Passive design strategies are becoming widely accepted as a way to drastically reduce the amount of energy a home consumes and low-tech solutions are gaining favor with designers and homeowners alike. Shutters are one such low-tech means of passively controlling the environment around a building. Operable shutters control light, temper heat, shield or welcome wind, buffer noise and provide privacy. Like a versatile three-season jacket they can help make life more comfortable. This video explores a few modern examples of the multipurpose shutter.
Channel Glass: An Architect's Material Review
This video is a primer on channel glass and an architect's take on the material. It's a 10-minute short course describing:
- Cost
- Uses
- Physical and thermal properties
- Finish and color options
- Attachment specifics
- Special design considerations
- Benefits and liabilities
Unlike standard float glass, channel glass has a high recycled content and the opportunity for improved thermal performance over insulated glass units. It's translucent so it provides natural daylight to spaces with privacy requirements or in tight urban sites where undesirable views are a design constraint.
Modern Handrail Details
In this video I review the process of designing modern handrail details. I advocate an informed minimalism whereby safety and function is the priority but I quickly move beyond merely what the building codes dictate (width, tread run, riser height, guardrail and handrail conventions) into meaningful design gestures and appropriate materials. Within the necessary safety and functional constraints, the modern examples I use to illustrate the concept in the video still manage to delight the senses. Be sure to read this related post on minimal deck guards and edges which describes in detail the guardrail for the Pond House project.
Polygal - An Architect's Review
In this video I review everything you need to know about multiwall (sometimes called twinwall) structured sheet plastic. I review the cost, manufacturers (Polygal, Verolite, Thermoclear, Palram, Sunlite), light transmission, thermal properties, installation details, size, color, shapes and possible uses. As with all of my videos I review the material from the standpoint of an architect evaluating the product for potential use in home design and construction projects.
The Shed Roof - An Architect's Review
In this video I discuss the reasons for choosing a shed roof shape as well as the design implications of the choice. Sheds are structurally simple, site responsive forms that are finely tuned to passive solar collection. With opportunities for daylighting via clerestories, rainwater harvesting and other aesthetic benefits they're a great choice to meld traditional and contemporary design languages.
I like the shed form for its humble roots and its directional nature. I've designed a few projects that utilize the shed roof:
Naskeag House
Modern Baseboard Design - 4 Ways
In this video I discuss four modern design attitudes toward the baseboard design and detailing in residential architecture. They are: no base, reveal base, flush base, and the applied base. Baseboard protects a highly trafficked (and abused) part of the home and covers the messy joint between the finished wall and floor. This collection of modern base details highlights the aesthetic language of modernism: functional, spare, humble, minimalist and expressive.
For modern baseboard details I've designed see:
The Dogtrot House Plan Origin Story
In this video I discuss the origins of the dogtrot as a plan archetype, its history and how it came to be. Although commonly thought of as a Southern building type early settlers of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the Swedes and Finns brought with them the "pair cottage" from Northern Europe. This shaped the early dogtrots in the United States. It was widely adopted in the South because is offered an ingenious method of passively cooling the home. This is the first of a three-part video series. In part 2 I discuss the design process for the modern dogtrot floor plans I've developed which were inspired by these early prototypes.
Modern Fireplace Design - Concepts and Ideas
In this video I review and contrast two distinct approaches for designing the essential architectural elements of the modern fireplace. Each concept is illustrated with a contemporary architectural example. By intentionally emphasizing or minimizing different components varying effects can be achieved.
For more fireplace images see here.
Industrial Style - Metal Mesh for the Home
In this video I discuss how to put metal mesh to work in your home. I'm always searching for new materials to use in my residential work. I’m particularly drawn to adapting simple, utilitarian, industrial materials for use in the home. Industrial metal mesh is an excellent example of this and one that deserves consideration for both interior and exterior use. In the video I review the different types of mesh available from bar grating and metal fabrics to screening and wire meshes. I discuss the substrates and specific applications. Each is illustrated with images depicting their use.
