Friday, October 12, 2007

Design Process: Step 2

Our architect presented his proposed design with site plan, floor plans, elevations and perspectives.

We had a very positive reaction to the overall design, which had double butterfly roof over the main, rectangular module. We also liked the idea of a block "feature wall" which he proposed to continue inside the house, showing the exposed block.

We then reviewed the floor plan and how our room wish-list had been accommodated and found we had everything (excluding the garage) in approx. 2550 square feet.

He then asked us to take some time to go over the proposal
and we initially focused on our room size wish list -- rechecking why we arrived at such #s and and either getting comfortable with them or tweaking them.


We then reconsidered the house's double butterfly roof line and started to imagine ourselves in the rooms this covers.


Obviously, it will give us the high ceilings and light we want in the living/dining space but when we considered this in the rest of house it raised some questions. The first was how light would enter the smaller rooms like the laundry and the second bath. The second, more significant issue for us, was how much light would be entering all three bedrooms as we like dark bedrooms for sleeping and do not want have to devise window coverings for angled windows.


We decided to revisit this with our architect and seek advice on whether such a roof can work aesthetically if one chooses not to have glass in certain sections, or whether there are other roof designs that still give us a "feature roof" without so much natural light coming into the bedrooms.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Design Process: Step 1

Our architect asked for an initial 2 hr meeting to gain a good sense of our design preferences and the specific needs we want this house to meet – and that we should bring any relevant photos and anything else that would help.

We had prepared a wish list of desired rooms and their approximate sizes, in order to estimate the overall size of the house and also to get clear on what would be their min. and max. sq. footage. We had also found ourselves asking about, and noting, different room sizes as we toured the homes we looked at. Obviously he has to make all this fit together, so we need to be flexible, but the list was helpful as a basis for discussing our needs for this house.

The discussion beyond these more specific aspects was more intriguing as we sensed our architect wanted more specifics on our design choices -- beyond those house photos we had selected. So he asked us to comment on some pictures of elements of Palm Springs houses. Looking back, we feel we had possibly avoided getting too specific on design elements as we really want him have some freedom and potentially test us with ideas we may not have considered.

At our next meeting he will present “a freehand site plan, floor plans, elevations and perspectives,” as per his process.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Our green education

After looking at the various houses and a lot of reading, what "green" started to mean to us was 1) the opportunity to build an efficient house, in terms of heating and cooling, thus making a green contribution, and 2) to also select other products and materials that are appropriately green.

The efficient aspect was easy, starting with the use of tankless water heaters and radiant floor heating. Optimization of natural cooling opportunities through window selection and placement was another obvious aspect. Next was achieving efficient heating and cooling through solar-generated electricity and solar-heated water, both of which we had seen in some houses. Given our site, solar electricity quickly emerged as a fairly obvious choice, particularly as our long term plans for this home allow return-on-investment models with longer periods.

An inevitable question with such equipment is where it will be placed, as we do not want our home to have "racks" and other hardware projecting above those flat and/or slightly sloping roofs. Fortunately, we learned that for our site's solar orientation the solar panels can be placed almost flat with only a 5% reduction in efficiency.

As to the selection of other products and materials that are green, our architect has experience in these areas, plus our reading and research continues.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Designs in line with emerging preferences





Two of these houses have different roof levels within the one structure, and some of those roofs also have some slope -- something that interests us as we had began to think of our house as two modules, one with the garage, bedrooms and bathrooms, and the other for living, dining and the kitchen. Two also have clerestory windows, with high ceilings, a common feature in modernist houses. Also their frontage is broken up by how certain aspects are set back, plus none of them have elements that we feel would look out of date in the future.

Given these preferences, we inevitably like the following house, from the portfolio of our chosen architect who had also satisfied our other criteria.