It is a truth universally acknowledged that a family in possession of a good townhouse, must be in want of a nice looking facade. But it is a lot harder to find one than it is to simply want one. Let’s not beat around the bush — Aotearoa has a lot of townhouses on the go right now and the majority of them are dull, boring, and as ugly as anything. Architects and designers: We need to raise our game!

It should not be that hard to do, especially as most townhouses only have two facades, one facing out to the front and the other facade facing the back. If you are designing a row house, or terraced houses, then you will have already taken care of that side wall elevation, consigning it to the purview of the fire-rated inter-tenancy wall. So let’s talk this out and find out exactly what we are doing wrong with our external walls. 

As a composition of forms, set into a usually rectangular shape, an important part of the design is the front door and its surroundings. That front door makes a first impression and that impression will often stay there for many years. The front door needs to be welcoming as well as formal, allowing some degree of secure overview of the nearby street, as well as being an informal place to sit and think, hopefully with your back against a sunlit wall. A carefully placed nearby bench can work well as a resting place and mediates between the footpath and the front door. Allow enough planting to thrive, and avoid anything that resembles a lawn — that then requires a lawnmower. A small amount of shelter at the front door is always a good idea too, but it must be functional, not like those ridiculous timber archways that serve no useful function, that one particular local developer is offering. Please, ____ Corp, stop that! It is ugly, it is stupid and it hurts my eyes!

I would recommend that designers try a little harder at the externals, by pulling and pushing at the elevation, to try and get a more nuanced facade. Pull the external wall back to gain space for a semi-recessed balcony, or push it forward to project a window-bay outward. Pick the right facade cladding system and make sure that it all ties together. This is the most important decision in your building’s life. Treat it well now and it will look wonderful for years. Treat it badly now, and like a sick patient with a bad doctor, it will never recover. Doctors can bury their failures — all that we can do is plant ivy, and there is a lot of ivy being planted at the moment in some parts of town! Have a talk with your rep from The Building Agency about the availability of their great range of cladding options. Pick the best cladding that your budget can afford, and aim for decent longevity and stunning good looks. 

One highly important thing to go with your material choice is the age-old question of proportion. We all know that what is driving the design is mainly money, and that items are getting placed by a design formula, but still: proportion counts. For a start, examine the position of the windows within the facade, and how they relate to each other in two dimensions, as well as three. If you have one door and a window downstairs, and a simple two windows up above, these units all make a pattern. Position these four parts of the pattern so that they make a pleasing composition, both horizontally and vertically. Play around with their orientation and their resulting sizes. Difficult, I know, because these also have a strictly functional role, but we have to play three-dimensional chess, or perhaps a version of Tetris, to ensure that the final composition locks in tight and looks great. Don’t just design by plan — plan by plan, section, and elevation as well.

Too many developers and their lackey designers are letting dollars get in the way of beauty. That composition you design will be around for a long time before someone pulls the plug and decides to demolish, so your five minutes of design here can work marvels for the next fifty years. Make something beautiful for us all to enjoy. Let’s also make the windows really functional while you’re here. We wrote a bit about windows in Medium, the book sensation of 2022 and 2023, but it is worth restating some design aspects. Obviously, design them well to look out of, but also remember that other people will be looking in. There is zero point in having full height windows form floor to ceiling unless you have a stunning view out the window, so aim for them to only start above 900 off FFL. That allows the resident inside to arrange their furniture how they wish, and stops us casual passers-by to avoid seeing their assorted collection of tat. Make a nice broad windowsill, to be enjoyed by you — and taken over by the cat.

Next, think about the opening panes in the window, letting in fresh air as well as sunlight and daylight. There are a lot of awning windows being specified, but for the life of me I cannot figure out why. They are appalling at letting air in, or catching a cooling breeze, when the opening is facing downwards. Yes, they are great at being able to be left open when you go out for the day, in case it rains while you are away (four times a day in Auckland), but they are inevitably fitted with those horrid width restrictors to stop small children climbing out, or small skinny burglars climbing inwards. That renders them somewhat useless as a well-functioning window. 

A far better system, in my ever humble opinion, is to have twin casement windows, with hinges allowing the sashes to open out, one facing this way, the other facing the other way, to better catch the prevailing wind. Design them so that width restrictors will not be needed, and so that you can throw open the windows wide and bask in the sun pouring through. Yes, of course, you will be carefully selecting the best window system, hopefully with double-glazing and thermally-broken window frames, and you will be spending hours working up the details so that they perfectly tie in with the cladding and the flashings as well. But please, spend a wee time more to make sure that they are beautifully proportioned as well. I sit here now in my house, looking out a beautiful sunset, through a window that was designed with the Golden ratio in mind (ratio of 1 to 1.618 as discovered by the ancient Greeks), with a perfectly square window in the centre, flanked by a slim casement window either side, all set in a divine Golden ratio. Somehow, it makes the sunset look even more beautiful when looked out thorough this window. Take my advice: Euclid, Pythagorus, Fibonacci, Vitruvius and Palladio can’t be wrong. True beauty lies in the proportions.