I pass by this distinctive house which looks like a Scandanavian restaurant. In winter, I expect to schuss down the slopes, leave my skis by the front door, walk in and find a smorgasbord of Swedish delicacies. But no. This is someone’s home. It is a mix of two architectural styles, the A-frame and the ranch style. I have seen a few A-frames — especially in vacation areas; they always looked cozy and seemed well-designed as temporary residences. However, not sure if I would like living in one permanently. Although, there are probably a lot of A-frames that could qualify as tiny homes, which are popular right now.
An A-frame house or other A-frame building is an architectural house or building style featuring steeply-angled sides — roofline — that usually begin at or near the foundation line and meet at the top in the shape of the letter A. An A-frame ceiling can be open to the top rafters.
Although the triangle shape of the A-frame has been present throughout history, it surged in popularity around the world from roughly the mid-1950s through the 1970s. It was during the post–World War II era that the A-frame acquired its most defining characteristics.
According to Alexandra Lange’s Sept. 22, 2017 article “The A-frame effect” at curbed.com, in his definitive 2004 book on the A-frame, architectural historian Chad Randl writes that the popularity of these houses coincided with the era of “second everything.” Second TVs, second bathrooms, second cars and eventually, second homes. Between 1955 and 1965, the wage for the average worker rose 50 percent. Construction of new highways — including Interstate 70 into the Rockies and Interstate 80 from San Francisco to Reno — as well as the creation of new dams, lakes and reservoirs across the country, opened up the wilderness as a weekend destination.
The Tennessee Valley Authority created more than 10,000 miles of new shoreline between 1933 and 1968, with room for at least 12,000 vacation homes; the Bureau of Land Management created 200 reservoirs between 1946 and 1968, primarily in the western states. “Every family needs two homes!” read one ad, “One for the work week, one for pure pleasure.”
The A-frame, in its purest sense, is a house shaped like an equilateral triangle. Its distinctive peak is formed by rafters or trusses that are joined at the top and bolted to plates or floor joists down below. The roof covers the rafters and goes all the way to the ground. The cross-piece of the A is created by horizontal collar beams, intended to stabilize the structure, which typically support a sleeping loft.
And that’s it: A-frames meet the earth on rubble or cinderblock walls, concrete or wood columns, but their essential nature is to float slightly above their environment, a viewing platform for an expanse of nature. Instagrammers emphasize the angles of the A against whispering pines or blue sky.
A-frames did exist before the 1950s. Architectural historian Chad Randl finds evidence for pitch-roofed structures in China, where they covered pit dwellings, and in traditional farmhouses on Shirakawa, Japan to Polynesia, where the roofs of such “great houses” were said to resemble the sails of boats. In Switzerland, where actual chalets typically had side walls, the gable roofs tend toward a much wider, flatter slope. The invocation of historic precedent, then, mostly serves as cover. The modernist can install rush matting and low cushions, while the traditionalist can opt for a gingerbread balcony and wood paneling. Coziness, your way.
One of the first all-roof vacation homes was designed by Rudolf Schindler in 1934 in Lake Arrowhead, where the homeowners’ association declared all new houses had to be in the “Norman style.”
Schindler’s design, in the tradition of his former employer Frank Lloyd Wright, made much of the triangle. The front of the wood-framed house was all glass, cross-hatched with thin wood mullions. Inside, the plywood walls and rafters were left exposed, while the rubble foundation crept inside as stone. A double-height living room took up the whole front of the house; in the rear was a loft with a bunk room and bedroom. His client, costume designer Gisela Bennati, decorated with Schindler’s own furniture.
That plan, which makes the most of the open space created by the overarching rafters, and stuffs the kitchen, bedrooms and bathrooms into the dark end of the A, has proven to be surprisingly durable. Owners try to get right-angled rooms under the roof through dormers and shed roofs, doubled As and dugout basements, but the truth is, it is an awkward form. Staying low, and furnishing minimally, is the best way to take advantage of an abundance of floor and a pittance of wall.