Phased Construction for Residential Construction
In this video I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of phasing your home construction project. Phasing intentionally and selectively plans for and delays certain aspects of a home's construction. While it saves money up front, it usually costs more in the long-term. The advantages of phased construction are:
- Lower Initial Investment - it takes less overall to get started and can spread the costs of a larger project out over time.
- Shorter Construction Time - the smaller scope of work nets a reduced (initial) construction timeline.
- Experience - living in a partially completed home while its under construction not only offsets living costs but allows you to truly experience the size and scale of the home before undertaking future phases.
- Design Changes - phasing opens the door to pivoting design ideas over time. You may decide you don't want the detached guest house planned in phase two, rather you want it incorporated into the home as an addition.
The disadvantages are:
- Complexity - overall phased construction is more complex.
- Longer Total Construction Time - even though the initial construction sequence is shorter it will take longer to realize the entire project.
- Higher Total Cost - because of the longer time frames involved, financing costs, higher design fees and the extra mobilization costs, phased projects are inherently more costly to undertake.
I discuss the details of financing concerns, planning issues, sequencing, phasing plans, staging, scheduling, and living with the mess of construction.
Phasing is an overall more complex process, but it makes sense in certain cases, the video explains those cases supported with lots of visuals.
Garage Style Doors for the Home
In this video I review new ways to put the common garage door to use around your home. I review the types of garage doors: pivoting, sectional, and coiling as well as the materials, hardware options and special considerations you'll want to review before committing to using this design element in your home. The images offer proof that the overhead door doesn't have to be relegated to only the garage anymore.
How to Separate Space in an Open Floor Plan
In this video I review seven of the most common tricks I use as an architect to separate space in an open floor plan. I talk about the advantages and disadvantages of each including: the room within a room concept, open shelving, thin wall planes, thick wall masses, sliding walls, fabrics (metal and cloth), and hybrid systems.
Choosing Pocket Door Hardware - Pro Tips
In this video I discuss the secret to pocket doors' success - selecting the proper hardware. I discuss quality architectural hardware specifics from manufacturers like: Hafele, FSB, MWE, Halliday & Ballie, Sugatsune, Accurate and others. I review the optimal track configurations, flush pull handle sizing and shape considerations, and the all important lockable pocket door function.
Embracing the Narrow Home
The simplicity, directness and beauty of a narrow floor plan makes it suitable for many building sites, not only those on tight lots. In the video I discuss in detail twelve compelling reasons to embrace a narrow home design. If I've convinced you; be sure to check out my offering of efficiently designed, affordable, narrow home designs in the shop.
Advantages:
- Light
- Warmth
- Ventilation
- Efficiency
- Flexibility
- Expandability
- Vertical Separation
- Horizontal Separation
- Cost Savings
- Sense of Exploration
- Borrowed Space
- Diversity
A Kitchen Remodel That Costs More Than a School
As a residential architect, I've had the privilege of working with some amazing clients. I'm truly fortunate to be able to work on such interesting projects for people who care deeply about architecture. The impact of the single-family residential work that I'm commissioned to do – the work that supports my family – is naturally limited in scale and scope.
This year I'm committed to building something larger than 30X40 can do alone. To honor that commitment, I've chosen to give to Pencils of Promise, a non-profit that builds schools around the world. They offer a chance for all of us to expand the reach and impact we can have in the world. For less than the cost of a typical kitchen remodel in the United States today – which stands right around $28,000 – PoP can build a school in Ghana.
An entire school.
That’s a school in one of the 75% of communities they visit that doesn’t have one.
Imagine for a moment what your life might look like today without a school in your past. Every one of us can name a teacher who, at some point in our lives, made a difference, who inspired us, who pointed us in the right direction. Imagine your life without that teacher.
Without school, my life today would be profoundly different.
I'm just one architect building a small business, but I want to do something big. Something outside of the bounds of my private practice. With your help, I hope to fund the construction of a school in Ghana and give the gift of education to children who live very different lives than we do. These are children and communities that deserve the same educational opportunities we often take for granted here in the US.
