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More Than Just Blueprints: Architects Add Value to Home Renovation and Construction Projects
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By Ken Wilson\n\t\t\t\n\t\tFor many people in the market for a new home or just looking to enlarge and/or remodel what they already own, working with an architect seems a fanciful dream and an unlikely, impractical reality. But should general contractors and home-drawn blueprints really be the default choice for people of modest means and modest projects?
“I don’t think architecture should be limited by people’s budgets,” says architect Ian Bosserman, a 1993 graduate of the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture and founder of Bosserman Design. “It shouldn’t really matter. I think people are pleasantly surprised by how easy it is, relatively speaking, to work with an architect, and how much fun it can be to make decisions and adapt something to your own needs.”
Laura Sherman and Ellen Longmoore sought Bosserman’s assistance in 2006 when they wanted a new front porch and carport for their home. He drew up a design that unified porch, carport, and house with lean-to copper roofs for the new additions and a pergola connecting carport and house. The two women then hired a contractor whom Bosserman worked with until the job was complete.
Bosserman’s design, says Sherman today, is far beyond what she and Longmoore could have drawn up themselves. “ I don’t think there’s anybody that could have come up with this design that worked so harmonically with the house, unless we’d had some kind of architectural background. We wanted that design to come from somebody who knew what they were looking at.”
But Bosserman’s contribution went beyond his pleasing plan. “He made the building process quite smooth,” Sherman says today, “keeping us from having to be the bad guy. He was in the middle with a couple of construction issues and ironed them out for us.”
“There are no plan books that can adequately address the complexity of an addition or renovation,” Bosserman warns. Undertaking construction “without the benefit of the visual aids that only an architect is trained to provide” is a formula for miscommunication. What’s more, contractors aren’t trained to design spaces and use them most efficiently, the way architects are. With their knowledge of construction practices, architects can also assure that the contractor’s work is of high quality, as Bosserman did for Sherman and Longmoore. And an architect is best qualified to design “green” structures that least impact the environment, and use the least possible amount of energy.
“In the case of an historic dwelling,” Bosserman adds, one can actually devalue the residence with inappropriate style or material choices. A simple set of professional plans will add to the project’s cost, but may add much more to a home’s resale value.
Choosing and Working with an Architect
Carports and porches, new kitchens and garden sheds . . .. modest jobs at modest costs add character now and pay off financially when the house goes on the market. So how should one go about choosing an architect? And how does the client-architect relationship work?
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has a checklist of issues it recommends considering even before one meets with a professional. These include just what the structure will be used for, what the schedule and budget for it will be, whether or not to pay more for energy-saving, environmentally-friendly features, and who will make the final decisions about the project in the case of disagreement.
Once such decisions are made, an architect’s first role, says Ron Keeney of Keeney and Company Architects, PLC, “is to sit down with a client in order to get a clear understanding of what the client wants.” Asking questions is the key first step for both parties.
Keeney has been practicing architecture hereabouts for a quarter of a century, and has sat on the board of directors of the Blue Ridge Home Builders Association (BRHBA) for 16 years. Eight former BRHBA presidents have been clients of his firm.
“We don’t impose our idea of a house on a client,” Keeney says. “It’s their house, not ours. Most clients come in the door with some understanding of what they want; frequently they come in the door with four or five plans out of a magazine and they want this piece of that one and that piece of this one.” Keeney starts with that wish list: “If they had an unlimited budget, what would they do? Then we have to talk about the reality of that -- you know, where you keep the kitchen trash can. And reality always ends up working into a budget, a dollar value.”
Once the ends have been matched to the financial means, it’s important to ask for references. Even when the architect has a good reputation, the key question is whether he or she has completed similarly scaled jobs. It’s also wise to choose an architect who listens well before offering suggestions. As the AIA puts it, “Look for a good listener, and you’ll find a good architect.” Pictures from books and from magazines can be invaluable in getting across just what you want, but make the architect show you that he understands your own vision for the work by putting it in his own words.
If these criteria are satisfied, it’s best to work out a payment schedule upfront. Most architects charge by the hour when drawing up plans, and a few bill thereafter by square foot. But the most common contractual agreement is for a percentage of construction costs, likely 10-15% for a new home and 15-20% for remodeling. Payments are typically required monthly.
Once the schematic design drawing is completed to the client’s satisfaction, an architect converts it into what Keeney calls “‘constructionese,’ the language that a general contractor understands.” On the basis of those drawings, the builders will make a price offer. The contract, Keeney says, “should be attached to the drawings as a contract, a written document, so that there’s a clear definition of what’s going to get built for that amount of money.”
Unlike under the traditional “design-bid-build” procedure, in which the client signs separate contracts with an architect and a builder, architectural projects today proceed by the “design-build” system, in which the architect provides the builder with a set of blueprints and the builder determines the necessary technical specifications. This makes the architect accountable for the entire project, so that the client doesn’t have to deal with and coordinate multiple entities.
