Design Goals

Let me start by apologizing for the length of this post. I really tried to keep it brief but design is something I’m obviously passionate about and I thought it was important to share as much as I could…so here it goes:

As a working mother, efficiency is something I strive for in every facet of my life. From getting everyone up and out of the house on time to constantly multi-tasking as I am now, writing this blog while sitting in my daughters chair as she drifts off to sleep. I admit I take it too far sometimes but being a mother and an architect has made it necessary to survive. This yearning for maximum efficiency coupled with my passion for sustainability were really the main drivers behind the design of our house.

The most efficient shape for any building is a cube. It has the least amount of perimeter wall and roof per square foot. Which means less roofing, less wall materials, and less heating and cooling. We tell our clients this all the time so I had to follow my own advice and go with a 2-story plan. I worked the floor plan over and over to right-size spaces for how I envisioned us using them. I knew this was going to be important to hit the energy goals I had and one of the only saving graces when the costs started coming in. It was also important to me to think about the scale of each space and how I wanted them to feel. A lot of houses go with ‘the bigger the better’ mentality which I can tell you is not always good. Even if you aren’t interested in energy conservation or the budget, overly large spaces can lack the intimacy that you may be looking for in a particular room.

In addition to size and arrangement of the house, I also wanted to design a highly insulated envelope (walls, floor, and roof) around it. It amazes me that in Ohio and similar climates that most homes are still being built as they have been for the past century, with fiberglass insulation between the studs and no exterior insulation. This goes without saying for my fellow nerds, but without exterior insulation you end up with a wall with thermal bridging at every stud and an effective R-value far below what your insulation is giving you. For example, in a wall using standard framing practices, 23% of the wall area is framing (solid wood) and 77% of the wall is cavity (insulation). So even though you can get R-20 batt insulation in 2×6 wood framed wall, because of the studs interrupting that insulation every 16 inches your wall actually has an effective R-value of 13.4.

Throughout the process of design and pre-construction the make up of our walls have changed for cost and constructability reasons but the constant has been that there would be as much continuous exterior insulation as possible. I think I’ll take a moment here to talk about how important it is to work with contractors and tradesman to learn as much as we can from one another in order to get the best results possible. I know a lot about building science and what materials are available but I don’t always know how that translates into what tools will be needed and how labor and cost will be affected. We can all learn a lot from one another and I approached my home with the sane collaborative attitude that I do with any of my projects.

All of this leads to our ultimate goal which is to have a net zero home. Through the installation of solar panels (which I now realize won’t be in our initial budget) we hope to generate more energy than we consume in a calendar year. Some other strategies I have incorporated in the house to help facilitate this include: a geothermal heat pump system, insulation under the basement floor slab, house on east-west axis, windows designed to allow spaces to be day-lit, operable windows placed to allow for natural ventilation and cooling, and overhangs to block direct sun on hot summer days yet allow it in on cold winter days. I may dedicate a future post to illustrate the evolution of the materials we ultimately choose to use but for now I’ll move on to discuss the aesthetic goals for the house.

As you can expect, I aimed to achieve all of our energy goals in the best-looking package possible. The apparent lack of architectural influence on the residential building sector in the Midwest is upsetting. I’m not going to try to explain all the reasons why but if you are curious, have a few minutes, and want to have a good laugh, check out mcmansionhell.com. Kate Wagner has it all boiled down and her writing is satirical genius.

We wanted our house to be modern and to fit well with the natural landscape. This meant clean details, a shape that embraced the terrain, and materials that were reminiscent of the surrounding rocks and trees. The house site we chose was sloped and allowed for a walk-out basement. I designed the kitchen and dining area to be one story on top of the walk out basement to keep the house from being too tall at any point. A wrap around deck further breaks down the scale of the house while also allowing us to experience the outdoors as an extension of each interior space. As you move up the hill where the basement is below grade, the house steps up to the two-story portion.

I have always been obsessed with the butterfly roofs used by Le Corbusier(1930) and Palmer & Krisel(1950’s). For those who don’t know, a butterfly roof is an inverted peak or v-shaped roof. This type of roof seemed like a natural fit to help us achieve our goals for daylight and future solar as it allows for high windows and the roof angles can be optimized to boost solar collection. So I chose to top the two-story portion of the house with an elegant butterfly roof along with a band of windows just below it. I’ve proposed a butterfly roof on a couple projects in the past and it never made it so let me just assure you all that the rain will drain off and the snow load will not be an issue. Tapered insulation under the roofing will divert the water to scuppers and downspouts on each end of the valley and the structure will be designed to hold the snow in the winter. I understand why they make people nervous at first glance but with proper details and roofing materials there is no reason to worry.

Here is an early sketch I did during design. (Don’t judge my notebook paper, when you have toddlers you use whatever paper is accessible)

Elevation

As you will find out in coming posts, this is not representative of what the final product will be.

Bri looking for inspiration. I promise I didn’t stage this photo!