Pencils of Promise is an organization that takes action and builds things. The fundraising goal I’ve set is for $25,000 - the average cost to build a school in Ghana. I can't do this alone though, I'm just one guy with a small business. It's a big goal, but it has big consequences, I hope you'll be a part of making the world the better place, one school at a time.
To that end, 30X40 Design Workshop will match every dollar of the first $2,500.00 contributed.
Thanks for supporting my campaign and Pencils of Promise.
An Architectural Recipe...of sorts...
I received a box of concrete samples from Get Real Surfaces recently. Small, 3"x3" squares of varying finishes and color mixes. Perfectly sized to fit in your hand, for sharing with a client in a meeting, or for toting around to the job site to imagine them in a finished space. The samples themselves are beautifully rendered objects in their own right. For an architect, materials are the cooking equivalent of ingredients. Just as a chef enters the pantry to select ingredients for an entree, the architect consults their sample library. For me, this happens throughout the design process. In the very beginning a material concept informs the building concept. As we move deeper into the design that concept is shaped by the building layout, the client and the site. Together it evolves.
Stone, concrete, wood, tile, glass, metal - the raw materials of building can be chosen for their reference to particular place, one's taste or just because of their beauty. But I have favorites and they're a narrow few.
Here's why.
The paradox of choice is such that having more options doesn't actually yield more freedom to choose; rather it makes it even more difficult to feel like any selection you might make is 'correct'. Having a few favorites means the project quickly can focus on the features inherent to the design - its form, light and the environment all of which the material selection can highlight and not simply on using the most fashionable faux pebble tile.
The Japanese Pritzker prize winning architect, Tadao Ando's work offers a rather extreme take of this position. His material of choice is reinforced concrete and he uses it everywhere, in every project. It's weighty, but there are moments of extreme lightness too in the scale of the volumes. The gray of concrete is a canvas upon which light softly renders form and space. The earth and weather develop a patina on the concrete that helps to fold it into the site, it's rugged and supple at once. I admire the stillness of his work and his ability to achieve such depth of emotion from a singular material. Less, in fact, is more.
Focused choice in material selection allows this kind of a simple dialogue to take place. It allows the place and the building a voice. Solid and void. Weight and weightless. Dark and light. Warm and cool.
I love concrete as a building material deeply. Not only for its color and its tone, for its feel and its weight; but also because it's expressive of the process by which it was created. The form-work permanently reveals the skill of the craftsman who built it and the subtle markings of the ties and the aggregates that comprise its mass.
For me, concrete also needs the warm counterpoint of wood. The informality of Douglas fir, the ruggedness of Red Oak, the refinement of Maple, the tailored appearance of Mahogany, the evenness of White Oak. Each of these pairs beautifully with concrete and elicits different emotions. Like concrete, wood can be subtly effected by the way it's finished or cut: plain sawn, rift-sawn, or quartersawn; each reveals a different graining pattern and tonal character. Subtle but wholly beautiful.
These are effects that are heightened and only appreciated when there's little other noise to drown them out. Just as the tenderloin requires salt, concrete requires wood. Nothing more.
...except perhaps a side of glass?
Book Launch and Guest Post on Entrepreneur Architect
I'm quite honored to have written a guest post featured this week on Entrepreneur Architect, a website run by my friend, architect, and talented businessman, Mark R. LePage. Not only do we share an alma mater, Roger Williams University, but we also share in our mission to help small firm architects looking to change the world one project at a time. Mark has been delivering on his goal to be "a force for change in the world of architecture" since he doubled down on his commitment on 12/12/2012 with good advice and positive mentoring. In the post, I discuss four basic things every pro needs to attend to when using Houzz and a back door trick for entering their image-based ecosystem.
