Fireplace Design

Posted on: December 6th, 2010 | 2 Comments

In this Design Minute, Matthew North shows us the design details that went into the construction of the fireplace inside John Brown’s townhouse.

  • Kirk

    Nice work John and Matthew!
    I noticed the small television adjacent to the fireplace in Johns home. I am wondering if you can provide some comment on televisions mounted above fireplaces. From a design stand point, I suppose a stacked configuration is difficult to accomplish given that both the TV and fireplace would compete for prominence as the focal point of a composition. I haven’t seen any stacked TV / fireplace combinations that I have liked. Have you designed any other schemes incorporating an over / under fireplace and TV configuration.
    Regards
    Kirk

  • Matthew North

    Hi Kirk – thanks for posting your comment! It is tough to balance the composition of TV and fireplace – I think it is a harder feat to do this when the TV is above the fireplace. TV’s are getting bigger and the combustible clearances of fireplace units are also getting wider – this means the TV ends up being mounted higher above the fireplace. We have generally tried to lower the TV’s with our most recent designs to keep them about 12 – 15″ above the floor and put them to one side or the other of the fireplace. If you look at the Windsor design project that we did last week, we detailed the fireplace as a floor to ceiling drywall object and then placed the TV in a millwork unit to the left of fireplace. We use millwork doors to conceal the TV’s a lot – it just helps to simplify everything. You can see some other examples of TV/ fireplace compositions in the project gallery at http://www.housebrand.ca which is our architecture firm. Hope that helps – thanks for visiting the site!