The House With a Snout
Many suburban homes don’t hide their parking lots at all—their garages are front-and-center. Consider these so-called “snout houses”, then discuss with your team: have you seen any in your community, and would it be better if their garages were more hidden?
Drive through almost any new suburb and the first thing you see on every house is the garage door, jutting toward the street like a big snout — 'a house for a car, with a couple of rooms for the car's caretakers in the back.' These 'snout houses' put the vehicle, not the people, at the front of the home.
Key concepts
- The Snout House
- A home whose protruding front garage dominates the street view, pushing living spaces and entrance to the back — the car gets the prime spot; the people get what's left.
- Form Follows Function
- Things look 'right' when fit for purpose — a snout house looks off to many because it broadcasts that its purpose is storing a car, not housing a family.
- The Dead Street
- When every house presents a blank garage door to the sidewalk, the street loses the porches, windows, and faces — the human presence that makes a block feel alive.
- Car-priority Design
- The snout house is car-centric thinking at the scale of a home: the layout literally prioritizes the vehicle's convenience over the household's relationship to the street.
What to know
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01
A snout house announces its true priority — the most prominent feature from the street is car storage, so by 'form follows function' it looks strange because it honestly reveals the home is built around the car, not the people.
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