The adage, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” is certainly true for architecture today.  These days, the traditionally-styled exterior of a house doesn’t necessarily mean the interior is a traditional, center-hall floor plan.  At RDDA many of our clients have been asking for homes of traditional appearance on the exterior, but with open, flowing floor plans on the interior.The idea of open floor plans was pioneered by modernist architects, such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, in the early years of the twentieth-century.  Yet up until recently, traditionally-styled homes continued to be designed with lots of separate rooms. Now we are designing modern, open floor plans for both our traditional style and our modern style homes.

Take this traditional Acadian-style plantation house that RDDA designed for a client in Fairview, Texas.

The exterior is decidedly traditional, but look at the contemporary, open floor plan on the interior.

The kitchen, dining room, living room, and sitting room with a cozy fireplace are all combined to create a central living space that serves multiple functions.

You can’t strictly blame the popularity of open kitchens on the emergence of cooking shows on TV.  In fact, open floor plans grew out of the realization that formal living rooms and dining rooms no longer suited the needs of today’s lifestyles.  Thus, the creation of a “great room,” by combining the kitchen, family and casual dining areas, allows the living space to get more use and the kitchen to become the “heart” of the house, just as you see here in the house we designed in Fairview.

The flexibility of this space is further increased with a telescoping, moveable glass wall that slides into a pocket, opening the room onto a large outdoor covered living area.

Here is the floor plan for the Fairview house.  The flow of one space into another is evident.

Interior Designer- Traci Connell
Contractor–Paul Billingsley 

The stylistic influence of this traditional French facade harkens back centuries, but the interior spatial planning is decidely contemporary.

The family room, kitchen, and casual dining area merge to create a room whose functionalilty matches the needs of contemporary life.

As is evident in this home, open floor plans also increased the amount of natural light in a home.  The removal of interior walls allows sunlight from windows in the exterior walls to permeate throughout the house.

Interior Designer– Deborah Walker
Contractor–Sebastian Construction Group

The “rooms” in this kitchen/dining/living room are delineated by the placement of the furniture.  The result is a more spatious effect than if the rooms were segmented by walls in a traditional approach.  The dining area merges with the entry gallery, which flows into the family and kitchen areas.

In this case, the exterior look we designed is modern.

Interior Designer–Joanie Wyll
Contractor–Simmie Cooper

These homes offer examples of how modern, open plans can be enveloped in modern or traditional exteriors.

To see more images of projects designed by RDDA, please visit our website.