This article starts you on the path of developing your "Project Program". There is a companion worksheet that can be found in the article index that will assist you in documenting what you learn in this article.

New Home Design - The Very Beginning

Successfully designing a home requires a synthesis of:

• personal vision
• needs and desires, and
• constraints

Everything you do while designing your home involves integrating, balancing and compromising among these three parameters.

Personal Vision

This is your “big idea”.  It can be aesthetic or emotional and should be general.  For example, I recently had a client whose vision was “To design their final retirement home that reflects a contemporary style, takes advantage of their view and easily accommodates their children and grandchildren”.  A spec builder’s vision might be “A house with a craftsman style with some unique design elements and all the typical amenities needed for it to sell for $750,000”.  A much less interesting vision, but a valid starting point.   This is very much like an organization’s mission statement.  Architects talk about this as part of the “Project Program”.

When considering your own vision statement imagine all the different ways you think of home.  Is home a quite retreat for relaxation and contemplation?  Is home a place for entertaining friends and guests?  Is home a place for raising a large family through all the cycles of family growth?  Is home a place to last two or three years while your family is young?  What are the things you think of fondly that you’d like to implement?  Jot this stuff down on a piece of paper as you consider what you value.

Next consider the elements of style you’d like to emulate.  Is your preferred style craftsman, contemporary, Italianate?   Are you imagining a little bungalow or a house that reflects a regional flavor?  Do environmental conditions dictate some of the style such as a ski chalet?  This can even take a negative form.  I have a client that couldn’t articulate a preferred style but knew for sure what they didn’t want.

If you already have a site are there specific conditions of the site that inform your vision?  Perhaps there is a view you want to maximize.  Perhaps a beautiful tree or trees that you want to preserve.  Perhaps part of your vision involves developing urban wildlife habitat.  Think of things associated with your site that might drive what you want to accomplish.

Once you’ve considered these things you probably have a list.  The list may be good enough but you might consider distilling that list into a sentence or two.  This will be the place you start and will be a tool to use to evaluate your success as the design process unfolds.  Periodically through the process ask your self if the design to date reflects your vision.  If the design isn’t accomplishing your vision it’s time to stop and realign the design.

Needs & Desires

This is a really big topic and in future articles we’ll have more to say about it in detail.  In summary however this is a list of the specifics you want in the house.  This makes up another part of what architects call the “Project Program”.

House Size

How big do you want the house to be?  This is a parameter that is partially affected by constraints that we’ll discuss in a future article, such as lot size or construction budget.  However it can be a useful starting place.  Most people have some idea of how big they’d like their new home to be, if for no other reason than they can compare it to the homes they’ve lived in in the past.  Generally this is a very rough number and it actually becomes the sum of all of the room sizes.

Living Style

What’s the “living style” of the home?  Is it a traditional house with formal and informal living spaces separated from each other?  Such a house might have a formal living room and a formal dining room that wouldn’t be directly open to the informal living spaces such as the kitchen, daily eating area and family room.  The informal spaces would be used every day and the formal spaces would only be used for guests or special occasions. An example of such a floor plan can be seen in figure 1. 

Figure 1

Perhaps you prefer a more informal and “open plan” type of home.  In this case the great room would be the primary living area and would be open to and include an open kitchen, a breakfast nook or other eating area and room for more than one social activity at a time.  Figure 2 shows an example of this.  Another option is a hybrid of the two.  Often our clients will employ the great room concept but will also include a formal dining room.  In this case the dining room may still be immediately adjacent to the great room as seen in figure 3.

Figure 2

-

Figure 3

What rooms do you need?

What rooms are absolutely necessary in the house?  Answering the “living style” question shakes out some of that.  You’re still left to decide how many bedrooms you need, how many bathrooms and what other auxiliary rooms are necessary.  Do you need a den or office? What kind of storage do you need?  Are other rooms such as studios or children’s play areas needed?

Next you consider what rooms are not absolutely necessary but that you would still like to have if they can fit within the other controlling constraints.  In other words, which rooms are negotiable?  Negotiable rooms might be sewing or craft rooms, mud rooms, additional guest rooms, additional closet or storage spaces.

When considering rooms don’t forget outdoor spaces.  A great deal of the livability of the house comes from how you use your outdoor space.  Out door space can be as simple as a typical deck off the great room.  It might be a covered section adjacent to the kitchen large enough to accommodate a barbecue or it might be a full blown covered room with an out door fireplace and space to eat or lounge and still be out of the weather.  We’ll discuss outdoor spaces in grater detail in future articles.

Now identify the preferred sizes of the rooms.  An example could be, “The kids bedrooms should be 12’x12’ or roughly 150 square feet each”.  This is your wish list.  If every room in your house met these criteria you’d be ecstatic. This is the target that will be used when doing the initial layout.

How big are these rooms?

Next identify the minimum room sizes you are willing to live with.  An example could be “all bedrooms must have a minimum dimension of 10’ x12’”.  In this step identify the minimum dimensions of each of these rooms.  Some rooms might not have a minimum dimension, but most of them should.  This will be the non-negotiable fall back position as you lay out the rooms.

It’s also helpful to have an idea of the maximum room sizes you want.  Sometimes the best solution to a given design problem might result in some rooms being larger than your ideal.  Knowing how big is too big can be a useful analytical tool.

How many levels?

The final consideration for this stage of the project program is deciding on the number of levels in the house.  Is the house a single story “rambler” or do you see it as a multi-story home.  Often the site constraints inform or drive this decision, but it’s a good idea to know what you want.

