For any architect, scale and proportion are the two skills that are seemingly the most challenging to master. Get it right and nobody will notice. Get it wrong and prepare yourself to be run out of town.

For any architect, scale and proportion are two skills that appear to be the most challenging to master. Scale and proportion are also where a good architect makes their living. I know coming out of school, the thing I was the most terrified about was screwing up the scale of whatever it was I was working on. I can remember losing sleep as I fretted over the size of the pipe columns in the first project I ever designed by myself in the real world (read: The Best Project Ever Designed That Wasn’t). It might not seem like a big deal to others, but I spent a lot of nights worried that my 2″ pipe column was visually too thick for the door it was holding up.The struggle is real as far and scale and proportion go.These days, I’d like to think that I’ve got this scale and proportion figured out and I don’t worry that I’ve made some terrible mistake. More times than not, I can just look at something I’ve drawn and I’d know if something was off. A good case in point is the gable vent I recently designed for a house in Dallas that I am currently working on. This vent isn’t required for performance reasons, I needed it to help break down the scale of the brick gable elevation at the garage and the Master Bedroom wing. This particu...