Sustainable Design Update

Illustration From “The Good House”

Note: This is part of an ongoing weekly series on building a sustainable home. 

Design Matters

It takes about the same amount of material to make a BMW as it takes to make a Chevy. The only real difference is the design. (Ok, some of the interior finishes in a BMW may never be seen in a Chevy, but bear with me) The shape, color, texture and even the sound of a new car are designed and built from the same lump of clay. The same holds true in Architecture. The same pallete of materials handled by different Architects will turn out differently.

Here are some design considerations for a sustainable home:

Design a Passive Solar Home – I know I am repeating myself here but passive solar design is more than a way to conserve energy. Passive solar homes feel better to live in than their traditional counterparts. In a passive solar home you know where the sun rises, where it sets and where it is at noon. You develop an intuitive sense of the world around you even if you don’t get outdoors often.

Design Interesting Spaces - Don’t be afraid to build a geometrically complex structure. Clients recite to me something about how it costs more to have more corners on a house. This is possibly true, but most contractors base their bids primarily on square footage, ceiling height and the level of material finishes. Additional corners just don’t make that much of a difference. If you insulate well, additional corners don’t detract from your overall thermal performance. Make a nook off the living room for a small library. Make a breakfast area in the eastern sunlight, cantilever a sleeping porch into your back yard. The added complexity of space makes the interior more interesting and your house will seem larger.

Layer spaces – Most people don’t have any idea what I’m talking about when I say that layering spaces adds to the feeling of greater volume. Layering space means you look past one part to see another. For example design a fireplace between the dining area and the living or family room area of a house rather than having one big “Great Room”. I’ve seen too many great rooms that feel like airship hangers. Having a fireplace, possibly combined with a small library space between parts of a great room can make the room feel larger.

Use contrast as a design tool - There is a great book on this topic “The Good House” by Max Jacobson. (Max is one of the authors of “A Pattern Language”) Design some smaller spaces with lower ceilings and larger spaces that are open and airy. Design some spaces that are naturally darker than others. Design spaces that blur the distinction between indoors and out.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 8:50 pm and is filed under Architecture, Sustainability. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.