Pitched roof - gable roof - roof covering of Persepolis

 Gabled roofs are as potent a symbol of Americanness as apple pie: The roof typology and dessert are European, yet both are viewed as emblematic of national domesticity. So it’s meaningful that gabled roofs are experiencing a revival across North America in new variations and materials at a time when clients and communities tend to weigh each project’s social and environmental impact. After years of being viewed and taught as a feature at odds with Modern architecture, there seems to be a gable 2.0 emerging.

 It can completely fit in while still being innovative,” says Katherine Chia, principal of New York-based firm Desai Chia Architecture with Arjun Desai. Indeed. And while three examples of that innovation would usually suggest a trend; dozens viewed over the past few years signal an evolution—or at least that there’s an encouraging number of firms that have jettisoned binary thinking when it comes to American house styles. A middle ground is cropping up. سقف شیروانی

In Wisconsin, the Woven House by Bruns Architecture, for instance, “distills the shape down to a typical child’s drawing of the home, by overstating the gable and erasing the overhang,” says principal Stephen Bruns. Doing so gets rid of canned decoration that might otherwise make it a “caricature.” One continuous slate-looking material clads the structure from the roof’s peak to the graded ground— actually a composite made from recycled tires that functions as a rainscreen instead of a conventional eaves trough.

For a weekend house in Connecticut, Desai Chia recast the regional gabled barn typology in Japanese-style charred Kebony yellow pine wood siding known as shou sugi ban. Because they chose the gabled roof over something edgier—such as the undulating butterfly-shaped roofline they used on a different project, Michigan Lake House—the firm went to great lengths to find technology that could help reveal the form on the interior. Specially engineered framing by David Kufferman PE Structural Engineers allowed conditions that expose the steep vault created by the sloped roof, unobstructed by the usual trusses and beams. “It’s not like we want to be known as the pitched-roof architects,” says Chia of the extra effort needed to deploy the type here. In this case, she says, “it was relevant to being contextual.