what a house should be - part two - it should be affordable

Every project has a budget.  Whether it is a grand country house or a humble pop-top, the cost of the construction will always be stressed.  It should be. In the design process, there are loads of options that are considered and balanced.  But there is nothing quite so focused as the discipline brought to a project by an initial cost meeting with a contractor's exhaustive bid that is over budget.  But there is also usually no way for an architect to truly gauge the deep-seated priorities of a client until each of those priorities have a price tag.  A beautiful greenhouse is fantastic, but is it $50K fantastic?

It is extremely rare; rainbow-spotted unicorn-rare, that a client's budget exceeds their expectations.

There are a number of ways of establishing a budget and the realistic expectations to which it is linked:

An architect can do a cost estimate and design within that estimate.  Architect's are notoriously bad at this if they do it at all.  We want to please, we want to think we can fit 20 gallons in a ten-gallon hat.  The architect's budget can be based on a basic cost/square foot or can be more sophisticated breaking down the building into constituent parts and assigning differing costs to each.  The architect should do this before they sketch the first line or soon thereafter.  And at every phase of the project, the architect should update that cost estimate as more specificity is brought to bear on the project.

A builder can do a cost estimate. Homeowners can bring a builder on at the start of a project and the builder and architect can work hand-in-hand to simultaneously design the project and verify costs.  Many builders like this idea because they don't have to take the risk of competitively bidding a project.  However, most contractors are not very good at putting increasingly specific numbers to the rather vague initial sketches of an architect.  Very often builders say they need a complete set of drawings to work up an accurate price.  If that is the case then we might as well bid the project.  A contractor brought on during design should have enough experience and data from past projects to be able to make fair assumptions of cost.  Like the architect's estimate, the builder's budget will get increasing specific and hopefully more accurate as the design progresses.  No excuses for saying "we didn't have enough information" or "the architect added a bunch of stuff that wasn't in the early sketches".

An owner can do a cost estimate.  The quality of this estimate will vary greatly depending on the sources of info as well as the sophistication of the person assembling it.  Most dubious are the cost/sf numbers listed on the internet for new construction.  That information was free and probably not reflective of the region or date or style or ...  The owners budget is more like a vague idea of how important something on a project is to them.  Not absolutely everything in the dreams of the owner and architect will end up in the project.  The owner needs to know what is important to them and why and be able to communicate that to the team.

The best answer is:  all of the above.  The relationship between owner, architect and builder is best carried forth if everyone does their part to keep a discipline on the budget.  For an architect that means not adding in expensive details or assemblies without discussing them with all parties and knowing what everything on the job costs in relative terms.  For a builder that is not selling a client on an all-too-rosy scenario of an unrealistic budget to get a project only to have the reality of costs slam down at a later date.  For an owner, clearly communicating their desires as to materials and details early in the process is the best way to insure that costly change orders don't uncomfortably arrive during construction.

The building of a custom house is an exciting and thrilling prospect.  But there are too many stories of cost overruns and bottomless monetary pits.  Every project has a budget and every budget will be stressed.  If everyone does their part honestly and with diligence, that stress won't break the project.  "Affordable" is relative, different on every project, but we all ought to know it when we see it.

from the ashes - Sunshine Canyon house

We started construction today on a house up Sunshine Canyon to replace a home lost in the Fourmile fire.  Equipment is rolling.

Although the scars of the fire are all too evident, new life is sneaking back in between the County's air-dropped mulch.

Spring is indeed a time for renewal.

Stay tuned for updates over the next 12 months.

what your house should be - part one - it should work

This is the base competency for an architect - if you want a dining table that seats 10 (and you have made that clear to your architect) then the dining room ought to be able to hold that table.  Room-by-room, this is not difficult.  The homeowner describes what they want, in functional terms, the architect provides it.  Added up it all might not be in the budget, but simply designing a building to accommodate the functions of a house is usually pretty straight forward.