The post is my small contribution to Mark's broader mission and it supports the release of my book this past week on Amazon, The Unofficial Guide to Houzz.com . I wrote the book to help architects and designers find relevancy and rank in more searches on Houzz. I have quite a bit of experience writing there and successfully securing work for 30X40. My writing has been a force for change in my own life, helping me to sort through ideas and help others and I think it shines through clearly in the book.
See the article entitled, "4 Things You're Not Doing on Houzz (But Should Be)" on the Entrepreneur Architect site.
Thanks to Mark for featuring my work and for the excellent resource he continues to build
If you like the book, I'd so appreciate and welcome an honest review on Amazon.com and I'd love to hear what's working for your business on Houzz.
8 Habits of Successful Architects
One of our most popular videos to date. I describe eight (of the many) architectural habits which I practice that lead to good architecture.
Design Inspiration
For me, the beginning of a new design project brings with it, in equal measure, both excitement and fear. Fear because the quest for design inspiration is an unknown path. The idea may arrive in an hour, a day, a month or, the deep nerve of fear: never. The architect Maya Lin, perhaps best known for her Vietnam War Memorial, likened her design process -- the discovery and inspiration -- to that of laying an egg. Her egg is an idea that arrives "fully formed" and it's the result of an unknowable amount of thought, study, sculpting , sketching and writing.
I'll admit to some envy of her process. Mostly because it results in a completely fleshed out idea, ready to develop into a coherent, beautifully articulated project. I console myself with the thought that she suffers the same anxieties all designers face.
I find my own search for design inspiration as elusive today as it was when I entered architecture school in 1991. It's an unpredictable muse. What I know now, that I didn't know then is that my ideas only come as a result of sketching. Much like writing, the ideas flow from the act of putting pen (or key) to paper (or pixel). The process of sketching is one that is taught early on in school as a means of thinking. It's a way to arrive at the genesis idea that sets a project in motion. Architects call this idea a ‘parti’. From the French, Prendre parti meaning "to make a decision".
And for an architect, nothing can replicate that moment when that idea arrives.
The Problem
I use sketching to document and synthesize thoughts about the site, surrounding buildings, the client, the necessary spaces, the climate, zoning restrictions, budget - basically all of the situational factors that represent the context of the architecture. While that seems like a lot to absorb, there are always certain themes that demand more attention than others. This makes the process easier for me as I dig deeper, a natural hierarchy begins to establish itself. There are building codes, restrictions, design review boards, wetland's commissions, budget, client proclivities - these are constraints that every project confronts. The goal is to understand all of the rules for the project and then set about creatively following them. It's often these constraints that can be the genesis for an exciting work of architecture.
A new project I've been working on is an interesting case-study for how this process works.
The client brief was to replace an existing, one-story dilapidated structure and double the leasable space of the property with retail on the ground floor and a restaurant on the upper level and an apartment on the uppermost level. The small 20-foot by 80-foot lot meant that the additional square footage would require a multi-story solution. Because it's in a business district it shares a property line with a neighboring structure to one side and to the other it looks out on a parking area and an unappealing, cluttered rooftop.
Seems straightforward, right? The building next door has windows along the entire shared property line and some of them serve bedrooms. So, legally we can't build right up against the property line and obstruct the bedroom windows. Given that the lot is only 20-feet wide, sacrificing any square footage would limit the leasable area and the monthly ROI for my client. The lot is also in a downtown business district with a Design Review Board which requires buildings to fit with the established character of the neighborhood, which is, buildings constructed to the lot lines. Add to this, the fact that the lot is oriented along a north-south line means collecting southern light for an upper story restaurant will be tough. It's a tricky problem, but there's one thing that stands out above all else when I think about how I'll organize the structure, that's where I begin to focus my efforts and my search for inspiration.
The Idea
Knowing that I had to preserve the exit pathway for the upper story windows of the neighboring structure reminded me of the complex network of foot paths that predominate the walkable European city. There, alleys were usually remnants of old pedestrian streets. And, while these pathways have become ever smaller as the cities became more dense and the land more valuable, the alley has persisted because they're essential for service, access, light, and air.
