Plan (result of vision conference

Below is the plan we generated from the vision conference. I originally just wanted to provide the owner with the booklet. The reason for this is that I believe owner's hire us to provide a service, and the best way to provide good service is to work closely with the owner and treat them as an equal partner in the process, to combine their knowledge of their wants and needs with our knowledge of how to fit that into a building. The drawings which we provide the client with at the end of the project are merely the record of the partnership. How can we design something for an owner without their input? But I finally came to the conclusion that owners want to see a plan, no matter how little we know about their needs, or how much it will change before the design is completed. It gives them something to be excited about.

This project is a renovation of a bungalow. The unchanged parts of the house are shown in grey. The front door is at the top of the page. The additions are shown in red and rendered in material. We removed two walls from the middle of the house to create a great room We then opened up the stairs and added some book shelves and storage. Our final step was to add a kitchen addition and screen porch to the rear of the house, and design a garden for vegitables.

Below is a rendering of what the renovation and addition may look like from the front of the house. Bookshelves and the open stairs are on the right. An existing fire place is on the left. The two sets of wood beams and columns indicate where we removed existing walls. We also added a new window to the left. Just outside the window is a planter for aromatic plants. The owner's told us in the vision session that they love to garden, love fresh, green smells and love opening the house to fresh air. The bar in back separates the new kitchen from the house. The bar lies on the point where the back of the house used to be.

In retrospect the rendering was a mistake. It fixes an image to firmly in the owners mind. This early in the process we only have ideas, not finished forms. Opening the stairs is an idea. Removing some walls and replacing them with a new structure is just an idea. The forms these ideas end up taken could be very different from what is shown in this rendering.