This is just the beginning stage of the project program.  In later articles we’ll consider it room by room and make more specific decisions about what the rooms contain, how they’re configured and what their relationships to each other are.

Constraints

Constraints has 2 fundamental components: budget and physical.  The budgetary constraints are obvious and affect some projects more than others.  The physical constraints have to do with what is possible to actually build on the parcel of land you’ve selected.  While we’re at it, we’ll assume the laws of physics as constraints as well.

Budget

There are many different ways to ameliorate and manipulate this constraint.  We’ll touch on those in detail in a future article.  At this point we’ll keep it simpler than it actually is.  For most people their principal budgetary issue is how much of a mortgage they can afford, or how much of a mortgage are they willing to pay.  So we’ll work backwards from there.  For the time being we’ll assume that you have $750,000 to work with which we’ll call your total budget.

The Known Knowns

The purpose for the budget we are developing is to be able to guide design decisions about the house itself, we’ll call this the design budget.  Therefore we’ll need to subtract from that total budget all costs not directly related to the design of the home.  First subtract the soft costs.  That would be all costs associated with the transaction of the land purchase and loans.  This should include any costs associated with the construction loan.  It’s not unusual for this to be 20% of the total cost of the project.  Some people use the term “soft cost” to refer to things like appliances, floor coverings etc, this is not how I’m using the term.  Next subtract the cost of the lot and any known assessments.  This is especially the case if these costs are large and known.  If you have a $20,000 sewer assessment fee that is paid at the time of permit issuance, here’s the place to subtract it from the budget.

The Known Unknowns

Here you have things like consulting fees (architect, engineer etc), and permit fees.  Next subtract all costs related to developing the lot.  That would include the cost of clearing and grading, costs of demolition, fees associated with utility hook ups, septic system design and installation.  You should also include something here for unanticipated site costs such as poor soil conditions or problems caused by bad weather.  Also include general liability insurance.

What’s left?

What’s left is what you have to spend to pay a contractor to build your house.  This should include their profit, overhead and any sales tax.  Don’t forget about the sales tax!  I’ve seen budgets discussed many times and then had them change because sales tax was not included in the estimating.  So if everything above cost half of the total budget you have a design budget of $375,000 to build the house.  In 2008 dollars you should anticipate that it will cost between $100 and $200 per square foot to build a home.  The difference between these two numbers is complexity and quality.  If you anticipate a budget of $100 per square foot then the design should be very simple and the finishes and fixtures selected should be inexpensive.  If you anticipate a complex design with high quality finishes then expect less square footage for your design budget.  Lately I’ve been suggesting that clients plan on $135 per square foot.  Of course in 2008-2009 there are some real bargains out there and you can probably get more for less.  At that price you can get a 2800 square foot house that is 2 or more levels and has a 2 car garage.

Site Constraints

The constraints that a site can place on your design vary widely.  A flat 5 acre parcel that has been fallow pasture land may have no real constraints at all.  You can put the house any where you want (within setback limits) and perhaps any old design that meets the program will work.  On the other hand if you have a 4000 square foot steeply sloping lot in Seattle your constraints will be stringent.

In later articles we’ll discuss in detail siting issues using real world examples but for the time being we’ll talk in generalities and assume a typical suburban or in-city infill lot. 

Zoning

The first set of constraints you’ll face are regulatory, that is the zoning (or land use) code’s rules for developing lots in your zone.  These generally take the form of restrictions on setbacks from property lines, limitations on height and lot coverage, parking location restrictions and sometimes limitations on impervious areas.  Some municipalities have unique regulations you won’t see anywhere else.  The City of Seattle, for example now limits the garage door width to 50% of the width of the house.  That means if you want a typical 16’ wide garage door on the front of your house, it’ll need to be at least 32’ wide.

ECA

Environmentally sensitive areas such as steep slopes or wetlands (even in the vicinity although not on your property) impose their own set of restrictions on where or what you can build.  I recently designed a home on a 4 acre site that had exactly 1700 square feet of buildable lot area once the sensitive areas were delineated.  These sensitive areas have different names in different municipalities.  In Seattle they are designated Environmentally Critical Areas or ECA for short.

Access

The next controlling issue is vehicular access.  One way or another you want to put those cars in a garage, so the house has to be designed so that a car can get into the garage.  On a flat lot it’s easy; on a sloping lot it has more of an influence on the finished design.  An alley gives you additional alternatives and flexibility.

Sloping Lots

Sloping lots pose their own challenges.  You will often see folks who found the perfect plan for a flat lot try to force it on to a sloping lot rendering it at best ugly.  When a lot slopes side to side, consider placing the driveway on the low side.  If it slopes downward or upward from the street the fun really begins.  I recently designed an addition to a house that put the garage up high near the street with a breezeway down to the existing house.  The home shown in this photograph had the benefit of being on a corner.  In this case we designed the house so that the garage access was on the lower street and the main entry was on the upper.

Aesthetic Considerations

Another set of site constraints are aesthetic.  Is there a view you want to take advantage of? How does the direction of that view relate to the street and which rooms should face the view? Perhaps on smaller lots there are privacy issues. Perhaps the neighboring property is unsightly and you don’t want to have to look at it. Perhaps your street is busy and you want to minimize its impact.  All of these things go into deciding how to lay the house out on the lot

Conclusion

By now you’re at the beginning stage of knowing everything you need to know to design your home.  You have a framework for proceeding with the next step of identifying the details of your program and design.  You have your vision of the home, you’ve developed a list of your needs and desires, you have a sense of your budget and thus roughly how much house you can afford.  You’ve examined your lot and determined how its particular characteristics will shape the design.  The next step is to flesh out and add detail to that framework.

-