I am often slightly amazed when I visit a house to realize that the original design turned its back to an amazing mountain view or to get to a room you have to go down three steps and then up two.  These are also functional issues, though not as straight-forward as the room size problem.  I am currently working on a large renovation and addition that will put the living spaces at the best place to capture beautiful valley views, not just the garage like the old house.

Of course houses individually designed have individual quirks.  There are homeowners who see no need for a mudroom, or no need for doors to bathrooms for that matter.  Some of these functional oddities do show up in houses.  It has always been my practice to pursue these often strange ideas of clients while also pointing out to them that a  bedroom without doors may be seen as odd by some folks.

For as important as these functional issues are in the design of any building, they are not, and should not be, the sole catalyst for a project.  A perfectly functional house does not exist and the quest for such is of diminishing returns and at some point, diminishing spirit.  A house should work, but it should do so much more  ...

tune in to part two

Earth Day 2011

On this celebration of Earth Day it is tempting to post about all the sustainability efforts and green productsthat we have integrated into our work.  Here in Boulder, the installation of solar panels, integration of geothermal ground source heat exchange systems, advanced framing techniques, etc. are so commonplace that they have become a standard part of every architect's practice.  Sitting on the Landmarks Board, weekly I hear the stories of homeowners upgrading windows and insulation, caulking and duct-sealing.  A blower-door test is used more frequently than a soils test.

These are all important and necessary techniques and processes that should be brought to bear on every project.  But they do not address the most compelling issues of how we inhabit the land.  Not even the quest for greater density and less sprawl and impact speak to what I believe is the most crucial problem of the built environment.  It is the more subtle and less ostentatious attitude of how a building sits on and within the earth that I believe is the most important problem that an architect can tackle.

When we dig into the earth to make a building, and we almost always start with digging, how do we resolve the desire to make a place on the earth with a passion to protect that same landscape.  How do we honor, and maybe even enhance,  the land we initially dig up, blast out and push around?

We could make no building there.

We could make a beautiful building there.

We could make a building that will last a thousand years.

We could make a building that everyday allows the homeowners to see the landscape as integral and necessary to their lives.  We could make buildings that forever sever the man vs. nature paradigm that has marked so much of our attitude to the land.  We could make a building that makes present the wind and sun, that frames the moon and stars and our place among them.

materials, construction materials, and house form

In case you were wondering if its true that your building materials go a long way to determining a building's shape, I give you the following:

The 1980's historical pastiche of Po-Mo as rendered in the very appropriate foam blocks (not so far from the EIFS of the time)

the large, rambling suburban "Western" McMansion that pervades the front range here in Colorado, as executed in, of course, Lincoln Logs and their associated plastic cousins

and of course the Flemish, stacked masonry house with Dutch tulip garden out front as rendered in Legos.

All of the above design and construction credited to M. Gerwing Architect's youngest studio assistants.

Stair as theatre- part three

In the previous posts I have remarked on the drama of stairs.  That drama is certainly reinforced by the actual design of the stair - its details and materials, certainly its shape and how sharp or relaxed the descent or ascent.  Unfortunately, as architects love stairs, we can get a bit carried away with this sense of drama and go a bit overboard.

The drama here may have a lot more to do with the probability of  falling and ending up as a bloody heap at the bottom of the beautiful stairs.  Architects complain all the time about building codes.  However, some might make a bit of sense.  Like providing a handrail.  Or maybe guardrails.  Or treads that you won't slip on.  Or all of the above.

This stuff is known in the industry as "stair porn".  It looks a bit shocking and bit amazing and not very good for you.  This kind of visual drama misses the point entirely as far as I'm concerned.  The drama of a stair is the potential and very real moment of moving up or down it.  The stair literally transcends, breaks you free from the surface of the earth or at the very least it is Scarlett sweeping down to Rhett.  If the stair itself requires so much attention to the careful placement of every foot and hand, then maybe that heightens the tension of the transition but only in the most negative and frankly childish sort of way.  These glossy stairs that work so hard in their minimalism and lightness to defy gravity all seem to flee from the real potential of a stair - engaging gravity itself, pulling yourself up or plunging down.