5 Features to Look for in Contemporary House Plans

Surprise! Contemporary House Plans – Often Misunderstood and Overlooked – May Be Your Next Favorite Home Style

You’ve searched through many, many house plans to find the dream home to build for your family, but you haven’t found any right for you. Modern house plans, with their industrial, stripped-down design seem too sterile. And the myriad traditional home plans you have seen, like Colonial, Victorian, and Craftsman, seem plucked out of the past, and you want something that feels current. . . .

Contemporary house plans may be just the ticket! Contemporary is in a strict sense present-day architecture. As a result, it is a somewhat amorphous style of architecture that can encompass other design styles. Often confused with Modern style, Contemporary is less boxy and Spartan. Whereas Modern home plans exhibit strict rectilinear angles, an absence of ornament, minimalist exteriors of stucco or brick, and generous use of steel and concrete, Contemporary house plans use gables, angles, and various exterior materials to add interest. It often melds historic elements with contemporary lifestyle concepts. So Contemporary may re-interpret Colonial style with more radically steep gables, large expanses of asymmetrical glass, and wood siding installed in an angled pattern.

We take a look at this architectural design style to discover 5 popular distinguishing features that Contemporary house plans have to offer.

1. Irregular, Asymmetrical Facade

Where traditional styles, such as Georgian and Colonial, often depend on symmetrical placement of exterior elements like windows, dormers, and support posts, Contemporary home plans may deliberately place such features in asymmetrical patterns to provide an element of surprise and interest. The same goes for the plane of the façade. Instead of a straight wall, a Contemporary house may have bump-outs and walls on several planes for visual interest.

2. Strong Geometric Shapes

Visual interest and implied action or movement are important features in Contemporary design, and it achieves them through the use of geometry. Unusual angles, geometric shapes like trapezoids and acute triangles, intersecting planes, and a mixtures of slopes all contribute to the – sometimes unsettling but visually stunning - feeling of movement.

3. Large, Often Asymmetrical Windows

Large windows that are cut off in sharp angles and asymmetrical shapes instead of squared off as in traditional designs are a quintessential aspect of Contemporary design. The window shapes add to the interest and implied movement of the other elements of the design style. They also allow lots of natural light into the interior, a hallmark of Contemporary house plans.

4. Open Floor Plan

Open floor plans are very much of the minute these days, and so by definition are contemporary; it makes sense, therefore, that they are an important part of Contemporary architectural design. The use of movable partitions to create general-purpose rooms and/or the use of non-load-bearing walls to facilitate creating alternative layouts if needed can be found in Contemporary houses. Often the interior space is arranged in an L-, T-, H-, or U-shape to make the most of outdoor space.

5. Ecological Features

Because Contemporary house plans are “present-day designs” and because sustainability, so-called “green” building, and ecological concerns are of the moment these days, they embrace all of these aspects on principle and make as low of an impact on the environment as possibile. So many Contemporary homes are built from local or reclaimed lumber and sustainable and/or eco-friendly materials like bamboo. They use energy systems like solar, wind, and geothermal for heating and cooling and power. And they are built to the highest standards in terms of insulation (important for both heating and cooling) and a tight building envelope to prevent air leaks and wasted energy.

So if you’re looking for something different and exciting as your next house, it may be time to start searching through Contemporary designs for your dream home.