It may be interesting to know where I come from and how it shapes my work. I grew up in rural Maine. I had friends who lived in houses with no running water, I never knew anyone with more than one bathroom in their house until I went to college, There was usually more than one kid to a bedroom. In the winter I walked the frozen shore line of the nearby lake, peaking into the windows of summer camps owned by the out-of-staters. In the summer, local kids worked 40 hours a week at the camps attended by kids from wealthy Massachusetts families and in the winter many of them worked 20 hours a week after school. I left Maine and attended college with kids who had gone to these summer camps, kids who had never held jobs. Culture Shock. Now I am comfortable in both worlds but I don’t feel that I truly belong to either. I definitely get uncomfortable when a client wants and can afford excess. I chomp at the bit when people “need” more than a one to one ratio of bums to toilets. Isn’t a 10 by 12 bedroom plenty big enough for little Johhny? A special room just to watch tv? On the other hand I love to design large homes that can accommodate several adults and packs of kids of all ages. A 10 by 12 pantry doesn’t seem so excessive to me and even sounds a bit small for a mudroom. Two sinks and two ovens in the kitchen? Why not! A 6 x 6 shower? Yes please and can I put the hot tub partly under the roof for when it snows? Can I heat it with solar panels on that roof? Sigh. These are some of the things that I think about while trying to be a brilliant up and coming young architect.
me
I just corrected some links on my website that send people to my blog - (they didn't)
I added this head shot of me to my blog because a magazine just requested it. I'm gonna be famous!
The True Measure of Good Design
I listened with interest and a level of cynicism to an NPR interview of a bunch of high school kids touring the solar decathalon houses on the Washington Mall this summer. They loved the houses, which were clearly modernist in design, and could happily envision themselves living in such a house. I say cynicism because in ten years when they are looking for their first house to buy, I bet they will be looking for something "phony colony" or "neo-traditional"(Architectural anachronisms) in a garage door dominated subdivision. These kids will grow up and get conservative. Or maybe not. I have been encouraged recently to hear that the baby boomer's kids are not neccessarily looking for houses like they grew up in. Green design is in, cool modern aesthetics are in, smaller footprints and better floor plans are in. natural light is important, neighborhood is important and not just for the quality of the local schools. A good measure of design is "would a twelve year old think it's cool?" This works for houses just as much as other forms of design such as automobiles and electronics.
Passive Solar, Super-insulated...heat system?
Houses are getting too complicated. There are many people living in New England in houses that are warm and comfortable and only heat with wood and passive solar. My friend Steve is such a person. His house was built in the early eighties with large windows on the south and a descent amount of insulation by eighties standards. The temperature in his house is always 70 degrees in the winter even though he usually only fires up the wood stove a couple times per day. He uses no other heat source. When you build a new house at any budget level, it seems to be not a question that there is a significant heat system. As an architect, I periodically go to seminars on super-insulated passive solar houses where I hear that radiant heat is overkill and that you should consider a simple type of electric (future photovoltaics) backup heat near the plumbing (but you may never use it). No heat system, radiant or otherwise is a very hard sell as an architect. Maybe I should take people to Steve's house and let him be the salesman.
Hiring an Architect
I tooled around the web and found a few informative sites relating to hiring an architect. Bob Vila.com, eHow, and Contractors.com Add these to my post "A Good Architect" and it should say about ninety percent of what I would say if left to ramble on for an hour or so. I like potential clients to call people who I have recently worked with to get a sense of what I do. Few people have any idea how involved it can be and why it's so worth it.
Three Types of Builders
I have often said that there are three types of builders. The first is the craftsman who does amazing finish work and is really more of an artist than a builder. These folks sometimes end up building a whole house but would probably be happier doing custom cabinetry. The second is the most common. These are builders who treat building as work, a job taught to them by their mentors. They are often stuck doing building methods that are somewhat out of date. A classic example of this is putting clapboards directly over building paper wrapped sheathing. Most of the time this works okay and they can get away with it. The third type of builders treat building as a profession melding art, science and craftsmanship. They read a multitude of professional journals, go to building conferences and network with other builders. These folks know that there is a lot of work currently being done around the northeast to repair buildings constructed in the eighties and nineties with clapboards that were not back-primed and installed over a rain screen to space it out from the building paper and sheathing, preventing moisture from escaping. These builders are willing to learn and adapt to the rapidly changing building industry. These builders drive the evolution of the building industry.
