More Home, Less House

I believe sustainability and good design go together seamlessly. Green thinking for me starts early in the design process. Well before clients begin to consider energy star appliances or faucet performance from a check list, the decisions we make about location, space quality and type of home determine much of the impact our building will have on the planet. Regardless of your favorite style or budget, or how big or small the home of your dreams is, our day to day goal is to maximize the joy and efficiency of the spaces that are right for you, while using the minimal amount of resources to build them. Over the years I have come up with a series of "design strategies" that architects use to create beautiful homes, which are grouped under a "more home, less house" design attitude. Following are some examples taken from my own work.

Healthy skin: Home TYPES

Compact homes tend to have less exposed exterior wall area than Spread-out ones, which makes them thermally more efficient in cold climates (please note the highlight on "tend"). On the other hand Spread-out homes tend to interact better with the immediate natural environment. The work of Frank Lloyd Wright and his organic architecture is the best example of the Spread-out type. Forest Horizons was designed with the More Home, Less House principle in mind. It stands on the ridgeline of a forested property, and it needed to be as compact as possible to comply with the client's desire for energy efficiency. On the other hand, a spread out layout would allow the home to better embrace the unique character of the site. A screen porch was located at both ends as a response to this challenge, which extends the visual length of the home without increasing the wall surface. The screen porches' timber structure is fully exposed, accentuating the visual effect of "floating away" from the rest. The section illustrates the heated part of the home.

Multiple use spaces

While far along in the design of a small cabin on Gull Lake in Wisconsin, the clients came up with a request to add a library to the project. This new room that accommodated their passion for reading would have increased the square footage and cost of the project. After listening to their habit of carrying books upstairs to read in their bedrooms at dusk, I proposed to combine the library with the stair. Not only was an extra room spared, but the combination of two disparate spaces opened the door for some creative design solutions, like the steps becoming bookcase shelves and providing a comfortable spot for the kids to sit down and read. We can sum up this more home, less house principle with a simple statement:

1 LIBRARY + 1 STAIR = a more interesting place than 2 separate rooms;

1 LIBRARY + 1 STAIR = less square footage and less materials than 2 separate rooms

More about the More Home, Less House principles

More Home, Less House principles have been part of residential designer's repertoire for a long time. Their significant impact on the green nature of a project is often overshadowed by the lack of a precise method to measure them. How do we measure the poetic beauty of a family room that has been gracefully combined with the kitchen to become the heart of a home? And how do we measure its efficient use of resources if we have not built a "clone" duplicate kitchen that is separate from the family room? I am presently researching ways to establish some criteria to evaluate these significant "poetic" variables. If you are interested in learning some more about this and the strategies used by architects in "more home, less house" design click here, and here to get some information on the courses I teach through the Compleat Scholar (U of MN) and the Edina Community Learning Center (Edina School District). Don't hesitate to give me a call or send me an email if you are interested in any aspect of the More Home, Less House design.

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