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The Lawrence Street House – Front Porch

This post is Front Porch because we also have a Side Porch I’ll talk about in a future post.

Part of our desire to be downtown is neighborhood. Connecting with people and the whole aspect of our culture that we’ve lost in the suburbs. We’ve noticed, when walking around this neighborhood that people are out front. 15th Street is a major bike and pedestrian connector with more bikes than cars, I think.
So we wanted a place that relates our home design to the street. We found a picture of an old bungalow house that had kind of a corner wrap-around porch. That concept stuck with us. Since our lot is a corner lot, this orientation seemed to make all sorts of sense.
So here’s the result. We have a nice corner porch, south-facing, with room for a couple of chairs to sit out and drink coffee and watch the neighbors walk by. It has what we envision to be a gently curved roof to provide visual interest from the street and protection from the rain as people come to visit. Right now, we’re showing a short sidewalk to each street: Lawrence and 15th.
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The Lawrence Street House – Programming

I’m trying to title each of these posts with a one-word summary. Site. Beginnings. You know, try to keep it simple. After all, this is thesimpleHOUSE.
So this next step in our process is called “programming”. I tried to look for a better word, because programming is long, sounds technical and doesn’t quite have the sexiness of a word like “beginnings”. But there really isn’t a better word, so I stayed with that.

Programming is where we take the information from a client (in this case, myself and my wife) and help them organize it into a framework where we can move into a schematic design (for starters) of their home.
You would think since I’m an architect and am designing my own home for myself and my wife (who I’ve been happily married to for almost three decades), we could dispense with the programming and just start designing. Well, that was the temptation.
But I’m so convinced of our process and the years of experience with it that we did it, too. My wife and I sat down and “programmed” our new home. The first picture above is one aspect of this process. We have a matrix where we link all the rooms and areas of our home and decide what kind of relationship we want between them. We color-code this with “direct”, “indirect” or “no relationship”. This is the first part of the process.
The second part (represented by the second picture) is going room by room and listing ideas, thoughts and dreams specific to that room. Downloading images and taking pictures of things we like are also incorporated into a page for each room. Any furniture we intend to keep (“reuse” is one of the three “R”s) is measured and listed at the bottom of the page for that room.
After all that is compiled, it creates a very comprehensive basis for starting a design. The other benefit it does is it gets the client (in this case me and my wife) talking and communicating about what we would like. It can be (and was for us) a wonderful process of thoughts, ideas and dreams. And I discovered even non-architects (my wife) often have really good ideas I haven’t thought of. And that’s how we grow and learn and get better at what we do.
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theSAGE now available!

theSAGE is now available for purchase at our website. Through an exclusive arrangement with the award-winning firm of Arbor South Architecture, PC, we are pleased to offer this 1,447 sq ft, 2 bedroom, 2 bath home.

Also, Arbor South is currently building theSAGE in Eugene, Oregon and it is targeted at LEED Platinum.
Visit the Arbor South Architecture Group on Facebook for pictures and information.
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theSAGE


We are in week six of construction. theSAGE has roof, windows installed and we are now working on interior “infrastructure”. We are targeting LEED Platinum. We are pulling out all the stops — solar PV, solar DHW, massive insulation, small infill site, reclaimed and reused redwood from the Cuthbert Amphitheater benches (it’s incredible wood! Thanks to BRING Recycling for contacting us).

We will be offering the plan for sale on our website soon. 
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simple design

I guess maybe I should have started with the obvious. These plans are simple. There are a few, understated design elements and themes that carry through; just enough “umph” to give them some pizzaz, but not overdone. 

For so many years we’ve overdone. With the global climate and fossil fuel issues, we can no longer live lives of excess. That doesn’t mean we can’t be comfortable or have style, but within the context of simple, sustainable, responsible housing.