Multi-Level Decks in Madisonville, OH

Madisonville (ZIP 45227) has a great many parcels with a street at both ends, and on one of those the back of the property is a street frontage in every sense that matters. A stepped deck there is not a private arrangement between two platforms. It is a piece of massing being read from a public way.

That changes which part of it people see. From inside the deck the level change is a step. From the sidewalk behind, it is a horizontal line partway up the structure, and the face between the platforms is a band of material at eye height across the whole width. So the thing that reads from the street is not the surface or even the railing. It is that face, and whether the two levels look like one designed object or like a deck with a piece added to it.

The useful part is that a stepped design generally reads better from a frontage than a single tall one does, for the same reason it does under a design review: the visible face is shorter and the upper level sits back. What it needs is the band at the step treated as an elevation rather than left as framing, with a continuous fascia and the boards finished over it. We draw the rear elevation as well as the plan on these lots, because the plan is not the drawing that answers the question.