Why Hire an Architect?

What would I like to say to a client who asks: “why should I hire you to design my ______?” Because you will get a better _____ for the same amount of money if you pay me a small percentage of the money to bring your _____ project to a higher level of perfection than you could achieve on your own (or by hiring one of my competitors of course!). This is my short and arrogant answer that I really want to give.

“Define better” the potential client replies.

To start with, we will create a more graceful and elegant floor plan and overall design that works on a functional level in tune with your lifestyle, the site and environment, the cultural and historic context, local vernaculars and building norms. We are going for a level of fit that can be surprising to a client who has spent time working on their own plans for a while or spent time surfing the net in search of the perfect plan.

The cleanest and simplest plans are often the easiest and least expensive to build as well as the nicest to live with. I see many plans that look as if a battle took place to try to achieve the client's goals because the designer couldn't figure out how to incorporate the client's full wish list smoothly. The end result is needlessly complicated. There are a million tips and tricks to simplify and save money. A good start is always to simplify form and detailing. Easier said than done. Once the process of refining a long list of needs, wants and desires into a simple, clear design has been achieved, the design seems obvious. I have sometimes presented the client with a simple scheme that so thoroughly and smoothly addresses their concerns, it gives no hint of the time and effort required to get to that point. (Not so good when you present a bill for the actual hours involved.)

Also, simply knowing how things are going to get built by the contractor – using familiar methods and details - equals cost savings and smoother construction sequencing. When it comes to “green building” and “building science” there is a lot of separating the wheat from the chaff to be done and the field is in constant flux. I don't claim to be a green building expert but knowledge of what questions to ask and where to find the answers (if there are any) is part of the service I offer as an architect. Again, simplification is usually the best route.

There is also the architect's role during construction. Construction contract administration is an important part of the architect's services. Occasionally my role ends with the handing off of the final plans other than a site visit or two and some email communications and phone calls during construction. This can be fine for small and simple projects but for a project of significant size and complexity such as a new house or major addition or renovation this usually proves to be a mistake. The smoothest projects are when I remain involved through construction. I was involved with a project a few years ago where the builder was not shy about calling me and asking lots of questions as well as scheduling site visits. He was more “on top of things” than most builders I have worked with and would often ask the question: “what is the design intent” which I really appreciated as it spurred a very collaborative process where we both came out feeling that we had gained valuable knowledge and insight. It resulted in a very cohesive and beautiful final result as well as a very smooth and fun process to that point. On projects where I am less involved during construction the end result varies more. Sometimes with less than desirable results. Regardless of the level of my involvement during construction, I have learned to always put out the most complete and well vetted plan sets that I am capable of. No “light” versions from me. Plan sets that are incomplete or minimally complete are fraught with potential time consuming and expensive problems. The best builders are aware of these issues and insist on a complete set of construction documents as well as my involvement during construction.

This is what I want to say to every potential client but don't always manage to very well so I'm writing it down here and filing under “working with an architect” as well as “ego”

MA Mod new photos

I added a page to my website called MA Mod with a few photos from a recent project.I will be doing a post soon on construction administration - what it is and why you should hire your architect to provide this service

Stewardship

We have a cemetery on our land with two skeletons in it.

This will probably be an excellent source of terror for our kid at some point. We also have the stone foundation of the house where they lived over 100 years ago. The barn foundation is across the road. There are some old rusty sap boiler parts and masonry from a “sugar shack” where they (or someone) boiled maple sap into syrup. Of course, stone walls are everywhere and often serve as property lines. The soils are rich to the south of our house where a hundred years ago or more cows where probably pastured. These soils now sustain sugar maples, black cherry, and ash trees. The soils to the north probably never saw intensive livestock farming are are thinner and less rich. White pine, red maple and birch grow there. With some exceptions, none of our trees are over 100 years old. There are several other cemeteries on our sparsely populated road and the uninhabited valley to the Northeast of our land has many old cellar holes where houses and even an inn once stood. All the land was completely cleared of trees a long time ago. We cleared an acre and a half of the woods for a field where we play, grow fruit trees, watch stars and with occasional success, garden. The sense of the history of the land is strong as is the feeling that we are new to the land and very temporary. People will be on this land and changing it long after we are gone. I think of buildings the same way. If we are building structures that we hope to last for two hundred years or more we need to look at more than just the needs of the current occupants (clients). I think this is an oft overlooked tenant of “green design”. If I design an ugly building because the client insists on it, will the building be torn down in thirty years time because others can't stand to look at it? And do all the “green” bells and whistles included to make the building use less resources and energy really matter at that point? Historically, beauty and function where given equal billing here in New England which is why we have such a rich heritage of historic architecture. We now seem to be emerging from an architectural period where we let engineers and developers design our buildings into a more collaborative effort where those trained to look at beauty, history and function with a more long term approach (architects) are working with people schooled in the more functional aspects of a building's performance. Architecture should be more about stewardship and legacy than lists of user needs, green features and feasibility studies.

