Filed under: house design
In many house construction projects, landscaping design is often not being thought about until construction is almost complete. Often, it is one of those things that people wait to see if there is still money left to put into after the house is done.
However, proper landscaping not only can beautify your surroundings, it can also reduce your energy and water bills, increase value of your property and provide a more integrated and functional environment for your home.
In order to integrate landscaping early on into our design, we have partnered with Landscape Architects Jamie Fleckenstein and Chad Wichers at Studio 342 Landscape Architecture. After having a few design charette meetings with Jamie and Chad, they have helped us to come up with a landscaping design that we are excited about.
The landscape aims to:
– Integrate with the modern design of our house: Groups of plants with different heights and colors are selected to compliment with the vertical lines and structure of our modern-looking building
– Integrate with the functionality of the outdoor space: A Vine Maple tree is designed in front of our floor-to-ceiling windows to provide some privacy to the indoor space, as well as providing shade for a reading/relaxing patio at our front yard. Grass paved areas double as visitor parking spots as needed. Herb gardens in the backyard with easy access to the kitchen are designed. Deck areas on the backyard extended out from the kitchen and the guest suite are perfect for those summer BBQ parties.
– Reduce irrigation needs: All plants are drought tolerant and therefore reducing watering needs after initial establishment
– Reduce energy consumption: Retaining and adding deciduous trees south of the house, these trees provide shades in the summers (but will not block the much needed sunlight in the winters)
– Selecting plants based on their culture: Sun-loving plants are selected for our south-facing front yard and shade-loving plants are selected for our north-facing back yard
– Landscaping that can fit our budget: Selecting plants that serve the functions and look but without breaking our bank. We are however expecting to be putting in some ”sweat equity” into our landscaping — may be we need to throw a few pizza parties with our friends!!
For more information, please check out Studio 342 Landscape Architect’s website here.
August 20, 2009
What rooms go where, and how do you make them all fit? Green design is about making your house a functional, comfortable and healthy place to live as much as it is about saving the planet.
By paying attention to your lifestyle, understanding whether a room ought to get sun or not, how the rooms should connect to each other, how they should connect to the outdoors, how you can layer your space from public (the front door, home office etc) to private (your bedrooms), how to segregate noise and so on, your house will function better. The key to doing this is to understand how you use the house and a little bit about human psychology.
For our house, we have decided that we want to have 2 separate “blocks” of space — the West side of the house will be our “public” space where the kitchen, living, dining areas and our home office will be. The East side of the house will be our “private” space where the master, kids and guest bedrooms will be.
The “Public” Block on The West:
The open kitchen, dining and living room design allows the space to be used more effectively (the room will feel much bigger without all the separation walls) — perfect for us, a young family, who enjoy entertaining guests on the weekends. The open office upstairs gives a lofty feeling to the space. This side of the building is much more connected to the outdoors, with floor-to-ceiling windows on the south (looking at our landscaped front yard) and a french door open to a beautiful deck on the backyard (perfect for those future BBQ parties in the summer). These south exposure windows (with overhang) also help to maximize sunlight into the space.
The “Private” Block on The East:
The bedrooms are for resting so we wanted a clear separation from the West “public” block, with clear separation of space and segregation of noise. With this separation, the activities in the kitchen, living, dining areas and the home office will not interrupt our children’s sleep or study in the future. To provide more privacy, this side of the building is much more enclosed compared to the West block (no floor-to-ceiling windows).
June 10, 2009
What is the right size for our house? There are several factors which we have considered — future household size, house size of the neighborhood and size guidelines from green certification programs.
We are looking forward to be living in this Green Concept Home for many years to come. Therefore, as a young couple, we need to consider the space we will need as our family expands in the future. We also have relatives and families from overseas that we expect to be visiting us for extended periods of time each year. We will also need space for our home office. Therefore, we have designed for 5 rooms — a master suite, 2 kids bedrooms, a wonderful guests bedroom and a home office.
Our neighborhood consists mostly of high income married couples (with children), we want our house size to be within a reasonable size range among the neighborhood. A simple research online tells us that the average house in the area is about 2,000 to 3,800 square foot. So we will design our house to be within this size range.
Last but not least, the most environmental thing you can do for green building is to keep the house size reasonable; Smaller houses are generally considered to be “greener” because less resources are put into building the houses and less energy needs to be heating and cooling them. Small houses also tend to be less expensive to build, so you can take the savings from building less and put it in quality and craftsmanship.
Both the internationally recognized “LEED for Homes” and regionally recognized “Built Green” green certification programs provide some kind of guideline/matrix on house size. For a 5-bedroom home, the thresholds “neutral” size is:
“LEED for Homes” = 2,850 sq ft of “conditioned” space
“Built Green” = 3,600 sq ft of “conditioned” space
Houses with 5 bedrooms but are bigger than the above are considered to be less “green” and will have “points” deducted towards the certification process.
The Green Concept Home will stay around 2,800 square foot.
June 5, 2009
The site is south facing and sits at one of the highest point of the hill. Situated at a cul-de-sac, the street is private and intimate. The house has south facing roofs where the solar photovoltaic panels will be attached to. The north side of the house will be a intimate backyard with patio deck which will be shaded in the summer. Most of the windows are along the south and north side, with few openings along the west and east side to avoid excessive heat gain from summer western sun.
April 30, 2009
