An exeter, N.H. architect utilizes classic proportional systems to help clients build their dreams.

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What makes a home memorable? What ensures that a new house, room addition or complete renovation will be beautiful, comfortable, and still functional? What makes it feel like it was designed for you alone? We asked Tracy S. Platt, RA, AIA, of Platt/Hichborn Architects, P.A., for guidance.

 

“When the interior and exterior elements of a home are integrated, you feel it from the moment you go up the driveway,” says Platt, principal of the Exeter, NH firm he heads in partnership with his wife, Diane Hichborn Platt. “We work with clients to explore the nature of their space, how they move through it, and their personal needs so that it becomes a home customized for the way they live.”

 

Platt/Hichborn Architects, a mid-size, full-service design firm founded in 1991, begins each residential and commercial project with an open-minded approach: Ask the clients lots of questions, then listen carefully to what they say. Regardless of the project’s size, Platt/Hichborn’s goal is to give the client many options from which they can choose, and together design a home that is unified and timeless, one that family and friends will enjoy.

 

“Typically with a home, clients have not worked previously with an architect,” says Platt. “We take them through the process. If the project is a renovation, they often feel something is just not working for them, but they may not know why. Together we’ll explore aesthetics, and conscious and subconscious elements that come into play.”

 

Architecture, says Platt, is most aesthetically pleasing when its design adheres to classic proportional systems.” For centuries, these precise approachs to achieving proportion has been the basis of great music, mathematics and architecture. It goes back to at least 300 B.C., and has been credited as the basis of such diverse masterpieces as the Parthenon and Mozart’s music. “Extremely pleasing spaces are derived from the uses of various proportional systems,” says Platt. “It gives meaning to the design and creates an environment that is more than a structure, closer to a work of art.”

 

Platt Hichborn Architects

175 Water St. #1

Exeter, N.H. 03833

603 778-9503