A casual survey of why people become architects will inevitably lead to an early interest in or passion for the design of houses. It is therefore surprising to many people that not all architects design houses. Single-family residential design is something most architects feel they have the skills and knowledge to do effectively, but the reality is few of us make an ongoing practice of it and even fewer can earn a meaningful living doing it. I know—I try to do it every day and it is tough.
This book had its start as an answer to a question. A good friend of mine, Tim, got the opportunity to do what all of us architects (and a lot of nonarchitects) dream of—design and build his own house. Tim enjoys a successful architectural career working almost exclusively on commercial projects. Using this experience and his considerable organizational skills, he designed his house in an orderly manner that reflected everything he’d learned about how to lay out and plan an efficient building. Using the careful assumptions any of us would make when planning for economy and efficiency, he arranged the rooms in a compact mass with a minimum of exterior surface area. He utilized standard sizes of lumber and masonry when laying out and organizing his elevations. He avoided curves, expensive finishes, and difficult details. He stacked his plumbing in a logical manner, minimized lighting fixtures, and oriented the house to minimize solar gain while maximizing opportunities for natural lighting. He reviewed his completed drawings carefully with a responsible contractor with a reputation for fair pricing and an acceptable level of quality and provided cut sheets and data for all the materials he thought necessary, so as to leave no questions unanswered and to avoid gray areas that could lead to higher or incomplete pricing. A few weeks later, the contractor called him with news that his bid number was ready and a meeting was arranged to review the pricing.
That night Tim (and his wife), for the first time in his professional career, was on the receiving end of a cost estimate that was significantly over budget. He’d been in the room as a consultant many times when a client reacted with shock when a bid or budget price for a building project came in high, and he was adept at all the things to say to handle damage control. But in this case it was his own house, his own money! He was the client and the partner in this particular business deal was his wife, who immediately brought into question his professional competence. How could he design a house so far over budget and not know it?
Prior to this day, Tim had always dismissed the residential aspect of my practice as a sort of hobby that allowed me to dally in frivolous things for folks with too much money. He assumed we did the houses for “fun,” as an artistic outlet, and they really weren’t a serious part of the business of my office. Like many architects in larger commercial or institutional firms he had never been involved in the design of a single-family home, never budgeted one, nor really thought of homes in any context other than the annual issue of Record Houses. But after this day Tim needed some help, and he called me because he thought I could guide him out of his mess.
It is not unusual to be an architect and never design a house. The first one I was involved with happened after sixteen years of practice, six as the principal of my own firm. That first house came to me through one of my commercial clients who, with his wife, decided to do significant additions to and remodel a large house and hired my firm because we had been handling a variety of other projects for them. At almost the same time, friends of theirs were planning to build a house in the same neighborhood and they referred them to us. We went from doing no houses to two houses in the space of a few days, and single-family residences have been an integral and rewarding part of my practice ever since.
Tim’s predicament and the way I was able to help him with it became the spark of an idea that led to my creating a 90-minute continuing education program for our state’s AIA component titled So You Want to Do Houses? It was meant as a sardonic twist on the typical cocktail chatter I endure at a party when someone asks me what I do for a living. After I tell them I’m an architect, they relate how they always wanted to be an architect but couldn’t do the math or draw a straight line. This is usually followed by a loosely worded question to me along the lines of “Do you do residential?” which then produces the confession from them that they always wanted to do houses. In one of the most excruciating variants on this conversation, they ask me if I designed my own house. After I tell them no, they lose all respect and move on to chat with someone else.
My continuing education program provided a broad overview of residential practice and how it was organized within my firm. It relied heavily on my own experience and a central theme of mine that even though houses are integral to the public’s perception of what we do, it is really a unique architectural project type and not one that adapts easily to our established patterns of professional practice. What we are taught in school about the delivery of services simply has not worked for my residential practice, nor has it proved relevant to or supportive of my clients’ understanding of the design process. Houses are unique projects with unique client expectations and goals and a generalized process as outlined in the standard agreements for services simply doesn’t work. Experience has taught me that another way of looking at providing these services was necessary, and the development of a practice process and the subsequent success we have had servicing our clients by reorganizing our priorities became a basic model for our doing houses on an ongoing basis.
When we first started designing houses we did them like commercial projects. We tried to move through the five stages of the design process (schematic design, design development, construction documents, bidding and permitting, and construction administration) in a sequential manner. We also brought along all of our typical consultants (mechanical, electrical and plumbing, structural, and occasionally civil) and a full slate of services and staff to coordinate and document the process. We kept having problems, though; the process that worked so well in the design of our commercial projects seemed ponderous and inflexible. It was frankly confusing to our clients, who were not used to working with architects and to whom our professional jargon made no sense. Even worse for our planning purposes, the typical allocation of fees and resources simply didn’t work. We were not just losing money on the houses; they were taking our focus off the other jobs in our office that we were delivering with more traditional service patterns. But we loved doing them! I knew we would have to adjust and change the service delivery process if we were going to continue to do them. I began to experiment with the right mix of services and fees to develop a practical and effective way of doing houses that would allow them to be a meaningful part of our project mix and be good business, but, more importantly, be fun.
This book will look at the design and construction of houses and how to do them, from my experience of the last 12 years. It’s not a very long time, but during that time we’ve built or significantly modified about 17 houses. All of them are projects we are proud of. We develop relationships with our clients that have become highly personalized, a necessary component of practice for achieving artistic results. We have developed a reputation in our region for well-designed, contemporary houses and all of our residential work comes to us by way of referral. In the book I will point out my experience and that of my associates in the context of our projects, using real-life examples of things that went well and, unfortunately, that went badly too. I will also compare and contrast our residential and commercial practices and illustrate how doing residential projects, even for commercial clients with experience working with architects and contractors, requires a different approach. I will rather bluntly tell you how I feel about residential design in a business sense, how many of us don’t really provide residential design services with a true eye on the financial realities of practice, and why it is a challenge to get residential projects that are “real jobs.” Finally, I will explain how residential design practice simply isn’t for everyone, why the idea of an architect-designed house for every person is a myth, and why we cannot practically be a resource for any but a small elite.
By the end I think you will understand what I did for my friend Tim and why he was able to build his dream house and live happily ever after.
At the conclusion of each chapter, I have included a case study of one of my residential projects and used it as a way to illustrate the actual experience my firm has in the design and construction of a house. Each of the houses represents a unique site, budget, program, and set of circumstances that made it a valuable lesson to us, even if it hurt learning the lesson at the time. Mindful that architecture is collaborative and that we have to work with contractors and vendors to build, I will also try to share the process and challenges associated with each house.
Michael Malone, AIA