Bob's Barn
Here is a view of my barn so far. I am gradually building it to house my studio in the loft which will be super-insulated and heated with a wood stove and maybe a solar air heating panel to the right of the big windows. The big windows are out of an old factory and will have to be weather-stripped. I will also add polycaronate interior shutters and a big heavy curtain to draw at night. Downstairs left and center, I covered the studs with a greenhouse poly and I'm putting slatted siding over this with screws. El-cheapo moderist detailing that makes for a beautiful storage room inside.
April 4 note: I have spent $13,600 so far and will probably double that when all is said and done.
Slow Home movement
is an international movement devoted to bringing good design into real life. It takes its name from the slow food movement which arose as a reaction to the processed food industry. The sprawl of cookie cutter housing that surrounds us is like fast food - standardized, homogenous, and wasteful. It contributes to a too fast life that is bad for us, our cities, and the environment. In the same way that slow food raises awareness of the food we eat and how these choices affect our lives, Slow Home provides design focused information to empower each of us to take more control of our homes and improve the quality of where and how we live.
1. GO INDEPENDENT
Avoid homes by big developers and large production builders. They are designed for profit not people. Work with independent designers and building contractors instead.
2. GO LOCAL
Avoid home finishing products from big box retailers. The standardized solutions they provide cannot fit the unique conditions of your home. Use local retailers, craftspeople, and manufacturers to get a locally appropriate response and support your community.
3. GO GREEN
Stop the conversion of nature into sprawl. Don’t buy in a new suburb. The environmental cost can no longer be justified. Re-invest in existing communities and use sustainable materials and technologies to reduce your environmental footprint.
4. GO NEAR
Reduce your commute. Driving is a waste of time and the new roads and services required to support low density development is a big contributor to climate change. Live close to where you work and play.
5. GO SMALL
Avoid the real estate game of bigger is always better. A properly designed smaller home can feel larger AND work better than a poorly designed big one. Spend your money on quality instead of quantity.
6. GO OPEN
Stop living in houses filled with little rooms. They are dark, inefficient, and don’t fit the complexity of our daily lives. Live in a flexible and adaptive open plan living space with great light and a connection to outdoors.
7. GO SIMPLE
Don’t buy a home that has space you won’t use and things you don’t need. Good design can reduce the clutter and confusion in your life. Create a home that fits the way you really want to live.
8. GO REAL
Avoid fake materials and the re-creation of false historical styles. They are like advertising images and have little real depth. Create a home in which character comes from the quality of space, natural light and the careful use of good, sustainable materials.
9. GO HEALTHY
Avoid living in a public health concern. Houses built with cheap materials off gas noxious chemicals. Suburbs promote obesity because driving is the only option. Use natural, healthy home materials and building techniques. Live where you can walk to shop, school and work.
10. GO FOR IT
Stop procrastinating. The most important, and difficult, step in the slow home process is the first one that you take. Get informed and then get involved with your home. Every change, no matter how small, is important.
House Size, Square Foot Costs and Economy of Materials
or: Size Matters
I have some issues with the idea of building small which I will see if I can explain. I really appreciate Sarah Susanka’s book “The Not So Big House” but most of the houses she illustrates the book with are still fairly large. Yes, 2500 square feet instead of 4500 square feet is a good thing but it is still rather large and the jogs in plan and overly complicated roofs that many plans use to reduce the raw square footage seem wasteful.
Lets assume that you are at least meeting and hopefully exceeding energy codes. (remember these codes represent the bare minimum! - Vermont has an energy code although there is no residential building code in most towns) A simpler plan that is 20% bigger is not going to cost 20% more to heat and/or cool and it may even cost less. A simple form may also use fewer raw materials or at least result in less waste. Simple forms, particularly ones that have cleaner roof lines, are less likely to need renovation and repair in the long run.