It was this realization, that I could create an alley between the two structures that was the spark that led me to the organizational design solution. But, this had to be more than just an alley. To maximize its functional potential on the small lot it had to provide the circulation for both my client's building and for the neighboring structure's exit windows, entry, exit, light, air - all of the things that an alley provides we can make use of. I won't get into the legal and code implications of actually constructing an alley between buildings, as it's complicated and somewhat uninteresting - let's just say it's a good solution to a complex problem.
The alley idea is a simple organizational concept, that helps me to begin laying out the building spaces on the site. But there are other ideas that I began to explore too and those informed how the building might consciously work to affect the environment around it.
In Part II, we'll discuss the visual inspiration and see the building take shape.
The One Space You Can't Live Without
I'm convinced I was born in the wrong part of the world. Have you ever had this feeling? I love my family, don't get me wrong, it's got nothing to do with them. My parents moved from my birthplace on central Long Island in New York a few hours north - upstate - to a small town baseball fans know well, Cooperstown. It was baseball that connected the economy to the outside world drawing thousands of tourists to see heroic players inducted into its hall each August. It was farm country and when it wasn't farm country, it was snow country.
I never played baseball, and the smell of manure made me long for the trade winds of the tropics, and the searing heat of the desert, the salt air of Big Sur, and a lush, green Kyoto.
Not coincidentally, all places more temperate than upstate New York and also places where it's possible to live somewhere between inside and outside. Not fully one or the other. Something I never had a chance to do.
I'm fascinated by open air living as a human first and of course professionally as an architect. It certainly isn't a recent invention, but it's one that has been co-opted by modern architects as an instrument to connect people more fully to their surrounding environment. As a modern architect myself, now practicing in the northerly, marine climate of Maine, I can't help but drool over the imagery and apparent freedom of my colleagues practicing in more temperate climes. No need for screen doors, or tightly controlled waterproof building shells their architecture flows from inside to outside unobstructed. These structures define places for being, for living - without constraints or boundaries.
But I know as an architect too, that even though we may have black flies and mosquitos and snow - which flies for more of the year than we'd like - we still have a need for transition spaces in our architecture. Open air living isn't completely possible but these transitions can afford the suggestion and on rare days even deliver on the promise.
I would argue that transition space is the one space no work of architecture can exist without. No matter where we practice, architects follow similar rules about the need for transitions between enclosed (indoor) and unsheltered and open (outdoor) space. These buffer zones, where we move from one activity to the next are not only extremely useful, utility-driven spaces but they're integral to our comfort and our experience of a place.
Imagine stepping into the the Pantheon's cavernous dome without the large sheltering portico transition. It's not the same. The Greek's and Roman's of antiquity understood this, their architecture is rife with colonnades, porticoes, the agora, the forum - each one had a preamble. Hardly superfluous, they're necessary and comforting architectural devices.
A more contemporary example everyone is familiar with is the porch. Porches give us a place to kick off the mud from our boots, a place to sit outside while it rains or sheltered from the sun and reduce the apparent size of our two or three story homes to something more in tune with the size and shape of our bodies.
We instinctively notice the absence of transition spaces too. Think of almost any tract house in suburbia built in the last 20 years. Are you picturing arriving to a garage door? I know I was. Suburbia has asked that we eliminate the transition space in favor of our car. Step out of your car an into the four walls of your home.
Architects understand the need for transition spaces and leverage their utility. They provide a sense of scale, shelter, enclosure, protection, a sense of arrival and departure and because they lack the strict requirements of conditioned (or heated) space they can be more sculpturally free and expressive.
Modern architecture has surely sought to connect us to our place in a more direct way than its predecessors and transition spaces make this possible as evidenced by these seductive photos of a project in the desert southwest. Almost like nomadic tent structures, the architecture is reaching out to the land, buffering the extreme environment creating pools of shade around the home. This makes the interior environment more comfortable and it provides places to sit out of the intense sun for the inhabitants.
Transition space is the one space you can't live without (there just might be one other one too).