On a design-build project, Keeney says, “the contractor will present an invoice to me and I’ll go out in the field and check to see if that amount of work had been done. Then I’ll sign off on it and hand it off to the owners and say, ‘Yes, I believe he really does have 18% of this done and 40% of that done and this bill is appropriate.’ The client then writes a check directly to the contractor.”
This arrangement can also help clients who take out loans for their building project. “The bank may require an independent, third party to verify the amount of construction in the field before they write a check each month,” Keeney says.
Design Trends
If the design-build model has changed the manner in which residential architecture is conceived and constructed, the “not so big house” trend (see sidebar) has given consumers contemplating home designs a new look to dream of, in which high quality materials and thoughtful use of space take precedent over size for size’s sake.
“I think people are recognizing that big cathedral ceilings and big open foyers and spaces like that are not really very usable, just because of the cost of materials and labor and how much per square foot it’s going to cost them,” Keeney says. “When you waste 20 square foot in the living room by making it 2 feet longer, you’re not gaining anything. We generally work hard to be as cost-efficient as possible and I believe most of our clients want us to do that.”
A concern for cost efficiency and a more thoughtful approach to integrating natural and manmade environments are factors that tie the “not so big house” trend to the “build green” wing of the environmental movement. Green options include using recycled, non-toxic materials, as well as photovoltaic cells on the rooftop that capture sunlight, and air and water treatment systems.
“I think the biggest difference most homeowners will see is that the house will be tighter and less expensive to heat and cool,” Bosserman says. But along with energy-saving innovations, many architects recommend the use of natural materials like solid woods instead of glued plywoods, and wool carpets instead of synthetic ones. Because some people are affected by tiny molds and dust mites that can lodge in wall-to-wall carpets, some homebuilders are foregoing carpets altogether and employing rugs, which allow for more thorough cleaning.
“I don’t like the word ‘green,” I like ‘cost-efficient,’” Keeney says, “and I would say the better builders have been building relatively tight, energy-efficient houses already. Thomas Jefferson designed for what he needed to live in based on his physical size and the physical size of the people around him. Monticello has stairwells that are only 30 inches wide because that’s the width of the shoulders. So I think generally speaking we’ve all been designing for the physical size of human beings and how much space they needed. The real change I’ve seen is in specialty items: swimming pools and spas and health fitness rooms and four season glass-wrapped rooms. But the basic house is still the basic house.”
For further information on working with an architect, see
www.aia.org/ask_20_questions and http://howdesignworks.aia.org/working.cfm
Many Buyers Trading Space for Quality
Architect Sarah Susanka is a home design revolutionary whose reconception of the ideal residential architecture has sparked a movement and made her a best-selling author and much-sought-after speaker. Susanka’s core idea is to trade space for quality: “Money saved on square footage,” she writes, “is spent on quality of design, detailing, and crafting to make a house that’s more than the sum of its parts.”
This “better, not bigger, quality not quantity” philosophy, which she first laid out in her best-selling 1998 book, “The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live,” is a response to what many feel is the blight of ostentatious and indifferently rendered “McMansions.” It reflects her “growing awareness that new houses were getting bigger and bigger but with little redeeming design merit.” Comfort, Susanka writes, “has almost nothing to do with how big a space is. It is attained, rather, by tailoring our houses to fit the way we really live, and to the scale and proportions of our human form.” This means cutting out rarely used spaces and emphasizing “comfort, beauty, and a high level of detail.”
The actual size of a “not so big house” varies in accordance with budget, preference, and size of family, Susanka writes, but “as a rule of thumb” it’s two-thirds the size of what the home shopper was originally looking for, feels much bigger than that original goal, and costs the same. At the core of this “space with substance” revolution are six design principles:
Shelter Around Activity: Like children making a cozy play space with a cardboard box or a blanket, adults can use sheltered alcoves to make grown-up homes feel homey.
Doing Double Duty: “Not so big” homebuilders don’t build a room for every activity: they “moonlight” spaces so that they serve multiple functions over time.
Interior Views: Everyone looks out the windows when house-shopping. But the beautiful home has pleasing vistas indoors as well.
Diagonal Views: Put to use the hypotenuse. A house arranged so that’s it’s most often viewed along the diagonal from one corner to the opposite corner will seem larger than it actually is.
Variety of Ceiling Heights: High ceilings are impressive, but do they make us feel at home? Matching ceiling heights to the other dimensions of the room, and varying them from room to room, provides variety with personality.
A Place of One’s Own: The kids each have their own room, but do you? A room of one’s own, or just a corner to oneself, can enhance the feel of the rest of the home.
