Site Analysis

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It's important to understand what nature gives you. How steep is the land? Where does the sun rise and set? Is there a view? What about wind, or flooding, or an unattractive view or unwanted noise?

This project will require some unusual shading and screening strategies to minimize unwanted noise and bring in natural light. There's a busy intersection to be screened and the rising sun is shining directly along the length of the site in mid-summer. On the plus side of the ledger there are a couple of beautiful oaks, there's a winter view to the north, and the entrance from the road is nice and level.

I map everything of interest, both good and bad, by hand over a topographical map of the project site. This gives me my first clues about where to locate certain rooms, and where and how to place windows. As soon as I have a working floor plan I'll refer back to my site analysis to be sure I'm on target with the project goals - minimizing unwanted noise or unattractive views while maximizing light, and balancing views, and privacy.

Herding Cats

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One of the first steps in designing a project is figuring out the program. This is just a written list of the spaces along with anything that may be known about them. Sometimes it's pretty simple:

"We'd like to add a master bedroom and bath. The bathroom should have a shower but we don't need a tub." "Oh, and we'd like two sinks in the vanity."

Sometimes it runs for pages and pages with detailed room descriptions and adjacencies. The program for the project I'm working on right now is a little over two pages and includes everything that the client could think of as well as everything I could think to ask. The project is a house of only 1500 square feet so it's pretty detailed. My clients for this house are artists as well as dedicated cat people so one interesting wrinkle in this problem is controlling access to various parts of the house for the felines.

That's right. This morning I'm herding cats.