Designing: Dreams, Innovations, Solutions

Designing: Dreams, Innovations, Solutions

Actually, this is about more:

Designing Dreams
Designing Innovations
Designing Solutions
Designing Sustainability

and building Relationships, with our commitment and passion for your project.

Designing Dreams

Your dreams for your special house.  We are here to help you make it happen, by designing the house that you want.  Tired of sifting through dozens of floor plans in magazines, trying to imagine yourself living there, then realizing that plan doesn’t work for you and your family?  Time to ask for an architect’s help.  Have him design one just to suit your lifestyle.  Know that you have obtained a design tailored to your needs.  You know because your architect (Rand Soellner, AIA, of the HOME ARCHITECTS TM) first creates a Program that lists all of the things that you want and need for your house.  This is how a professional starts designing: by listening to what you want and documenting that in the Program.

Designing Innovations

Residential architects  will constantly find themselves having to design themselves out of challenging situations, which often results in the creation of innovations.  These innovations solve unique, and sometimes well-known functional needs.  For instance, Rand Soellner, AIA often creates Outdoor Living Rooms for his client designs.  These special outdoor spaces are in fact living spaces with special equipment, furnishings, lengths and widths to accommodate certain amounts of family members and guests at one time, and other requirements.  For instance, many people are quite surprised to find how many people might be sitting down at one time for an extended family holiday meal.  If a a couple had 3 children and each child married and had only 2 more children each, plus 2 older parents, plus just one guest for each main child that would total: 2+2+(3×2)+3=13.  Some of Rand Soellner’s client actually ask for dining space for up to 20 people at one table at one sitting.  Not many people realize how much space this takes to comfortably accommodate this many people, along with the furniture and spacial clearances necessary for easy circulation.  A house can become significantly larger due to these requirements.  Better to have an architect program these requirements into the design rather than try to cram all these people in after the fact and discover that they just don’t fit.

Designing Solutions

It is amazing how many corners an uninitiated would-be “designer” can paint themselves into trying to design a quality house for a real family.  This is why so many people seek out architects to design their houses.  It can be frustrating for a couple to try to create their own design; just try it and see how far you get.  Everything is connected to everything else.  The American Institute of Architects has called home design one of the most complex activities undertaken by architects.   Rand Soellner has designed many complex projects in his life, including many houses.  He agrees with the AIA’s assessment. Soellner said: “You have to understand structural concepts so that your framing allows for the spans you need to allow for the size of spaces your client wants, while incorporating the necessary economies to result in a reasonable cost.  And that is just one factor out of hundreds.”  In addition, there are the added requirements of HVAC (Heating, Ventilating and Air-Conditioning), plumbing, electrical, lighting, furnishings, finishes, foundations, walls (inside, outside and core requirements), water and vapor barriers, roofing, doors, windows, paint and stain, floor and ceiling finishes, site utilities such as sewage, potable water (including wells), site slopes, landscaping, driveways and vehicular circulation, aesthetic views from the street, and to neighboring properties and other considerations.  Architects must design solutions for all of these items and circumstances.

Designing Sustainability

There is a lot of buzz about sustainability these days in architectural circles.  What does it mean?  In the sense of architecture and specifically the design of a house, it means having a design created that uses  components, systems, materials and energy in a manner that can be sustained indefinitely for you and for our culture.  It is irresponsible, in these days of vanishing oil, higher energy prices and technological advances to ignore these aspects in the design of any house.

So what does this mean, specifically?  Well, for one thing, the days of incandescent lighting are over.  By 2014, they will no longer be manufactured in America, by law.  Seeing this coming, starting back several years ago, Rand Soellner Architect began specifying LED (Light Emitting Diode) lamps (light bulb technical term) and CFLs (Compact Fluorescent Lamps) for all light fixtures in his projects.  This should result in perhaps 20% savings or more from the use of incandescent lamps (bulbs).   Also, Soellner specifies super insulation R-values in excess of code for only pennies on the dollar more than code minimums, achieving tremendous energy savings, especially for ceilings and attics, which the main source of heat transfer in most houses.  All of these techniques, and many more, result in a much more sustainable lifestyle for Soellner’s clients and for America and the World.  We need to have methods of sipping energy to make its sources last longer, while continuing to enjoy comfortable lifestyles.  Soellner calls this “having your cake and eating it too.”

Building Relationships

The HOME ARCHITECTS TM are all about building positive relationships with their clients to establish enduring interaction for the long term.  Soellner wants you to be comfortable with the decisions you make, knowing that you will have a quality house for decades to come.  Also, Soellner is the only architect on the planet, to our knowledge, that have a 9AM to 9PM access hotline (1-828-269-9046) 365 days a year.  Try it!  What you will find is that Rand Soellner personally answers his phone.  You will not experience the “big firm” standoff scenario that we have all had: an answering machine, then perhaps a secretary or two, then maybe a reluctant e-mail a week later from some subordinate.  Oh no: with Soellner, you receive the attention of the top person, Rand Soellner, AIA/NCARB, himself to talk with you about your project when you call, and he will be the person who personally creates your design and technical documents.  He enjoys creating projects himself and prefers to get things done right the first time, rather than correcting the work of less experienced personnel.

 

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