I also like the idea of designing as much flexibility into a plan as possible so that a home is not just custom tailored to the current residents but will fit a wide variety and quantity of people over the next several hundred years. This often means adding a little more area to allow for multiple furniture layouts, the possibility of wheelchairs and walkers, age related issues on both ends of the spectrum, big dogs who like to sprawl in the middle of the most traveled route, the list goes on and on. There are a lot of small houses around here that were built to perfectly fit their tenants but I am often called in when the next person comes along and can’t fit. A good architect will help plan for the maximum amount of contingencies. This is a large part of the value an architect can add to the project and the subject of another blog entry someday.
A current project that had me thinking along these lines is a smallish house with a large floor plan. The main floor has 1060 square feet. I could knock out 160 feet fairly easily but the spaces would not be quite as flexible, a few tight spots would crop up, future possibility of a first floor wheelchair accessible bath would not be an easy retrofit, there would be less room around the woodstove for drying racks, the pantry would be smaller, necessitating more ($$) cabinetry in the kitchen, etc. The site is conducive to a walk-out basement. Since basements are required to be warm conditioned space (75% of the way toward finished space) I can use this space for bedrooms, offices, a play room, media room, storage or many other uses and it now officially becomes finished space (add 860 square feet) except for the utility room. Raising the roof by three feet and adding a few simple shed dormers allows me to use the attic space as well. We get lots of bang for the buck since we are building this house with structural insulated panels www.foardpanel.com so the loft or attic space is finished off anyway. (Add 675 square feet – some of the main floor has cathedral ceiling) Suddenly my small 1060 square house has ballooned to 2595 square feet and the only substantial visible difference is that the roof is three feet higher. When I look at square foot costs, they have gone way down. I have created a house 2 ½ times larger for about 25% more materials. The outward appearance of the house changes very little. The larger house is much more likely to serve the occupant’s changing needs without using more energy and few additional materials. Interestingly, the larger house will also be valued higher which, unfortunately, means higher taxes.
Size isn’t everything.
Fiberglass Windows
The more I learn about windows, the more I am sold on Fiberglass windows. Thermal rate of expansion issues are completely bypassed and I think this is the cause of most failures. The thermal performance of fiberglass frames is incomparable. For the Perry Road project we are looking at: Integrity by Marvin Windows - www.integritywindows.com
Acurate Dorwin out of Canada offers tunability of glazings so you can get more solar heat gain in our Northern climate on south facing windows (American windows are all about blocking heat gain. www.accuratedorwin.com
Fibertech - just started looking at these. www.fibertec.com
thermotech - these seem really nice but no double hung. Seems rather myopic to me. Around here we have our windows open 5 months of the year and sometimes you need a double hung
No idea of pricing and lead times yet.
I'll let you know how it goes
Concrete countertops
www.concretedetail.comWhy would anyone use granite or any of the stone composites when you can have concrete countertops created by a local craftsman? Drop dead gorgeous. www.concreteexchange.com for more pics of what concrete can be
What I want my blog to be
What I want to do with this blog
I have been thinking more about where I would like to go with this blog and I have looked at various other blogs that I keep an eye on. Some architecture blogs focus on criticism, some on products and some on the process of design. Since it is a “professional” blog I will try not to get too political and I will try not to spend too much time complaining. I will keep it semi-architectural but not devoid of opinions or personality. If you are a potential client, I hope you will gain some insight into how I work, what motivates me and, in general , who I am. These are things a client needs to know about their architect for a successful relationship and these are things a standard website may hint at, as I hope mine does. However, most of the other architect’s sites felt very exclusionary to me. Most of them seemed to be saying “don’t bother calling unless you are very wealthy and conservative” or “wealthy urban artsy intelligentsia only need apply”. Since much of my work is for average people who would never have considered hiring an architect if their builder or a friend hadn’t pushed them into it, I don’t want to strike that pose. If you are interested in the ramblings of an architect trying to make a go of it and do good work in rural Vermont than read on. I hope I can, at least provide entertainment.
If nothing else, maybe this blog will make me a better writer.
The purpose of my blog
Welcome, It occurred to me to use a blog as a counterpoint to the static, "look but don't touch" nature of an architects website. The website itself is more of a portfolio with a limited amount of carefully chosen text and pictures. Pretty, but the business of designing for people is much more of a dialogue. I hope to use the blog to explore the messy and wonderful world of design.
Stay tuned
