his way around that powerful image of the crooks, with their hands on Jimmy’s things, stamped with a time and a date for everyone to see.

Jimmy’s insurance company fixed the window and replaced all of the stolen goods.

This all goes to prove that having an effective surveillance camera can be usefull in recovering stolen personal property.

Glenn Freiboth is a writer for Self Defense news and lives in Illinois.
Self Defense and Surveillance products can be found at