Saturday, March 15, 2014

Soaring, curved window wall at custom lakeside home!

Architect Kay Henryson and I worked on this home so many years that I thought it would never be built, but I am so glad I was wrong!  

The client recently emailed these wonderful photographs and said "the window wall...is absolutely the most stunning feature in the house."

This curved wall faces the sunrise and a view of the lake through many tall pine trees. 
Simply stacking windows in a grid would be the conventional method to fill this wall, but I 
decided to use various sizes of stock windows available to create a casual pattern of horizontal bars appropriate to a relaxed, lakeside setting. Also, this arrangement emphasizes the vertical mullions that rise up over 18 feet into the sky and are reminiscent of the tall thin trees outside. The small awning windows at the bottom can open to draw in that lake air, too. I need to get myself invited over soon. 
 

Thursday, January 30, 2014

The designer is the only one you will hire who cares about the entire outcome of your new custom home.

Every new custom home has a hundred salesman, craftsman, suppliers, engineers, and the like who have a handle on their part of a new house, but the designer is focussed on how it all will come together.  Each individual can be passionate or careless about their part, but they rarely can see past that one thing they do for the house.  A sunroom salesman believes his product is the thing that will crown your lifestyle with recreational pleasure; the countertop supplier, who dreams about all the stone he or she has seen, pushes for the latest exotic textures available; but all these wonderful things apart do not mean they should be joined together.

Builders start thinking about the ground and the foundation; they dream about getting the best framing crew after that, and then the process goes all the way to the end result, but what will it be, ultimately?

The designer begins with a vision of the end in mind; he works in the opposite direction of the builder.  In order to get the lines and shadows of beautiful exterior walls and roof, the designer envisions the the structure, roof, and rooms on the interior that must be created first. The designer cares about the steps that must precede to render a beautiful, useful, and enjoyable new home.