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More Than Just Blueprints: Architects Add Value to Home Renovation and Construction Projects
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By Ken Wilson\\n\\t\\t\\t\\n\\t\\tFor many people in the market for a new home or just looking to enlarge and/or remodel what they already own, working with an architect seems a fanciful dream and an unlikely, impractical reality. But should general contractors and home-drawn blueprints really be the default choice for people of modest means and modest projects?
“I don’t think architecture should be limited by people’s budgets,” says architect Ian Bosserman, a 1993 graduate of the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture and founder of Bosserman Design. “It shouldn’t really matter. I think people are pleasantly surprised by how easy it is, relatively speaking, to work with an architect, and how much fun it can be to make decisions and adapt something to your own needs.”
Laura Sherman and Ellen Longmoore sought Bosserman’s assistance in 2006 when they wanted a new front porch and carport for their home. He drew up a design that unified porch, carport, and house with lean-to copper roofs for the new additions and a pergola connecting carport and house. The two women then hired a contractor whom Bosserman worked with until the job was complete.
Bosserman’s design, says Sherman today, is far beyond what she and Longmoore could have drawn up themselves. “ I don’t think there’s anybody that could have come up with this design that worked so harmonically with the house, unless we’d had some kind of architectural background. We wanted that design to come from somebody who knew what they were looking at.”
But Bosserman’s contribution went beyond his pleasing plan. “He made the building process quite smooth,” Sherman says today, “keeping us from having to be the bad guy. He was in the middle with a couple of construction issues and ironed them out for us.”
“There are no plan books that can adequately address the complexity of an addition or renovation,” Bosserman warns. Undertaking construction “without the benefit of the visual aids that only an architect is trained to provide” is a formula for miscommunication. What’s more, contractors aren’t trained to design spaces and use them most efficiently, the way architects are. With their knowledge of construction practices, architects can also assure that the contractor’s work is of high quality, as Bosserman did for Sherman and Longmoore. And an architect is best qualified to design “green” structures that least impact the environment, and use the least possible amount of energy.
“In the case of an historic dwelling,” Bosserman adds, one can actually devalue the residence with inappropriate style or material choices. A simple set of professional plans will add to the project’s cost, but may add much more to a home’s resale value.
Choosing and Working with an Architect
Carports and porches, new kitchens and garden sheds . . .. modest jobs at modest costs add character now and pay off financially when the house goes on the market. So how should one go about choosing an architect? And how does the client-architect relationship work?
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has a checklist of issues it recommends considering even before one meets with a professional. These include just what the structure will be used for, what the schedule and budget for it will be, whether or not to pay more for energy-saving, environmentally-friendly features, and who will make the final decisions about the project in the case of disagreement.
Once such decisions are made, an architect’s first role, says Ron Keeney of Keeney and Company Architects, PLC, “is to sit down with a client in order to get a clear understanding of what the client wants.” Asking questions is the key first step for both parties.
Keeney has been practicing architecture hereabouts for a quarter of a century, and has sat on the board of directors of the Blue Ridge Home Builders Association (BRHBA) for 16 years. Eight former BRHBA presidents have been clients of his firm.
“We don’t impose our idea of a house on a client,” Keeney says. “It’s their house, not ours. Most clients come in the door with some understanding of what they want; frequently they come in the door with four or five plans out of a magazine and they want this piece of that one and that piece of this one.” Keeney starts with that wish list: “If they had an unlimited budget, what would they do? Then we have to talk about the reality of that -- you know, where you keep the kitchen trash can. And reality always ends up working into a budget, a dollar value.”
Once the ends have been matched to the financial means, it’s important to ask for references. Even when the architect has a good reputation, the key question is whether he or she has completed similarly scaled jobs. It’s also wise to choose an architect who listens well before offering suggestions. As the AIA puts it, “Look for a good listener, and you’ll find a good architect.” Pictures from books and from magazines can be invaluable in getting across just what you want, but make the architect show you that he understands your own vision for the work by putting it in his own words.
If these criteria are satisfied, it’s best to work out a payment schedule upfront. Most architects charge by the hour when drawing up plans, and a few bill thereafter by square foot. But the most common contractual agreement is for a percentage of construction costs, likely 10-15% for a new home and 15-20% for remodeling. Payments are typically required monthly.
Once the schematic design drawing is completed to the client’s satisfaction, an architect converts it into what Keeney calls “‘constructionese,’ the language that a general contractor understands.” On the basis of those drawings, the builders will make a price offer. The contract, Keeney says, “should be attached to the drawings as a contract, a written document, so that there’s a clear definition of what’s going to get built for that amount of money.”
