Design Blog

Regional design considerations

My wife and I just returned from the Southeast.  Charleston, South Carolina, to be specific…hurricane country…hot…lot’s of bugs!  I found it very interesting how the design of the houses reflect the climate.  Here, in Bend, we tend to embrace the sun and warmth.  It is frequently cold here, so we design in lots of windows to the south to soak up as much sunlight as possible.  In Charleston, it is so hot that all the designs are geared for shading from the sun, and maximizing  the ventilation to keep it cool.  Large covered porches are on every house, usually screened to enjoy the breezes without being eaten by bugs.  This photo is taken of the house we stayed in on Sullivan’s Island.  It is one of the few houses that lived through Hurricane Hugo, which went right over the island in 1989.  You can see the screened-in, covered porch, which we lived on during the day.  You can also see the flooding considerations of this house when you see that the living area is raised up 10′.  Apparently, Hurricane Hugo had a 20′ tide surge with it, and the tallest point of Sullivan’s Island is about 10′.  It all makes sense.  Isn’t it fascinating how our structures adapt to our living environments?

Custom home designer=patience!

New clients frequently ask me, “How long will it take to complete the design?”  That is a little bit like asking ,”How long will winter last?”  My reply is usually that it depends on many factors.  If all goes well, it could take as little as a few months.   But then I add that I have had projects that have lasted years!  Obviously, no new client wants to hear that it could take years to design their house, but there are so many factors that are not in my control, that elapsed time has to be included as one of those factors.  Sometimes the client can’t make up his mind, and vacillates about minor revisions.  Others sometime just suddenly get too busy to respond in a timely fashion.  Some clients suddenly completely change their mind, and I almost have to start over.  One client actually took my design to cocktail parties, and had all his friends give feedback.  Every Monday morning I would receive a complete list of revisions from the week before!!

The illustrations here represent four different designs of the same remodel project.  In addition to these variations, this project was also the topic for a design class at OSU, which means that there were another six variations created for this project.  I think this one represents a record…about four years in the making!!  I have placed the illustrations in a chronological order so you can see how it has evolved. 

The point is that in the custom-home design field, part of the designer’s job is to have patience and flexibility.  The common goal is to come up with a design that fits the client in the best way possible, and make sure that the client himself feels the same way.

Think huge, but Use Little Space

The general consensus is that building design has to change in today’s market.  More than ever before, people are trying to reduce their carbon footprint and save money.  One basic way to do this, without falling into a dependency on expensive, trendy, high-tech gadgets that will hopefully monitor your house performance, is to simply modify the design to achieve the same effect with less square footage.  If you make houses smaller, then you will save money in construction, reduce your carbon footprint, and save money heating and cooling your house. With all the savings, you can still get that expensive, trendy, high-tech gadget to monitor your house.

There are many ways the design can meet your needs without using a lot of square footage. Leaving more open volume, and letting the different functions of the house share space reduces the need substantially.  This is an old concept that is best illustrated by the Great Room concept.  The kitchen, living area, and dining area all share the same volume, which gives the sense of a large, open space.  But the reality is that if you separated those functions with walls, you would find that the spaces are very small individually.

You can go a step further, and actually build in different functions within the great room area.  For instance, a built-in desk off the kitchen, or living space, adds a minimal office to the house.  Make it a roll-top desk, and you can shut the mess of the office off from the rest of the space; just like closing a door.

Transitional space eats up square footage without really gaining anything.  Transitional space is defined as “space needed to get from point A to point B”.  Hallways are a prime example of transitional space.  If you can eliminate halls, then you can  eliminate a lot of area.  If you can overlap transitional space, you can also save a lot of square footage.  Grouping bedrooms around only a small vestibule eliminates a lot of useless footage.  Or, instead of using a separate hall, use a portion of the living room to move to another space. 

By using less square footage, possibilities open up for using simple structures in new and creative ways.  A simple shed roof allows sunlight where the roof and ceiling are the highest.  The interest to that space is enhanced dramatically without increasing the budget substantially.  More emphasis can now be put into the finishes, both exterior and interior, giving the house a personality that is fitting with the owner.

Now, I am not saying that you cannot design a large house anymore.  But just keeping in mind the benefits of a smaller house will affect your perspective of how to spend your money.

It is in the details

Most frequently, I find that the beauty of a house is in the details. How all the pieces of the puzzle go together is as important as the pieces themselves. In this picture, note how the windows are all tied together by the trim. This makes all the windows read as one unit. Then, how the roof beams interplay with the window trim ties everything together, turning a fairly basic geometry look like a work of art. Greene and Greene, brothers who were architects in the early 1900’s were masters of turning their designs into works of art. The house pictured here attempts to bring their artwork into the 21st century. It is the little things like this that make site visits during construction so rewarding.

Natural v Realistic

So, which drawing do you like better, the photo-real rendering, above, using actual photos of the site and a computer-generated rendering of the house super-imposed in the photo, or a hand rendering, below, which doesn’t depict the building like a photo, but gives the essence of the design? I personally don’t know. The photo real rendering has some definite benefits; like what the place should really look like. But the hand rendering has a certain …
je ne sais quois!! It is a piece of art!