My History

since high school for anyone interestedI thought I'd write down a bit about my life since high school (over 26 years now) (!) in a very abbreviated form. After high school I spent a year at Bridgeton Academy, a post graduate prep school, taking college level courses simply because I didn't do very well in high school and wasn't ready to figure out college yet. I then spent a year at Castleton State College in Vermont where I studied art and business with an eye toward a dual degree. That was a fun year and I spent a lot of time skiing on the nordic team but I found the art program lacking in rigor. I then got a summer job at a civil engineering firm in Portland, ME which turned into a 15 month gig. Then I applied to architecture school. (what I had wanted to do all along but never thought I could get in) There wasn't much to choose from in terms of architecture schools back then for a poor kid from rural Maine. I went to the architecture school at Roger Williams University and found the rigor and intensity that I had been looking for. I did very well and graduated from Roger Williams with a Bachelor of Architecture 5 year professional degree (BArch) 8 years after high school. After all that time in school, I graduated with considerable debt in the form of credit cards and student loans. Which meant no Europe for me - I had to get a job and fast. I had sent out a million resumes and had an interview at a small firm in Brattleboro, Vermont before I actually graduated. I immediately fell in love with Brattleboro and packed up my van the day after graduation, came to Vermont and lived in a campground until I found a small apartment. I worked at the Brattleboro firm for a year and realized that I really needed to build for a while to better understand how to be an architect. This led to the next 6 years or so working for a small building firm designing and building several new houses and a myriad of smaller projects. I tell people that this was my version of graduate school. Periodically, I took time to work for other architecture firms, pecking away at the internship required before sitting for all the exams necessary to become an architect. Demand for my design skills led to full time work before I had my license and over the past decade I have been mostly self-employed doing design work and occasional general contracting. Much of my work comes from local builders with whom I've worked in the past and much comes from my internet presence including this blog. Although I sometimes regret not heading into Boston or New York, wearing only black clothing and small rectangly glasses and working for a hip and cool firm before heading north into Vermont, I am mostly satisfied with my choice.

I rather miss hand drafting sometimes

Peter Q. Puppy August 1(ish) 1999 to July 20, 2011

Peter Q. (q for cute) Puppy, my constant companion over the last decade passed this summer after a year of decline due to a degenerative spinal condition which, thankfully, was painless but resulted in his becoming gradually paraplegic. I spent the last year helping him go outside to take care of his business, inventing new ways to play ball, carrying him up the stairs to my office and generally staying close to home and never leaving his side. He maintained a good attitude to the last, taking it all in stride. He is now buried in a pine box next to his big brother Mason who we buried three years ago on our property in Halifax, Vermont.

Tiny House update

Styles

I have been thinking a lot about traditional vs. modern home design. These terms are gross oversimplifications and this is the categorization of style issues I like to complain about. In the eyes of the populace it seems that modern still connotes white boxy houses with flat leaky roofs. Traditional has become a bastardized cheapened re-interpretation of the older houses found in the neighborhood. Architects working in the modern style used to be “out of touch”, overly intellectual”, “never swung a hammer”. Few are that anymore. Builders used to be scholars of the vernacular and learned the rules of convention and proportion in addition to construction . That mostly went out the window decades ago. Speaking abstractly, when I look at a pleasing-to-the-eye older house in Brattleboro, say a two family Greek Revival, I see an interplay of proportion, traditional details and an overall set of rules. A successful modern building would not try to copy this but instead perhaps be more true to available building materials and methods and not try to engage in historical fakery.

A successful modern building would still need to play by a set of rules even if those rules have been updated considerably in the last 100 years. Although some of the more mathematical rules such as the golden section seem to stand outside the progression of time and are perhaps more to be thought of as universal truths.

