If you drive around your town looking for the best residential addition, you probably won't find it. That's because a well-designed addition blends so perfectly with the original house that the whole structure looks as if it were built at one time. I call the result a "seamless addition." Seamless design seldom happens by accident. Pulling it off depends largely on a number of basic design concepts, of which the most important are massing, articulation, rhythm, scale, and proportion. Experienced architects and designers consciously use all of these elements to pull the parts of a building together. What Is Massing, Anyway? When an architect refers to massing, he or she means the gross shape of a building, as defined by
