On plans

I can see both sides of the need to acquire permission to build.  On one hand we should learn from the mistakes of others and recognise that not everyone is suited to home design.  On the other hand knowing how to gain permission has almost become a profession to understand the process.

As taste and good design are things that are difficult to define, the rules regarding how this is policed are very complicated.  Also when it comes to design things need to be safe and environmentally responsible.  Regulations are formulated to ensure that those gravity defying shapes are in fact gravity defying.  And while there are plenty of mistakes that are rough on the eye, those that are rough on the environment need to be curtailed too.

So to help me not get through this process I enlisted the help of a professional.  I had drawn with substantial detail how our new house was going to fit together, but without having done so before it was impossible for me to be sure that I was not also adding substantial flaws.  So I rang around in search of a drafts person or architect.

I've always strongly believed in the role of an architect.  It became clear that employing a professional architect was not going to be workable.  I contacted one such individual as I was attempting to resolve the aesthetics of the northern wall as mentioned in my previous post.  As we looked through the projects of the architect they failed to impress and when we talked about our project it was apparent he was not into collaboration.

What followed was trawling for a drafts person.  I contacted a few drafts persons to discover either their fees were too high (maybe they had too much work already) or they were so low that I had the feeling we would wind up in a sausage machine process and just get precisely what I asked for without input on their part.  An old high school friend's father had been building this new house for the past 5 years so I got the contact details of the drafts person they used and made a call.  This was what we were looking for someone who listened to what we wanted but was also opinionated at the same time.

The progress went well to fine tune my design and produce a submittable document.  A few movements of walls to widen corridors and other adjustments of dimensions was by enlarge the changes required.  To get my drawings up to the correct specification lots of labels, section and elevation views.

The environment wasn't left out either.  When submitting for a DA you need to include a Basix certificate.  A NSW Government requirement which is really a giant online calculator to tell you how green you are.   Window sizes, water sources, heating and cooling of the premises are all taken into account.  This had its complications, for example to avoid a photovoltaic system meant I couldn't have air conditioning!

We were now ready for our DA submission to Baulkham Hills Council.

On evolution

After a process that had lasted around 5-6 months I was happy with the results.  The house design had undergone a number of variations as I honed its external appearance and interior layout.

The first thing to go was the round bathroom.  I added it to the floor plan as I thought it was all looking a bit too conventional.  I dropped it not only out of unpopularity but also because the shape was not exactly easy to work with from an interior perspective.

The theme of curves took another battering.  The garage roof inspired from aircraft hangers failed to integrate with the rest of the house and the juxtaposition of the flat roofs with one curved roof did not enhance the interest in the lines but proved to confuse it.  With a few clicks it was no more.

Otherwise there was very little change in the layout and general appearance of the design.  Most changes were correcting dimensions used for standard doors, windows and walls.  Although the front facade of the house remained a challenge.  The layout was part culprit, with the walk-in-robe at one end and the ensuite at the other, the walls around the main bedroom were very limited in how the windows could be positioned.  I used an idea of geometric lines indented across the front with windows in a picture-frame type alignment to address this shortcoming.  It failed.

Dani and I were at Circular Quay one day when the answer to this problem was found.  The Bennelong Apartments featured a facade on their South tower that used a book shaped design.  I liked it and that night fashioned a variation to resolve our own facade design.

One problem that a lot of people had when analysing the design was the lack of context.  Seeing a house floating in a space of nothing made imagining the real thing difficult.  The solution was to do some landscaping.  Not being a huge fan of mowing, minimising the grass areas became an obsession.  A pool was a great way to achieve this objective so in it went along with some decking and extensive pathways.

The size of the lounge room was of some concern.  It is an odd shape and the fitment of the furniture showed that having a double bifold door out to the backyard caused two problems.  The first was to work out how the pool fencing would be resolved and the second was that the wall where the door was would be unable to be used for furniture.  So the second bifold was removed and replaced with a louvre window.

And that was it.