Think Music

In music there are definite rules that nearly all styles play by; scales, rhythms and harmonics to name a few. In the past, music styles have been greatly segregated. In modern times the separating walls have eroded. Musicians now draw on a wide variety of influences and new music is increasingly hard to categorize according to style. The internet has accelerated this phenomenon greatly and the music world is experiencing an artistic renaissance. The world of residential architectural design is as well although at a slower pace. The average 35 year old new home buyer has probably been exposed to modern design much more than a generation ago. The house that their parents wanted in House and Garden magazine is not necessarily what the younger generation, who are more likely to peruse design focused websites on the internet or subscribe to Dwell, want anymore simply because they have seen the alternatives. Although developers and the banks seem a bit slow to recognize this there are exceptions.

Like any good musician, an architect must continually practice the fundamentals. In my case that means studying and working within the successful local vernacular and try to do it in a scholarly way without being too anachronistic. And occasionally I am given license to fly!

Bicycles! form and function

When I was in high school I spent more time ogling bike catalogs than studying. I was drawn to the art and science of bicycles. I liked riding too and did a fair amount of racing. I subscribed to bike magazines and learned about the Tour de France and the Alps and Pyrenees, form and function, I learned about strengths of ferrous metals, I learned about health and nutrition. But mostly I just liked to look at bicycles. In a big rural Maine high school that labeled me as weird, at least by those who noticed which was practically nobody. Of course there were the lycra riding shorts ... I still ogle bikes and am fascinated with the whole evolutionary process I have witnessed over the last 30 years in bicycle design. High end professional level bikes used to cost $1500 in 1985. Now they cost 7 to 10 k. Bikes used to be made out of steel with lugs holding the tubes in place (mine still is) Now they are also made from titanium and carbon fiber. High end bikes used to weigh 22 lbs, now they weigh 15 lbs. Oh and mountain bikes didn't exist in 1985. Here are some ogle worthy images. A Campagnolo Super Record equipped Bianchi (Italy) from about 1985

Modern Bikes:

Fern House Plans

$150 Now for sale here ! The plans are ready for sale and now include a sketchup model. Several have already been constructed from the plans. pay with personal check to Robert Swinburne at 72 Cotton Mill Hill, Brattleboro VT 05301 or paypal - robertswinburne@gmail.com

Tiny House in Context

Until I have as built construction photos this will have to do. I put the Brattleboro tiny house in context replacing the garage behind Vermont Simple House 1 on sale at houseplans.com. I am readying tiny house for sale there as well.

Building Science II - FaceBook conversation

What follows is a discussion from Bluetime Collaborative's Facebook page. For those of you who don't know, Bluetime is Vermont Architect. It represents the increasingly collaborative nature of running a small architecture business.

Bluetime Collaborative: I just attended a mini seminar at Building Green with Peter Yost on wall and roof systems - moisture management. something of a recap for me but what I think about are how many architects and builders are still doing things the way they were 10 or 20 years ago.

Bluetime Collaborative: I think what I got out of it was that we need to think more in terms of systems rather than simply products. There is a huge amount of information and discussion out there that most builders and architects are ignoring at their own peril.

Bluetime Collaborative: Remember building is a science, codes represent bare minimums and are always ten years behind the science, r-value is but a small part of a system

Dave: Bob, what is their wall/roof system recommendation?

Bluetime Collaborative: it boils down to air and moisture management and dealing with them as separate issues. ideal systems may differ from practical systems. (what would you do on your own house -vs-what would you design for someone else to build. Always know where your dew point will be to prevent failures. (LOTS of failures in the northeast in recent years) walls need to dry to the inside and outside. Air condiitoning introduces a whole new set of parameters. Boston based Building Science Corp is a good place to start. Insulation is what you add when everything else is done right. Systems management means there are tons of great and products out there and tons of hype, but little knowledge of how to put them all together as a system to minimize risk. Have a lawyer design your details ;-) they will research the science and design no minimize risk. Or design like a lawyer...

Dave: What's the current though on closed-cell foam? I like what it does for creating a very tight envelope but question what happens when water works its way into the wall. Open cell scares me - I have seen it blacken with mold because of infiltration at a roof.

Bluetime Collaborative : worth further investigation I would check greenbuildingadvisor.com - I have been lucky to never have used open cell. I hear it isn't great. I have used closed cell in a flash and batt situation often. It works very well with my double stud wall system and has lots of advantages. The key seems to be to flash thick enough so the dew point doesn't happen at the sheathing and look at the overall wall in terms of how it can dry out. (always assume things will get wet) For instance; vinyl wallpaper doesn't allow for drying to the inside.

Dave : Fine Homebuilding just had an article on the flash and batt approach. I was apprehensive when I read it thinking it would only be marginally more to fully spray the walls. I'm hoping to do closed cell on our house but it will come down to a budget decision.

