Inside a Contemporary Dogtrot Built to Catch the Breeze

On the South Carolina coast, Jane and Michael Frederick keep the center-hall breezeway that provided passive cooling in Southern homes for generations, then added folding glass walls to close it off when the humidity gets to be too much

By By Jane Frederick, FAIA, and Michael Frederick, AIA

June 24, 2026

6 min read

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Front porch of a contemporary dogtrot style home — The center hall of the dogtrot opens with a folding door with rectractable screens.

Editor's Note:

For decades, homes everywhere have started to look the same, with the same forms and same materials regardless of climate. Now, builders and architects are looking back to regional traditions, and in the process rediscovering what those forms already understood about the places they were built for.

With America's 250th birthday around the corner, it seems a fitting moment to consider how the country was built and revisit some of that knowledge. To kick things off, we present an excerpt from the book Contemporary Southern Vernacular by architects Jane Frederick (a former AIA president) and Michael Frederick.

Here, the Fredericks offer a short history of the Southern dogtrot (one of many traditional house types in the book), with its open central breezeway that channels wind through the house for passive cooling. Then, they show us how they reinterpreted that logic with modern materials and detailing in one custom home.

sketch of a traditional southern dogtrot home

The Dogtrot [House]

In his book Cotton Kingdom, Frederick Law Olmsted described a dogtrot he visited in Louisiana in 1850:

“The house was a double log cabin—two log erections, that is, joined by one long roof, leaving an open space between. A gallery, extending across the whole front, serves for a pleasant sitting room in summer.”

Olmsted, the founder of American landscape architecture and co-designer of New York City’s Central Park, had taken a few pre–Civil War tours through the South and wrote about it for the New York Times.

The dogtrot is traditionally a modest, one-story home commonly found throughout the South, even in northern Alabama and Tennessee. Early European settlers would start by building one room, then adding a second room and connecting the two under one roof. Usually, one building was the sleeping area and the other was the living area. Quite often, the kitchen was housed in a separate building out back due to the hot climate (and to guard against fire).

Sketch showing airflow in a traditional dogtrot home — The center hall between two buildings was traditionally designed to channel a breeze.

This form uses the middle open space between the two buildings to channel breezes by using the Bernoulli effect, a principle of physics where a change in pressure causes a better circular flow of air. In this form, outside breezes speed up as they flow through the channel created by the porch. And so, the home provides a very pleasant, shady place to sit during hot, humid afternoons. The form is thought to have gotten its name because dogs like to sit in the center space.

The following case study is a great example of our contemporary dogtrot design. Unique to the design, the center hall dogtrot space has folding doors on the front and back where the home can be opened to nature.

Case Study: Contemporary Dogtrot

This house is a true Southern-style dogtrot with a modern take, designed to optimize natural cooling while delivering expansive views, connecting the owners to their wooded surroundings. The lot is on a high bluff overlooking the May River in the development of Palmetto Bluff. We set the house back 80 feet from the bluff to provide a natural buffer and oriented it to capture the prevailing southwestern breezes. The natural landscape is composed of mostly native plant material and a few flowering nonnatives, particularly in the small formal garden between the house and garage. An existing live oak creates an archway that centers on the front door. The house is placed as far to the north as the site allows, to give ample space on the south for a bocce court and fire pit among the native vegetation.

The principal bedroom is on the northern side, with lots of windows to take advantage of the view to the river. The public rooms, the kitchen and family room, are on the south to connect to the exterior living and to allow for more privacy from their neighbors.

center hall of a modern dogtrot home — This center breezeway can be opened to the natural breezes or closed with folding doors and air-conditioned.

Our clients loved the idea of building a contemporary dogtrot—especially the concept of an open exterior space in the middle of their home—because the design looked and felt like it belonged on the property.

But it was the open middle space of the dogtrot home that was the unique part of the home’s design. Compared to a traditional dogtrot, this center breezeway can be opened to the natural breezes or closed with large folding doors and air-conditioned. Our clients can gauge the proper conditions for opening the large folding door for natural air circulation by the dew point, which measures the amount of water vapor in the air. When the dew point is 60 degrees or below, the conditions are right for natural air circulation. In the South, it is possible to open homes to fresh air four or five months out of the year.

sunroom in a modern dogtrot home — Folding central doors open completely on both sides of the home, creating a continuous opening that flows from the screened front door to the screened in porch in the back.

In the home, the interior walls on either side of the classic dogtrot opening are exterior walls, so the heat pump can run in the side interior spaces while doors in the middle of the house fold completely open on both the front and back. When open, this creates the classic dogtrot form: One opening runs from the front door with a retractable screen to the screened-in porch at the back of the house. In this way, the home literally lets the outside in, allowing the clients to enjoy natural breezes inside the home while spending time in nature. The home design beautifully connects them to the land and provides wonderful ways to enjoy the natural setting.

The house is sided with reverse board-and-batten cypress siding. This detail creates an airspace that allows the wall to dry between the water barrier layer and the siding. Notice that every window and door are laid out so the narrow batten is the jamb trim. The owners are boat lovers, so the natural stained-wood windows, doors, and ceilings appealed to their aesthetic.

An abundance of natural light is provided with north- and east-facing skylights, high windows in the open dogtrot space, large windows, and the glass folding doors. A zinc roof provided a soft heat-reflective surface that varies its color as the light changes throughout the day.

Excerpted from Contemporary Southern Vernacular: Creating Sustainable Houses for Hot, Humid Climates by Jane Frederick and Michael Frederick. Copyright 2025 by Jane and Michael Frederick. Reprinted by permission of Schiffer Publishing.

Jane Frederick, FAIA, was the 2020 president of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), was awarded the AIA South Carolina Medal of Distinction in 2023, and is a LEED-accredited professional. Jane and her husband, Michael, established their firm, Frederick + Frederick Architects, in Beaufort, S.C., in 1989.

Michael Frederick designs AIA award–winning custom residences that provide lasting value and celebrate the South’s architectural and natural heritage. He is a member of the AIA and is both an LEED-accredited professional and a Living Future–accredited professional.