On tools

I now had a starting point for the design, a rough sketch.  The floor plan had to evolve and this would require a suitable tool.  3D greatly interested me and my previous forray into Autocad was many years ago.  A friend suggested I look at Sketchup by Google.  After a few hours I was able to get some results and it quickly became my tool of choice.

 

There are many other tools in the market which are probably easier than Sketchup to achieve fast results such as Chief Architect.  But what others lack is the ability to stray from convention.  While it was important for reasons of cost not to stray too far, features such as the roof design, and of course the core shape of the house meant Sketchup would make this possible at the expense of a steeper learning curve.
To make sketchup a little easier to use they have a concept of plugins which can perform programmatic tasks on the model which would take far too long to perform manually.  Three were particularly useful, these were Solid Inspector, Weld and Bezier Curves.

As Sketchup is about 3D it works best when your objects are solids.  That is there are no gaps or holes which prevent the use of solid tools for trimming, subtracting or intersecting two or more solids.  Solid Inspector is a quick way to identify where shapes need fixing to become solids.

When drawing in sketchup each line is recorded as individual vectors.  Often when drawing and correcting the model one is faced with a straight line being made up of multiple vectors.  When changing a 2D shape into a 3D object this leads to unwanted vector artefacts on the extruded shape's sides.  Getting rid of them is made easy with the Weld tool, which joins two vectors into a single vector.

The louvre clip on the left has a curve that has been welded in the one on the right

The final plugin was the Bezier Curves.  The need for this tool was quite specific and related to the land contours.  I recieved from the real estate agent a PDF of the land contours which was not in vector format and therefore not something that Sketchup was able to interact with.  However I could load the image into sketchup and then use the Bezier Curves tool to overlay the surveyors levels.  This was a great time and cost saver.

Now I was armed with a tool creating a concept that would illustrate the design properly would now be possible.

On shapes

In my case while I'd admired and critiqued other house shapes actually drawing a floor plan of our own home was new territory.  So the method I used was to first think about what the core shape would be. 

A simple rectangle or classic L shape was out - almost every project home was a series of perpendicular rectangles with few going outside of these boundaries; so it was easy to decide what I didn't want.  Drawing from my inspirations I concocted a basic layout using a pencil and paper.

My initial sketches combined the curved glass wall with the obtuse L shape.  This provided a starting point so I could begin adding extra rooms and seeing how well it worked.  I proceeded to add rooms around the perimeter of the basic shape and out of it came a basic layout that is pretty close to what it looks like today.

The shape of an obtuse L configuration provided something unique that would have angles that would challenge the eye and provide interest in its form. The rooms would protrude from this core shape; it was important that the shape was not diluted and still visible from both the outside and inside of the home.

The placement of rooms followed the requirements of maintaining close proximity of rooms that had relationships with each other.  The children's bedrooms were at an arms length from the master bedroom but close to the main bathroom, the study could open out to the main living area and it would be no problem getting the groceries from the car to the kitchen.  Other touches like a deck and pool added food for thought.

One thing that was obvious is that we would not be able to fit everything on one floor.  So the guest room was missing and there were also practical considerations like storage that were still unanswered.  However, this technique definitely worked well for getting all my thoughts together where they could be analysed and allowed to evolve. 

It was also fair to say that the true appearance of the house could not be seen or abstracted from a simple two dimensional floor plan.  Three dimensions would be needed to express the concept in its full form.

On rooms

As we are building a home of our own design we put a lot of thought into what rooms we would need.  The location of rooms in relation to each other is also an important factor to ensure that the home works and does not present hurdles when carrying out daily activities.

There are a number of techniques that I had seen such as bubble diagrams for working out the position of rooms relative to each other; although honestly I didn't use them when putting together ours.  I relied on practical ideas of how to overcome common design problems with everyday living.

The first requirement was that it would be a family home, so two kiddie bedrooms were top of the list.  The bedrooms would need to be a decent size to avoid the overly cluttered look and have enough room for when their inhabitants are older, so 3 x 4 m would be the minimum.