Bluetime Collaborative: Flash and batt is usually cheaper enough to make the decision clear. A timing advantage in the fall is that you can flash, then all the subs do their thing in a warm heatable environment then fill in right before sheetrock. Probably the best performing system involves 2" of rigid outside (depending on where you live) with cellulose inside but detailing is tough - learning curve. Window manuf. are now adding exterior jamb extensions to their options.

Dave: I've seen that exterior insulation detail in Building Science Corp's books but have never done it before. Flash and cellulose is an interesting combination.

Matt : Bob, which window manufacturers? Thermotec? Also, this is a killer blog entry. I'm not buying flash & batt at all, especially with less than 2" flash coats; flash & pack ... maybe... better continuity, fewer gaps, between the lumpy foam and the cellulose than batts. I can't agree more on the theme of systems over products. I do construction estimating for a building supply company. I see 8-10 plans a week. The scariest thing I see right now is a la cart use of new products without regard to the system.

Matt: Actual construction document examples: taped 1" XPS over taped ZipWall with 5" cavity OPEN CELL, continuous Grace Ice & Water shield over closed-cell rafter bay insulation (Grace has even published a report advising against this), and 9" rafter bay closed-cell under a flat roof (mostly egregious because there are a dozen known more practical ways to deal with that).

Bluetime Collaborative: yikes!

Bluetime Collaborative: I should clarify and perhaps my terminology is wrong. By "Batt" I do mean a blown in dense pack cellulose or even fiberglass not batts. Does anybody use those anymore? (sarcasm)

Bluetime Collaborative: When I look back over the past ten years at my own work I see an interesting progression from 2 x 6 walls with fiberglass batts, poly vapor barrier and no questions asked to now where each house I do is a bit different and I spend much time investigating the options including what I can sell to the owner and what the contractor will actually build as well as what the budget will allow.

Dave: Bob - What is your "ideal" wall and roof system?

Bluetime Collaborative: as of today or what will it be next week? performance wise all foam on the outside with an empty 2 x 4 wall cavity inside.

Bluetime Collaborative: practical (cost /benefit analysis) double 2 x 4 stud 8 to 10" deep with 1 1/2" foam outside taped. up and over the roof if possible too.

Dave: With that much foam outside how to you detail door and window penetrations economically?

Bluetime Collaborative: that was my ideal performance scheme - not cost effective or very easy to detail. you see it sometimes on European passive house projects, often with the windows set to the inside face of the wall for increased thermal performance. Practical is 1 1/2" xps foam outside, (1" doesn't get the dew point out of the sheathing) and dense pack cellulose in the cavity. The question then becomes whether to set the windows and doors to the sheathing or block them out to the outside of the foam and strapping. (complicated layering and flashing) fortunately some window manufacturers are addressing this as I mentioned before with exterior jamb extensions. I also have a detail to allow an inswing exterior door to be mounted to the outside but still open nearly all the way. You can see it in the "Tiny House Plan for Sale"

Matt: Dave, if you want to see details on the 'all outside the wall' insulation plan you can download the REMOTE wall manual or look into the Canadian PERSIST method.

Matt: http://www.cchrc.org/

Bluetime Collaborative: foam on the outside works to get the dew point away from the sheathing but what about the ability of the wall to dry to the outside? I still have too many questions. I'm going to find a building scientist, knock him down and sit on his chest until he (or she) tells me what to do.

I hear you on that. One question: how do you figure out where dew point occurs for various times of the year within a wall?

Bluetime Collaborative : I think they look at the average temperature for the three coldest months (I could be wrong) because if the dew point occurs before the sheathing, water condenses on the sheathing itself and ices up rather than drying out. This is often a p...See More

Rui : good chat! With IBC 2009, the exterior wall design comes into question FINALLY, but only because the R-value is bumped up to 20 or (13+5). With the very first opportunity we had, we went with batt stud cavity R-13 insulation and R-5 continu...See More

Bluetime Collaborative : In VT and much of northern New England only 1" of ext foam puts the dew point in the sheathing too much of the time (rot issues) so we go with 1 1/2 to 2". Nominal vs actual doesn't seem to make it into codes either. a 2 x 6 wall with fib...See More

Rui: well that was exactly my next set of comments, the codes only go so far. Understanding the wall technology is more important than prescribed R values.

Bluetime Collaborative: reading...reading....

