E is for Education
The primary approach to architectural design is, “from scratch”, working from a blank piece of paper. The key to this daunting approach is to break it into small steps. First, create a grocery list of sorts. Write one sentence describing each room. Try and create an emotional feel, perhaps identify a style or a theme. Once you have compiled all this information, I want you to put it away in a drawer.
Create A Design Checklist
Categorize you checklist into notes on style, no notes, notes on layout, and notes on special places. Force yourself to brainstorm a complete list. Sit down in a quiet place and work steady, never letting your pencil leave the paper until you have a complete list. Later you can go back and fine tune it.
Brian J. Pilling, AIA
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C is for Conversation
Design is a conversation describing a picture of your home. A home often comes with reminders of traditional gables, chimneys, pieces of Colonials and Victorians, and our grandmother's house. You bring your old 35mm snapshots of historic estates and seashore cottages. You listen and in the end find a place for the hutch, the moose head, the sewing machine, the conversations and the Memories. We have all walked through houses that only exist in author’s imaginations, sea captain’s homes, medieval castles, antebellum plantation homes. It is because they have been described to us in vivid and exacting detail. As you and your significant other talk over the next days you will continually be creating a description. It will start with big generalities, “I want it to look like a Federal Style Farmhouse” mixed up with little details, “ I want one of those spice racks that’s built in back of the cabinet door.” So it needs to become like an old story, or rehearsed lines from a play. Build the story over days and days until you can recite it, walk thru your renovation, even if you are only recreating your master bathroom. Then it will be much easier to put your ideas to paper!
A is for Approximation
The first step in starting “for keeps” is to create what is called a “bubble diagram” by arranging circles with the names of your rooms by position on site and their relationship to each other. These bubbles are not to an exact scale but try to adjust the bubbles to the sizes and proportions of the rooms as best you can imagine. Do not proceed to next phase until all relationships are acceptable for site orientation and room placements.
The next step is to sketch your floor plans. Start with crayons or magic markers, no mechanical pencils yet, sketch with broad strokes, don't get hung up trying to fix flaws, you are searching for only one good idea to hold onto. I work in fits and starts. I like to let it rest, come back to it in half an hour or even two hours later with fresh eyes. In design you continue to work by a process of elimination, take as many wrong turns as needed until you “recognize the solution“. Design is much more trial and error than invention.Your final step for now is to sketch your elevations. Your first sketches should ignore the floor plan completely. Sometimes it is better to start with the elevation before the plan because you want to create a style. You should still be working with magic markers or the like. Next start to integrate the floor plan by sketching in the critical elements of your house, the porch or dormers or entry. Now challenge the design for the first time by applying scale to your “concept” sketches, wall heights and windows should be to scale, room dimensions, etc. Does it still "feel" right?
Things to Ponder:Have you "tested" the design against your shopping list? Do your room descriptions still fit? Are the images and emotional feel all that you had hoped?
MY FAVORITE RESOURCESHistoric neighborhoods, look beyond the peeling paint and disrepair, look beyond the gingerbread for proportions, or design elements, look for cues and clues.