Schindler’s A-frame was a one-off, but other well-known architects tangled with the form. Andrew Geller, known for his box-kite and bow-like postwar vacation homes in the Hamptons, had his first success with an A-frame he designed in 1957 for Betty Reese, George Nelson’s powerhouse PR executive. Reese had a budget of only $5,000, which Geller exceeded by 40 percent. When completed, she made sure her house made it into the New York Times and other magazines, in articles that emphasized the ease of living in her “playhouse on a budget.” Her living room may only have been 13 by 22 feet, but with a built-in banquette and a fireplace silhouetted between windows, it looked luxurious. Suddenly Geller had plenty of clients.
The A-frame seems to generate such publicity wherever it appears, and most of those originating during peak popularity, 1950 to 1975, were built architect-free. Pattern books, building kits and mail-order plans generated by manufacturers of plywood and homasote combined to make the A-frame seem like a short step up from home improvement.
The Douglas Fir Plywood Association paid pediatrician David Hellyer for his personal A-frame plans, giving him free plywood in exchange for documenting his building process and reproducing his plans. After publishing photos of Hellyer’s completed Tacoma, Washington cabin in 1957, the DPFA sold 12,000 copies of the working drawings.
San Francisco firm Campbell & Wong promoted their Leisure House as “your vacation in a kit,” and built a full-scale version indoors for the 1951 San Francisco Arts Festival. The firm initially sold the plans for $25, then created a precut kit with a local construction company. Drawings of the house published in Arts & Architecture in 1951 as “A Small Hill Camp” show two single-story A-frames joined by a trapezoidal deck. The larger is the living-dining space, the small one has bedrooms and a bath. It’s all one could need—no more.
Who wants a second home as high-maintenance as the first? There is usually a lengthy to-do list for the first home, much less a second. In an A-frame, there are few closets, so it must remain eternally Kondo-ed. In an A-frame, there’s little privacy, so the family has to gather around the fireplace or run around outside. Indoor-outdoor living and informal entertaining were the style of the day in the 1950s, as they are now, and you cannot be any other way in an A-frame. Leisure is part of its very character. The A-frame obviously shares DNA with the tent but offers just enough comforts of home to the camping-phobic.
Los Angeles photographer Bonnie Tsang visited the Yosemite-adjacent A-frames marketed under the Instagram account @far_meadow this summer. Were they 40-somethings made new? Or was someone making A-frames again? Owner Heinz Legler bought the property a decade ago with Veronique Lievre. The pair runs vacation rental site Boutique Homes and owns the equally alphabet-inspired V-Houses in Yelapa, Mexico.
At an altitude of 7,000 feet and an annual snow load of 10 to 16 feet, the pitched roof and modular construction of the A-frame was a no-brainer. “We were able to pre-build the whole structure in the Mojave Desert and ship it,” Legler said, for rapid assembly on-site. The houses each have a big open room in front and a loft with bedrooms in back, just like the Schindler house. Between construction of the first and the second structures, he decided the stairs took up too much room and switched out a straight run for a spiral. Plan books from the past inspired him to pre-build the structures, and since he’s had them for rent, he’s gotten a lot of inquiries about buying his plans: history repeats itself. He built a third A-frame on the site and had it approved by the building department, but he’s not sure he wants to become a professional A-frame promoter.
Last year Canadian architects Scott & Scott built a new A-frame for a family of snowboarders in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, another ski community where 1970s A-frames were thick on the ground. The architects updated the form with a poured-concrete base, a tilted gable, and a thin metal handrail—no gingerbread here—but the overall look, and use, aren’t far from Campbell in the 1950s and Schindler in the 1930s. They, too, receive frequent requests to sell their plans.
“There is this nostalgic idea of going to the cabin and playing board games and everyone being in the same room together,” said David Scott, who owned a Fisher-Price Farm and Jeep in his youth. “Your only task should be lighting a fire,” added Susan.
The cabin is entered from its lowest level, which contains a room for drying kit, space to store equipment, a washroom and a laundry. Upstairs, the living area and kitchen backs into the hill. A completely glazed facade allows a clear view of the mountains, valley and nearby Green Lake. A bedroom, a "bunk room" and a guest room are located on the top floor of the property. While the main bedroom benefits from the expansive outward views, the guest room provides access to a private terrace nestled into the rock behind the cabin. All materials used throughout the property were locally sourced, including the red cedar shingles that clad the exterior, and the marble used to form countertops in the kitchen.
The Abbey Resort in Fontana-on-Geneva Lake, Wisconsin claims to have the world's tallest wooden A-frame.
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