Dave: This is going to make a great blog post. I've been thinking about the wall section you sent for the last few days. I've also been thinking about this at a time where I'm detailing my own house. It's giving me a headache.

Bluetime Collaborative: Luckily we have GBA which has really become The on stop shop for learning. When I go to seminars for cont ed. it is all repeats of the discussions on GBA. Feel free to add questions you have, Environmental Building News is 1/2 mile away from my office - I have some contacts. http://www.energysmiths.com/ - Marc Rosenbaum is an excellent resource as well.

Dave: I'm scared of what the answers could be but I'm wondering about red cedars (non-rainscreen) over Zip System with closed cell poly (2x6 construction) and no vapor permeable membrane and an interior of veneer plaster. This is our standard wall these days...

Rui?:"Vaproshield" barrier

Bluetime Collaborative : vaproshield is an excellent product and what you use for an open rainscreen. I would look seriously at a rainscreen detail even just bumpy tevek type stuff. Rainscreen detailing is becoming code in parts of this country and if you did wood siding in some northern euro countries without rainscreen, they would look at you like you had two heads. I think the cedar works in your favor. We sometimes use New England white cedar from our local mill.

Greg: I am really not enthusiastic about the addition of low perm foam in thick layers to a wall system. Once you do this, you reverse to a drying to the inside wall system, and now suddenly every micro-climate needs to check the dew point location of their wall configuration to avert a disaster. To me this just does not make sense. A dry to the outside wall system is something that works over a wide climate range, and if AC is introduced, a smart vapor retarder like Membrain allows you to balance the drying performance for the summer.

Bluetime Collaborative: I'm starting toward the no foam on the outside idea as well. simply due to the drying thing. A local builder is liking Membrane and I tagged it elswhere for further study. We are lucky in VT as only people from out-of-state who build houses here seem to want A.C. We do seem to have extended very wet times (like now) every summer. I keep coming back to my oversimplified double stud wall for simplicity and low cost and excellent thermal performance. I've done it 1/2 doz times so far with different builders so the kinks are mostly worked out. Think of the inside 2 x 4 wall as just another interior wall.

This is typical of the conversation that goes on in the industry. Gregory La Vardera chimed in with this: "my opinion is the Building Sciences guys are brilliant, but rather insensitive to the practical side of what is easy or difficult, or even preposterous, to do in a house project. Even for a one of a kind custom show-off how energy efficient we can be house they can be a little over the top - never mind something we expect to be widely adopted across the entire housing industry." With which I would largely agree although I have found the building science folks around here seem to have a lot of practical knowledge gained from working closely with builders. LaVardera also linked me to a series of posts on his website detailing how the Swedes do things. If you go there, check out how they do windows - it's very cool. The swedes also don't do basements Grumpy architect alert: (Americans need basements because Americans have so much stuff) but have very nice foam slab forms that seem to have a durable cementitious outside surface rather than having to attach something to protect the foam afterwards. The Swedish system is built as much as possible in a factory which happens very little in the U.S. other than low cost modular type housing. There seems to be a big hump to get over in terms of creating factory built custom housing at a competitive price point. Also the Swedes don't seem to be afraid of Modern design. Perhaps that is also an American "thing"

Time will tell - Architectural history in the making.

Here in New England everyone seems to like to build neo-Greek revival. The original Greek Revival was referencing the original Greek. The first revival was far away from the original in form as well as geographical location and had its own set of clearly defined rules set out in builders guide books. The neo-Greek revival tries to copy the second coming but, too often, without the rules. So to a trained eye (or even not so trained) it generally fails miserably although enough people seem to think its lovely that there is plenty of it around. Point being; there is room for anything in terms of aesthetics and you never know what's going to stick. Give it 100 years and let history be the judge. I suspect that this may prove to be a weird point in history when people wanted new homes that looked old - a steampunk sort of thing. I am starting to see a shift in perspective already. I often work in the Greek revival style because it puts food on the table but also because there is also a lot to learn from it which is applicable to my more modern work. The New England historians remind us that all those old Greek revival village homes look so lovely because they tore down the ones that were ugly. Form and function and beauty are fine and good starting points but as an architect a person who has experienced what happens when architecture goes beyond those three things, I shall never stop trying to achieve that higher goal.Even when people think I'm nuts.

Building Science gives me a headache.

