The days of “Living Large” may be numbered. House design is changing. We might soon be bragging that we’re “Living Small.” With the current economic conditions, we are seeing our dreams and desires in a whole new light. High energy costs, environmental concerns, maintenance costs and the cost of the house itself are strong motivators to reevaluate one’s needs and create a house design that responds to those needs.

    I think the best way to reduce your living space is to write out what we architects call a “program.” This is the first thing i do when doing a house design. This is a list of needs and desires plus a target size for the spaces you want. It’s a good idea to multiply out the areas of these rooms, include hallways, closets, stairs, and other small spaces and add them up to get a total. Take that total and multiply it by 1.15 to add 15% for the area the walls themselves take up. You’ll end up with the total square footage your house design will need to include all that you want. If this total is too much, go back and reevaluate what rooms and spaces you included. Trim out the excess. I discuss this process at length in my book, Designing Your Perfect House. A good, well thought out program will become your road map to the right sized house design. (more…)

Today, we awoke to a freak snowstorm here in Raleigh, North Carolina. I say “freak” because any snow is a rare occurrence in this part of the country. Snow in January is a novel concept in the southeast. Everything, and I mean everything was closed. We were crippled by Mother Nature.

 When the flakes stopped falling, we had about six inches of nice, clean snow on the ground. I put on my tennis shoes (I don’t have boots anymore since I moved south) and found my gloves (they were in my golf bag where I left them following a chillier than usual round a few weeks ago) and set out to clear the snow. I don’t use a snow shovel any more. I’m not sure I still have one. I use my leaf blower, instead. It works surprisingly well. It fluffs up the snow and blows it away almost without a trace. I cleared my sizeable driveway in a little over an hour. The best part is my back doesn’t hurt! 

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The birth of “Building Green” arguably happened in Austin, Texas in the 1970’s. There’s a good article in Ecohome about Austin’s sustainable building program and their continuing progress. But the trigger for Austin may not have been what you might have guessed. Here is the first paragraph of the article by Jeffery Lee:

Austin, Texas – the state capital and home to the University of Texas – has long been known as a liberal bastion in a conservative state, and the city’s residents are renowned for their environmental consciousness. But it wasn’t the community’s mind-set that led to the establishment of the nation’s first comprehensive green building program; it was a nuclear power plant. (more…)

    I think that sometimes people are surprised I have done work in many states, including Hawaii. Unlike builders, architects do not have to be located around the corner from the construction site. It is easy to reciprocate my architectural license so as to allow me to practice almost anywhere in the world. This is a nice fringe benefit of working hard in school and getting all the proper credentials in order. Of course, I do a lot of my work nearby. It makes site visits more convenient and it helps to have several projects in the same vicinity for efficiency. But sometimes a very interesting project will come up and I’ll travel long distances to design it. I like the excitement of something new and different.

    Hawaii is over five thousand miles from my office. But when a relative of a previous client called me from Tokyo and asked if I would be interested in doing a project in Hawaii, how could I say “no?” I met the property owners at the beachfront site on Oahu and we agreed to work together. These days, with e-mail, digital cameras, the internet, and overnight delivery, moving information long distances is easy. I made many trips to Hawaii for design meetings, site visits, and contractor meetings, but the process went along in much the same way as it would have if it had been an hour’s drive from my office. (more…)

Are you planning on designing a new house? Or are you buying a house in a development and picking a house design and floor plan from the half dozen the developer is offering? Or are you searching for the right house design and plan from the thousands and thousands that are offered for sale? If you fit into any of these categories, there is one critical first step you should take.

