I was charged with designing two homes on one site for two completely different clients. One of the clients, Weiling is a single young woman. The other clients Wei Yan and his Wife have two children. Both clients receive extended visits from their parents. As far as desires for the living spaces, Weiling wanted a contemporary home free from ornamentation. She called for minimalism, openness, and a special interaction between the grade of the site and the home. She wanted to be able to “see structure”. She also wanted a studio to work in. Wei Yan was less focused on looks and more on function. His children influenced many of his needs such as an area for them to study while being monitored by their mother and outdoor areas for them to play. He asked for an area to watch television and a special office that would allow him to escape the “cave” he works in now. He also wanted space for a studio for his wife. Of course both clients needed spare bedrooms for their parents to stay in. Besides the clients requirements, bedroom and living space in both of the houses must have the ability to be naturally ventilated and also take advantage of natural lighting.
After considering all the requirements, I set out designing the two homes on paper and in physical models. After about four physical models and 100 hand drawn floor plans, I decided to begin using Revit to model my behavioral settings. Revit improved the speed with which I could design the buildings. I can often visualize components of my design by themselves in my head, but sometimes have trouble seeing how they interact with each other. Revit was a very quick and powerful tool to help me visualize and accept or reject ideas. In the end my method for designing these houses was to draw designs in my sketchbook and then model them and put them into place in Revit to see how the elements interacted. For example, I knew I wanted multiple levels of roofs in one of the houses, so I drew a quick sketch and then went about modeling it in Revit from my drawing. I was aware of what the outside would look like, but was surprised by what happened inside the house. It was nice to have a tool to show me the ins and outs of my buildings while designing and I think it greatly improved the overall design. For me, Revit was easy to learn and very fast. The user interface was easy enough, although, some more hot keys would have been nice. Maybe I’m just spoiled from AutoCAD.
The final products are of two different styles. Weilings home is contemporary with a black and white color scheme. Its form is very horizontally oriented and has long windows to let lots of light in. It ventilates well and has operable glass walls that allow the space to be open to the outside. Weilings upstairs studio receives very nice northern light. Wei Yans house has an odd form and uses a lot of lattice and vines to keep cool in the summer. The lattice becomes a theme throughout the house so much that the lattice is a dominating design element. The house ventilates very well also and takes advantage of natural lighting. More traditional materials are used to clad this house. There is a nice kitchen for Mrs. Yan and plenty of room in the yard for playing around. Upstairs there is a large balcony that offers great views of the lake that the houses are situated on. Overall, the houses have two separate styles, but do not oppose each other. The goal was to create individuality while not drawing a line though the site. That’s why there is a shared green space for both clients to utilize that will provide interaction as well as help to evaporatively cool the area. I am well pleased with both homes and hope the clients feel the same way.
Thanks to Revitcity.com and all the users who uploaded files that I used.
I used Photomatix to get a tone mapped HDR (high dynamic range) image from a series of Revit renderings, and then added the people in Photoshop from my own collection of images and some images from Getty Images. I found Photoshop to be very useful as a raster graphics editor. There are still many things that I have to learn about it, but after using it for this project, I have mastered the basics. I really enjoy using it because it can make a house "come alive" which is something I have tried to capture in the extra work that I did. I made a few videos that show the progression and the change of a model from physical to hidden line to photorealistic renderings.