Building Science gives me a headache. I read the usual sites: Greenbuildingadvisor.com, building science.com, plus a few others, I attend seminars, I get all the proper magazines, I belong to the correct organizations such as the USGBC. I'm a good little architect. But I am confused. The more I dive into building science the more questions I have – and therefore the less authoritative I sound in front of clients and I don't think clients want their architect to sound wishy-washy. Let me start by explaining building science. Building science is largely based on large amounts of cumulative experience (databases) probability and statistics. As I recall the story, Joe Lstiburek and his pals started buildingscience.com after going into thousands of houses near airports to upgrade insulation levels to provide better sound proofing. They saw lots of bad things (rot). This provided them with the beginnings of a large database of how houses are built in terms of what works and what doesn't – what details and systems result in greater failure rates as well as what works. A much larger database than Joe builder down the road who has built a few dozen houses in the past thirty years. Smart Joe-the-builders (notice I'm not saying Bob the builder...there's a reason for that...I'm tired of Bob jokes okay?) anyway, smart Joe-the-builders recognize that Joe-the-building-scientist has collected way more information and experience all in one place and is offering it out for free – or just about. Smart Joe-the-builders know that construction is a high liability proposition and anything they can do to limit that liability will help them sleep at night. You can probably replace Joe-the-builder with Bob-the-architect in the previous sentences and it would work fairly well. These Joe-the-building-scientist types are also very often engineers (which means they look at numbers a lot and when they build houses for themselves they cannot justify having windows because it blows their heat loss calculations right out...well...the window) Being numbery-engineery sorts they are able to take their observations from the databases of thousands of houses and figure out more specifically what is happening to cause the problems. Thus we have much more information now about, for instance, the importance of air sealing, controlled ventilation and gapping the siding away from the sheathing than we did ten years ago.

As an architect, fabulous new products come across my desk every day and the magazines are filled with advertisements. How to sort through all this? We architects look to building science to help us separate the wheat from the chaff. Who has done a study on this new and great sounding product? Was the study valid enough to take seriously? What is the builder input and reaction to this new product? What are the warranties? What is the science that the amazing claims are based upon. As an architect I realize that there is always someone with way more expertise and experience than myself and part of my job is to seek them out.

My thoughts along these lines started as an ongoing conversation with an equally confused builder friend of mine. This builder is a rare one who drags his crew to building science talks and seminars and is buddies with Alex Wilson et. al. over at Building Green. We have been trying to figure out what is the perfect enclosure for our local climate in terms of: Ease of construction – what can the carpenters understand and get behind? Budget constraints – most clients around here are have very limited budgets and just want more room; green building and lower heat bills through super-insulation are secondary. Simplicity – this cannot be understated as it affects all other issues. Use of commonly available and understood building materials and systems. Performance – why put tons of insulation in a wall if there is inadequate air sealing which renders the insulation nearly useless? So far, it has been our local experience that proprietary systems cost, at least marginally, more. There are some very good systems out there it should be noted, all with their share of positives and negatives What has a proven track record of performance with building science to back it up. Does a less than perfect installation negate any advantages or potentially cause more issues than a business as usual system of construction? How much of a difference is it really going to make – This may need some explaining and I will use the example of my own house. I burn about 4 cord of wood per year to stay cozy and warm. My house is very poorly insulated but fairly tight, mostly due to its simplicity. If I were to invest a large amount of time and money in air sealing, an HRV system, and more insulation, perhaps I might only burn 3 cords of wood per year. Big deal. But if I were heating with oil or gas it would be. In the locale where I live and work, this is the type of metric that must be addressed in any project. The builder, his crew and myself marched over to the offices of Building Green and sat ourselves down in the company of Peter Yost, a building scientist sort whom many of you would be familiar with from GreenbuildingAdvisor.com. Peter proceeded to confuse us all the more as he waved lots of numbers around. But we came out of the meeting with a reinforced sense of the importance of and methods of achieving a proper air seal (assume the wall will get wet – now how and when does it dry?) and the importance of dealing with gross water first and foremost (gross water is what comes out of the sky and dumps all over our buildings and splashes around a lot). We also came out with the increased sense that we need to look at enclosures as “systems” where one part of a system can only work optimally if used in a certain conjunction with other parts of the system. Phew. Did I mention that I have a building science headache? We also came out with more questions than we went in with. Sigh...

In an upcoming post I shall include parts of an online conversation between myself and other architect friends along these lines. Then I shall conclude with my inconclusive findings and recommendations.

Humble Beginnings

Here is where I can really embarrass myself! I grew up in rural Maine in a rambling house and barn that my father built in the 70's We moved there from coastal Maine when I was 8 years old. The new place had 40 acres of land which was fairly flat and included several fields where the topsoil had been stripped and sold as well as an old gravel pit filled with water, three cars and some trash (great for a little frog work!) and a meandering stream. (excellent for damming!)