Unlike under the traditional “design-bid-build” procedure, in which the client signs separate contracts with an architect and a builder, architectural projects today proceed by the “design-build” system, in which the architect provides the builder with a set of blueprints and the builder determines the necessary technical specifications. This makes the architect accountable for the entire project, so that the client doesn’t have to deal with and coordinate multiple entities.
On a design-build project, Keeney says, “the contractor will present an invoice to me and I’ll go out in the field and check to see if that amount of work had been done. Then I’ll sign off on it and hand it off to the owners and say, ‘Yes, I believe he really does have 18% of this done and 40% of that done and this bill is appropriate.’ The client then writes a check directly to the contractor.”
This arrangement can also help clients who take out loans for their building project. “The bank may require an independent, third party to verify the amount of construction in the field before they write a check each month,” Keeney says.
Design Trends
If the design-build model has changed the manner in which residential architecture is conceived and constructed, the “not so big house” trend (see sidebar) has given consumers contemplating home designs a new look to dream of, in which high quality materials and thoughtful use of space take precedent over size for size’s sake.
“I think people are recognizing that big cathedral ceilings and big open foyers and spaces like that are not really very usable, just because of the cost of materials and labor and how much per square foot it’s going to cost them,” Keeney says. “When you waste 20 square foot in the living room by making it 2 feet longer, you’re not gaining anything. We generally work hard to be as cost-efficient as possible and I believe most of our clients want us to do that.”
A concern for cost efficiency and a more thoughtful approach to integrating natural and manmade environments are factors that tie the “not so big house” trend to the “build green” wing of the environmental movement. Green options include using recycled, non-toxic materials, as well as photovoltaic cells on the rooftop that capture sunlight, and air and water treatment systems.
“I think the biggest difference most homeowners will see is that the house will be tighter and less expensive to heat and cool,” Bosserman says. But along with energy-saving innovations, many architects recommend the use of natural materials like solid woods instead of glued plywoods, and wool carpets instead of synthetic ones. Because some people are affected by tiny molds and dust mites that can lodge in wall-to-wall carpets, some homebuilders are foregoing carpets altogether and employing rugs, which allow for more thorough cleaning.
“I don’t like the word ‘green,” I like ‘cost-efficient,’” Keeney says, “and I would say the better builders have been building relatively tight, energy-efficient houses already. Thomas Jefferson designed for what he needed to live in based on his physical size and the physical size of the people around him. Monticello has stairwells that are only 30 inches wide because that’s the width of the shoulders. So I think generally speaking we’ve all been designing for the physical size of human beings and how much space they needed. The real change I’ve seen is in specialty items: swimming pools and spas and health fitness rooms and four season glass-wrapped rooms. But the basic house is still the basic house.”
For further information on working with an architect, see
www.aia.org/ask_20_questions and http://howdesignworks.aia.org/working.cfm
Many Buyers Trading Space for Quality
Architect Sarah Susanka is a home design revolutionary whose reconception of the ideal residential architecture has sparked a movement and made her a best-selling author and much-sought-after speaker. Susanka’s core idea is to trade space for quality: “Money saved on square footage,” she writes, “is spent on quality of design, detailing, and crafting to make a house that’s more than the sum of its parts.”
This “better, not bigger, quality not quantity” philosophy, which she first laid out in her best-selling 1998 book, “The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live,” is a response to what many feel is the blight of ostentatious and indifferently rendered “McMansions.” It reflects her “growing awareness that new houses were getting bigger and bigger but with little redeeming design merit.” Comfort, Susanka writes, “has almost nothing to do with how big a space is. It is attained, rather, by tailoring our houses to fit the way we really live, and to the scale and proportions of our human form.” This means cutting out rarely used spaces and emphasizing “comfort, beauty, and a high level of detail.”
The actual size of a “not so big house” varies in accordance with budget, preference, and size of family, Susanka writes, but “as a rule of thumb” it’s two-thirds the size of what the home shopper was originally looking for, feels much bigger than that original goal, and costs the same. At the core of this “space with substance” revolution are six design principles:
Shelter Around Activity: Like children making a cozy play space with a cardboard box or a blanket, adults can use sheltered alcoves to make grown-up homes feel homey.
Doing Double Duty: “Not so big” homebuilders don’t build a room for every activity: they “moonlight” spaces so that they serve multiple functions over time.
Interior Views: Everyone looks out the windows when house-shopping. But the beautiful home has pleasing vistas indoors as well.
Diagonal Views: Put to use the hypotenuse. A house arranged so that’s it’s most often viewed along the diagonal from one corner to the opposite corner will seem larger than it actually is.
Variety of Ceiling Heights: High ceilings are impressive, but do they make us feel at home? Matching ceiling heights to the other dimensions of the room, and varying them from room to room, provides variety with personality.
A Place of One’s Own: The kids each have their own room, but do you? A room of one’s own, or just a corner to oneself, can enhance the feel of the rest of the home.
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