Probably the most important thing must do before even looking for floor plans is to write a “program” for your new house. Before architects begin a design, we write out a list of the required spaces or rooms, target room sizes, and desired characteristics and features for each room. This list is called the program. It is essential your goal for your house design. Lesson Eight in my book, Designing Your Perfect House, we discuss how to do this properly and effectively. (more…)

    Designing stairs is more intricate task than many people realize. And it’s not just about how the stairs look. Proper proportioning is critical to comfort and safety. Set the tread and riser sizes carefully. For  I recommend 10″ treads with a one inch nosing. The nosing is the projection forward of the tread beyond the riser below. The riser is the vertical portion of the step. I try to keep the riser height under 7 1/2“, preferring to end up with about 7 1/4″ if I can. We’re all getting a bit older and the fraction of an inch can really make a difference in how a staircase feels. On a house with the now fairly common ten foot ceilings, 18 risers will give you risers of about 7 1/3″. If you have a situation where you want to further reduce the riser height to fit a particular situation or if you have bad knees, you can go by the old “Rule of Thumb” that said the riser and tread dimensions, when added together, should equal 17.  So 6 1/2″ risers would be combined with 10 1/2″ treads for maximum comfort. But there are always exceptions to Rules of Thumb, of course. (more…)

     People tend to not place enough emphasis on the lighting in their homes. It is often taken for granted and as a result, it is poorly designed.  There are lots of things you can do to reduce your electrical costs, improve the quality of the lighting in your home, avoid construction cost over-runs, and make your house more “green.”

      Natural day-lighting is something that has been under appreciated and undervalued in recent decades. But the current renewed concern about green building and high energy costs have changed that thinking. A good architect can help you orient your house properly on the land to maximize the benefits of free day-lighting without resulting in overheating of the house in summer months. In a well designed house, you should not have to turn on your electric lights during a sunny day. Simply placing windows on the southern walls (in a northern hemisphere site) will gain significant daylight, but the costs to cool the house will soar as the house will overheat badly. You will give up more energy money than you will save. Properly designed overhangs are needed, deciduous plantings, and sometimes shutters or shades can be used to maintain control over the natural lighting in your home. Indirect, reflected daylight is best. Direct sunlight is to be avoided. In addition to the heat gain direct sunlight can give, fabrics and carpets can fade under the intense rays of direct sunlight. (more…)

      Do you want to control your homebuilding costs? Do you have electrical plans for your new house? Many stock plans show some electrical information, i.e. the location of switches, light fixtures and electrical outlets. Chances are this layout will not meet your needs, if you have a plan at all. One of the primary sources of homebuilding cost overruns is in the electrical work. If you do not have a well defined, complete plan that shows every switch, which lights each one controls, every electrical outlet, every telephone jack and every television jack, you will not have a guarantee that the contractor is planning on providing what you want in his contract price. I’ve seen people add numerous additional devices only to be shocked when the electrician tallies up the final total and presents the customers with a bill for the extras. Even if the cost is only $30 or $40 per device, they can add up fast and you’ll find yourself with thousands of dollars of homebuilding costs you never anticipated.

      Many electricians base their price on the number of junction boxes they install. Each switch, each electrical outlet and each light fixture counts as one box. So if you add an overhead light and a wall switch, this counts as two boxes. Usually, the location of the boxes does not matter. It is the number of boxes that is critical to your homebuilding costs. (more…)

    Good design must have an organizing concept. But even with a good concept, a house can have all the right finishes, the best materials, the finest appliances, everything can be as perfect as it can be-and yet, the house still doesn’t feel right. Why doesn’t it feel like home?

All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.”-Philip Johnson     

    If you asked me to give you a short answer to the question, “What will make a house be my perfect house?” I would have to say this: Everything should just seem to be in the right place. Unfortunately, the word “seem” is pretty vague. So it follows that the characteristics that will create Your Perfect House are subjective, and the concepts are sometimes difficult to grasp. These are the immeasurable, unquantifiable aspects of architectural design. (more…)

I recently was asked a question from a person in Philadelphia about how to deal with a very high ceiling in a living room. Here’s the question:

  My nineteen-eighties condo has a 19′ ceiling in the living room that merges with the dining area where the ceiling drops to eight feet. The 19′ fireplace wall is in the corner. Is there any way to make the scale of this 19′ tall room more human? I have purchased numerous original oil paintings that go almost to the ceiling on the wall opposite the French doors. I’m beginning to question this technique. I feel there is so much wasted space that I wanted to make it interesting rather than just filled with air.

Here’s my answer:

Your dilemma with the high ceiling is one that we often face when there is a second floor overlook or balcony into a living room or great room. I can see that you have an appreciation for this problem already. (more…)