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.
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 They are often stuck doing building methods that are somewhat out of date.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.
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.
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