I was always building something or at least trying to. one of my first projects was a worm bin where I raised worms and sold them in small containers to fishermen at a local campground. This was followed by a luxury rabbit hutch complete with a poop collection device underneath. Wish I had pictures. Then when I was 10 (ish) I built this small cabin because nobody told me I couldn't. I built two bunks inside and had sleep-outs.

Puberty hit a few years later and I could no longer stand up inside so I set to work building another, larger house. I worked during the summers for a jack-of-all-trades sort and used the money I earned to buy building materials. Here is the remains of the saw mill I worked in. This is where the siding for the first cabin came from.

And here is the small house I built when I was 13 or 14 - I really don't remember. It was 12'x16 inside with operating windows, wall to wall carpeting, power run off the barn 150' away, and a door that my sister-in-law had won as a door prize. I added the porch roof a year or two later. I lived in this house during the summer months right through college. It is still standing but just barely and is quite rotten. Pictures follow:

Blog: Coffee with an Architect + Rural Studio

Coffee with an Architect is a blog that has really gotten rolling. Why is it suddenly everybody does this way better than me? In any case what caught my eye recently was some lovely photos of the rural studio work at Auburn University So I followed the link and found a treasure trove of beautiful images of projects completed in the Rural south.A bit of background on the rural Studio from the website

In 1993, two Auburn University architecture professors, Dennis K. Ruth and the late Samuel Mockbee, established the Auburn University Rural Studio in western Alabama within the university's School of Architecture. The Rural Studio, conceived as a strategy to improve the living conditions in rural Alabama while imparting practical experience to architecture students, completed its first project in 1994. In 2000, Andrew Freear was hired as thesis professor, and upon Mockbee's death, succeeded him as director while continuing to teach thesis. Under his guidance the focus has shifted from the design and construction of small homes to larger community projects.

They have created a huge portfolio of community projects and 20k houses. Here are a very few photos grabbed from the website:

Tiny House Plan for Sale

Now Taking orders for the plans for the Brattleboro Tiny House. The size is 16' x 22' with a sleeping loft. Super insulated double stud construction using advanced framing techniques. An excellent do-it-yourself project. Replace your old garage with something that can make an income as a rental unit or build this as a guest house/studio/office/..... Contact me at bob@swinburnearchitect.com if you are interested and/or have questions.

Life of This Architect

Life is complicated. We all long for a return to some point in our lives when things were simpler. So along the lines of what it is like to be an architect in rural Vermont I thought I'd write up a summary of what my life is like without getting too personal of course. In 2000, my wife an I were lucky to “accidentally” find and buy a small house with a kitchenette and electric heat on 50 acres three miles from where my wife went to college. This fortunately happened just before real estate prices escalated dramatically. We also learned at that time that banks really don't want to talk to self-employed people. We moved in with great plans to add on to the house, which was rather small. We did some master planning, cleared a field, planted a cover crop of buckwheat--the flowers of which were beautiful but smelled like cat piss at night. We built a barn with lumber from the local lumber mill and from the trees cleared off the the field, planted fruit trees, a lilac garden, a raspberry patch and a huge vegetable garden, planted hundreds of daffodils and built and a fern house. We dug a few vernal pools which proved to be a bit too vernal necessitating a joint compound bucket rescue mission every June to move eggs to a neighbors pond before ours dries up. And we built a trail network that connects to a trail network in the forests to the North of our property around South Pond in Marlboro.

Our house, however remains at 900 square feet and remains relatively untouched . We still cook fabulous meals in the tiny kitchenette and heat the place with a wood stove tucked into the fireplace. I often work from home in the winter to keep the fire going. The bathroom desperately needs a gut remodel – a large section of tile fell off the wall a few years ago while I was taking a shower and I glued up some sheet metal “temporarily” and used some packing tape to reinforce the remaining tiles. Pitiful huh? Not an impressive home that I would want clients seeing. “Uh, yeah, that's the house..come see my cool modernist barn!”

My office was the second bedroom (9 ½ x 9 ½ feet square) until my daughter at age two announced that the room was now hers. (She needed a headquarters from which to plot her eventual world domination. And keep all her stuffed animals.) So I moved my practice into an office in Brattleboro's Cotton Mill where my wife works. This was a good move anyway as it gave me a place with high speed internet and a place to meet clients. Did I mention that dial-up is the only option on our rural dirt road? Previously, I had to go hang out at a cafe if I needed to download or upload large files, surf the web or meet with a client somewhere other than on site.

