Pergolas in Dry Run, OH

Dry Run (ZIP 45244) is full of houses with a tall rear wall, often two stories of it with a lot of glass. A pergola standing in front of something that size has to be proportioned for it. So we settle the height before anything else on the sheet.

A pergola gives the household a room outdoors with a ceiling you can see the sky through. Posts hold a flat timber frame above the deck. It puts shade over the seating through the afternoon and draws an edge around the part of the yard people use. The rooms behind the glass get something to look out at.

How a pergola reads comes out of its width against its height. Twenty feet across at eight feet up reads as a lid. The plane takes over and the posts stop registering. The same twenty feet at nine and a half reads as a room. The up and down dimension is then close enough to the across one for the eye to see a volume.

Against a tall house that counts more than anywhere else. A low wide frame in front of a two story wall looks parked against the building, and the taller the wall the flatter it reads. Height is the lever and it is close to free. A foot on the posts is a foot of timber and no other change. The second lever is breaking the width: a twenty foot run with a post every ten feet reads as two bays with a rhythm.