As the central meeting point of the home, the kitchen was also of high priority.  There is a commonly known test for kitchens called the work triangle test.  This is said to ensure an efficient working environment by ensuring that the fridge, oven and sink are all in a triangular pattern from each other.  A large working bench and also a generous pantry would be ideal attributes.

The first rule of the bathroom is that it would have a separate WC.  The WC would need to be spacious enough for a basin so that one's not hampered when the bathroom is in use. 

For the main bedroom we wanted a large ensuite and walk-in-robe.  Who wouldn't? Otherwise it needed to be in reasonable proximity to the other bedrooms.

I tend to spend a bit of time in the study when working on either personal projects or occasionally work, so it was important to me that the study was open to the main living areas.  This way I supposed I could remain in touch with what was going on, rather than being hidden from view.  However a large cupboard where all the computer junk and books could be hidden from view would make the room workable from a practical perspective.

A guest room would be useful to accommodate visiting friends and family - with its own bathroom to make things comfortable.  But small enough to make sure they want to limit their stay too :-p

While a part of the philosophy of this home has been to minimise the number of living spaces to remove duplication, there would need to be one exception for when there was one Masterchef fan and one Rugby League fan eager to watch their favourite show on a Friday night.  So a family room would also be added into the mix.

One of the last two rooms would be the laundry.  In our townhouse the laundry is narrow and difficult.  Something that would open things up and allow actual laundry activities like folding possible would be nice.

Finally the garage.  Here is where the requirements become a little less ordinary.  Together we have three cars and a motorcycle so lots of space was always going to be important.  We settled on a four-car garage to also provide workshop space.  It would need to be close to the kitchen so that bringing the groceries in from the car would be easier.

As I mentioned earlier when designing the positions and relationships of the rooms I didn't use a bubble diagram.  However out of interest I have decided to give it a go and see how it would look, the results are below.

On influence

Ideas are often built on the shoulders of others.  The challenge of where to start our own design was quite daunting, so drawing from the influences of others would make the seemingling impossible possible.

Early inspiration was found when I was looking through the Domain insert from the Sydney Morning Herald where I ran across a unique obtuse angled L shaped house by the Sydney architect David Boyle.  The shape provided an interesting layout which avoided the common perpendicular box amalgamation or right angle L shape for something more challenging.

Other influences came from the UK Channel 4 television series 4, episode 5 of Grand Designs.  The episode was called the Curved House, designed by Threefold Architects.  I had seen it quite a few years earlier but of all the designs presented on this show it was a standout.  What appealed to me was the openness of the living areas that opened out to the backyard which was made possible by creating windows along unique curved shape.

As our design evolved other influences resolved issues with the details.  Most notible was a northern facade of the "the toaster", better known as Bennelong Apartments. There was also the more unusual such as aircraft hangers.

Not all influences stood the test of the design process, however they all contributed to the exploration of the possibilities.

On white

White is the colour of occupational health and safety.  More specifically it is the name of the Construction OHS induction certification, i.e. the White Card.  To become an owner builder in NSW one needs a permit to build and the White Card is a prerequisite of the Owner Builder Course.  Unlike the Owner Builder Course which may be completed online, the White Card course is mandatory face-to-face delivery.

So I picked a Saturday morning to complete my first step towards our home and booked myself into a White Card course at Parramatta.  Arriving at 8:30am, I proceeded to spend the next 20 minutes finding a full day's parking in Parramatta's notorious one-way streets and 2 hour parking meters.  Once seated in the class room I noticed a diverse mix of students; mostly tradespeople or the unemployed looking for ways to improve their prospects.

As one would hope, the instructor was an expert in all things safety.  He was a safety investigator and had a treasure trove of experience investigating when things go horribly wrong.  How wrong?  Apparently three people die while at work every day in Australia and many more are disabled or seriously injured.  So the message of the course was very much about identifying hazards and performing risk analysis to determine what action to take.

At the conclusion of the course we all did an exam and all passed.  It turned out the instructor was a fellow student pilot so we talked headsets, course structures and aircraft types while we waited for everyone to finish :-) 

Be safe!