As with everything in life, things don’t always work out quite how you expected. Rather than a Bob Ross style “happy accident” sometimes things just don’t come together correctly. But other times, things work out beautifully. If you’ve never toured a building with an architect, we are easily distracted and will take photos of small details that caught our eye, usually things that the average user of the space would never notice.
That’s not correct.
Even if designers have thought about a detail and drawn it out, occasionally things just don’t work, don’t fit, or don’t look right at the end. Sometimes it’s because there are changes as the project is built that have unexpected consequences. Sometimes the detail, however popular it is, just doesn’t age well. Sometimes multiple options could be correct. To make the choices harder, sometimes you don’t know that detail should have been done differently until you see the final installation in person.
Far Right: The fascinating Fonthill Castle (1912, Doylestown, PA) was built by Henry Mercer as a showpiece for his tile collection. But even in a house dedicated to tile, these vaults don’t come together quite right.
Center: This door or frame was probably supposed to be taller to line up with the top of the trim piece. But some change in the field meant that the trim ended up being cut around the door frame. Right: Was the wall supposed to be smaller? Or was the wood trim supposed to be wider?
But oh, when things are right.
These are details that have been fought for by both the designers and the builders over the life span of the project, and when that happens things are beautiful in the end. There is a sense of rightness and calm about a well executed detail, it just works and feels like it was always supposed to be that way.
by Brianna Blackaby