By Design: Rethinking the Bay Window

I’ve worked as a residential architect for nearly 15 years now, and I have yet to meet a homeowner who doesn’t love bay windows. Bays are intimate, cozy, human-scaled architectural moments that can bring an otherwise mundane addition to life. But there are times when the traditional bay doesn’t work. An addition I recently worked on here in Minneapolis is a good example. The project was as straightforward as they come: a family room–mudroom–master suite addition to the back of a 1948 two-story Colonial revival. We wanted the addition to blend in with the existing house, so the addition’s overall form — the roof slope, eaves line, siding, and window size and