So my wife and I have this 4-year-old daughter who goes to preschool 5 days a week for some part of each day. We also have a beloved dog with DM (Degenerative Myelopathy) who needs someone with him most of the time in case he falls and gets stuck or poops himself. He got stuck under the Christmas tree a few months ago and I came home from errands to find him looking rather miffed but being remarkably patient. We currently spend a fair amount of time schedule-juggling to determine who has the kid and/or dog. For the time being, travel is out of the question as is most visiting. “We brought the dog and he might poop on your living room carpet!”

My wife is self-employed as a massage therapist and I am self-employed as an architect. There are periodic issues relating to the idea that one of us should have a job with benefits that would cover the family, usually around tax time when we tally up what we earned and realize that one of us really should head down to Wal-Mart to pick up a job application. We each work about ¾ time and feel like we are right out straight all the time. My wife has specific appointments for her work while I am usually just trying to accomplish my work whenever I can get a chunk of time to focus. I have found that if I achieve the necessary level of focus, I can accomplish huge amounts of work in a relatively short period of time. If I can't enter that zone, it is a painful thing to try to work and I am better off doing something else useful like increasing the size of my woodpile or weeding the garden. This pattern of work is not very conducive to employment in a firm if I remember those days correctly. I remember working 5 hours and getting more done than anyone else in the office but getting in trouble for not looking busy the rest of the time. I also seem to accomplish great feats of design and detailing while walking in the woods, riding my bike, xc skiing and more consistently, in the early morning hours when I often lie in bed for an hour or two working out details or design issues that I couldn't seem to focus on during the previous day. I often work from home in the summer as well, at a desk out in the barn loft where I can listen to the birds singing, the kid playing in the garden with the sitter, enjoy the warm summer breezes and work with relatively little distraction. (Also the cotton mill office gets a bit hot.)

At this point in my career, I tend to attract the type of client who has big ideas and a not so big pocketbook. Therefore the bathroom doesn't get renovated and the house doesn't get added on to. Often, projects end before they have really started when early in schematic design we realize that the wants/needs list won't match up with the $$. I certainly could use an occasional high end residential project so the “cobbler's children could have shoes” however. This blog has increased my exposure to a level that has allowed me to remain in business when most local architects and designers seem to be unemployed. It has also been rather cathartic as a way of letting off steam...although I try not to get too grumbly. I originally started blogging as a way to complement my website which seemed rather static – just a portfolio. I really wanted to communicate more of who I am, how I work, what it is like to work with me, what my values are and to open a general window into the process as most people really have no idea what to expect when they pick up the phone to call an architect. The blog has been very successful at that and I actually have around 1000 subscribers now which puts a bit of pressure on me to come up with decent content. Such as this post. I hope.

As I think forward to what I want the business to become I reflect on a business plan I worked on with my wife a few years ago. It was helpful to inform me what path I didn't want to pursue: to grow the firm with employees that I would have to work full-time just to keep busy and employed. I started to explore what is happening in terms of a different business model based on collaboration. I also realized that the days of the small town architect that does everything are fading away. Everything requires specialized knowledge that one person or even one small firm can't provide. I realized that I had numerous contacts in larger and more specialized firms that were interested in pursuing local work outside the residential realm in a collaborative relationship with me. The internet has changed the nature of the architecture firm dramatically in more urban environments and we are starting to see it in more rural areas as well. My new business model is based on this idea . And it allows me to focus on my greatest strength--which is not marketing, schmoozing, management of employees, being a super-geek, but is simply ….Design.

Southern Vermont Greek Revival project photos

Here are a few photos from a recent project, a Greek Revival addition in southern Vermont

Tiny House in Brattleboro

I'm working on a new project - a tiny house in Brattleboro Vermont. The house will be about 320 square feet and will replace an existing garage and serve as a rental unit. The goal of the owners is to build this this for under 30k. Obviously, that includes doing the general contracting themselves. My job, aside from coming up with a nice design that everybody will love, is to thoroughly vet the products and techniques in order to achieve this goal. There is a difference between designing and detailing to hand off to a regular G.C. and what I do for an owner builder. Especially when it comes to super-insulation and budget issues. The clients are blogging about it Tiny house in Brattleboro, Vermont for under 30k (hopefully) blog The context and budget seemed to indicate to me a more traditional form. I may play with materials a bit on the exterior.