A blank sheet of paper

Every design starts with a blank sheet.

The architect visits the site, talks to the client to get a sense of what kind of home they want, obtains their space requirements, probably has a few conversations with their colleagues - soon its time to put down an initial concept on paper to test out with the client.

Rough schematic

Roughly three weeks after our initial site visit, I received the first conceptual design in my mailbox - very exciting ! At first glance it took me a while to understand what I was looking at - at the conceptual stage, the designer is simply laying out the various spaces in a suitable configuration that would form a reasonably balanced structure - what one sees is a bare wireframe view of the home.

Another view

The spaces were laid out over two floors with a staircase in the middle, the floor levels took into account the sloped gradient at the site. Most public spaces were on the lower level, the bedrooms and a party space was on the upper level.

A view of the layout of both levels can be seen below:

Level wise layouts

The first concept usually is a good start if the site is a standard rectangle with no other elements on the site to contend with. More often then not though, the design serves to help derive additional preferences and design imperatives from the client.

Firstly, I was uncomfortable with the structure taking over so much of the real estate - I wanted to have the experience of a large garden and this massing didn't give that feel. Secondly, I didn't fancy the concatenated matchbox design - I believe that the resulting corridors have an institutional rather than a residential feel. Finally, I wanted to have a much cleaner segregation between the public and private spaces and hence having the family room on the same level as the public spaces didn't work for me.

So more work to be done, in refining the overall concept, however we were off to a start !

...Space - the final frontier

...The Jenga design