Put Outdoor Living in Harmony with Your Home

Why harmony matters in design and architecture

You can trace the quest for harmonious home designs back to ancient China, where great homes aren’t a single house but a medley of buildings encompassed by courtyards, trees, gardens, and water features. You can find similar patterns in the atriums of Roman villas, the pools, fountains, gardens, and ponds surrounding European estates, and some of the grandest American homes.

As in music, harmony sets the mood in architecture

Harmony is more than compatible architecture. Its effect on human moods impacts human health. Like musical compositions, both home and landscape designs use texture, contrast, and rhythm to create a range of moods. Texture creates the contrast and rhythm, which in turn creates harmony, which forms balance without boredom, and variety without chaos.

These musical elements are equally powerful across all arts and impact all our senses. From visual to written art, from sound to touch to smell, harmony is a core art that strikes a chord for people everywhere. As Winston Churchill said, “We shape our buildings, and thereafter they shape us.” That’s how harmony in architecture works indoors and outdoors. That’s why outdoor living design needs to be part of your plans for living well at home.

Chinese harmony and music are different from Western music, but the impact of harmony is universal for all people. In “Chinese Architectural Theory,” Charles Chen wrote, “architecture in Chinese philosophy and life is very similar to that of music.” (Originally published by Architectural Review in July 1947, the article was republished online in November 2015).

Chen explains that Confucius believed “one can tell from the music of a nation whether or not it is well governed.” He says Confucius “lived in a time of perpetual civil strife (551-478 BC).” Confucius saw music, like harmonious architecture, as an antidote to chaos. Confucian principles, Chen wrote, shaped Chinese homes “to establish a harmonious relationship between father and son, man and the State.”

Harmonious spaces for indoor and outdoor living at home

In his original blog on TheWaterSpace, Chris Volk wrote, “If I had to choose one word to describe why homeowners want to create their own WaterSpace, I’d pick harmony. Even when clients never use the word… I invariably discover that harmony is at the heart of the things they prize.”

Important things to know about designing for harmony in outdoor living at home

• An essential design element in your outdoor living plans rests on your home’s architecture.
• If your are building a new home, your best move is to bring your pool builder into the planning process at the very beginning.
• If you’re thinking about a major remodel of an existing house, include outdoor living in the plan at the beginning.
• If you’re planning a new outdoor living project that has to fit in with the existing house, consider the things you want to change or add in the future to the house or the outdoor area. Design a plan now that lets you realize your dream over time, making upgrades and additions to better fit the your time and budget needs.

 

This post is based in part on an article originally published on TheWaterSpace blog, “Creating Harmony Through Architecture, Water and Space.”