Home Design Philosophy
“We envision the World as One united healthy, happy and beautiful place for everyone.
We all are making the World in which we live by our daily actions & our labors of love.
We feel blessed to design one small piece of the Grand Mosaic at a time, for you.”
————— Rand Soellner, Architect
View from Rand Soellner’s Falcon Cliff Lodge of Laurel Knob, the largest rockface in the eastern USA. Your land is a major part of where our home design philosophy comes from.
Our Home Design Philosophy Begins by Listening to You
and understanding how you want to live in your special mountain home. As home architects, we want to know what you want. That is integral to our home design philosophy.
Your land is one of the 2 most important elements of our home design philosophy.
The home design philosophy of Rand Soellner Architect starts with your lifestyle and your project site. This happens to be one of Soellner's project sites: Whiteside Mountain in Western North Carolina, which geologists call the world's oldest known mountain. (C)Copyright 2005 Rand Soellner, All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
We visit your site with you and document the best views you prefer, which we incorporate into the house design, so that when your house is built, the views you loved enough to purchase the site are framed with large window areas. In instances where clients would rather we review their site remotely, we use satellite imagery (please see our Site Consultation page).
Then, our home design philosophy continues by determining the Best Locations for Your:
- main home
- garage – porte-cochere – carport
- guest parking and backup zones for your vehicles for ease of maneuvering
- septic areas tested or that need to be tested by your local health department, repair area, tank location
- driveway
- possible secondary structures such as a guest cottage, workshop, additional garages, or other facilities. Our home design philosophy continues:
Home Architects Review with You
the general appearance preference you may have for your home. The aesthetics you prefer is integral to our home design philosophy.
Next, We Create the Main Level Floor Plan
and review it with you; incorporating any changes you wish. Next we create the other level plans and the main front elevation and review that with you. Once again, you have the opportunity to review, reflect on and request revisions to allow us to make your home what you want it to be. By this incremental home design philosophy, you and our home architects are part of a team working toward one goal: to create the home you want. This is our home design philosophy. At some point, usually after Schematic Design and before Design Development is complete, we recommend bringing the building contractor into the team. We will help you find a builder if you do not have one. We only suggest state-licensed contractors. They are able to give cost and availability feedback to the rest of the team, so that you as the owner can make informed choices as we proceed and add further information to the documents.
Space Planning Optimization is part of our home design philosophy:
(C)Copyright 2005-9 Rand Soellner, All Rights Reserved Worldwide. photo by Mark Hutchison, Hearth Room of Falcon Cliff Lodge, designed by Rand Soellner Architect.
Rand Soellner “optimizes” arrangements as part of his normal procedures for all clients. This means that we don’t waste a square inch. Our design philosophy requires efficiency is spacial use. We get a kick of making our floor plans as efficient as possible. Our arrangements are spacious, yet robust and healthy. When you look at one of our plans, you can sense the vitality of organization that comes from well-planned space. We sweat the details. We show our classic mountain door trims right on the floor plans so that we know our interior designs will work. We rarely have hallways or corridors, as we prefer to access rooms from useful spaces that perform desired functions other than mere circulation.
Our home architects work to get that extra couple of inches in your closet. Our kitchens have all the latest appliances and the proper distance between them so that doors and drawers function properly and look great in the large islands we create. We think about what we do. We make sure that your Master Suite feels large yet is not over-done. We align your interior circulation routes with large windows, framing your views. We arrange walls, doors, windows and furnishings in artistic compositions. Our houses and buildings are well-designed and make good use of space.
During the Bidding- Negotiating Phase,
Rand Soellner Architet can help you evaluate the pricing to insure that the numbers you are hearing reflect the house that was designed for you. We offer Home Value Engineering architects services.
During the Construction Phase,
we offer Construction Administration services to visit the project site periodically to review the progress and compare it to the construction documents. Our design philosophy includes being your eyes and ears during construction, if you want this services. We issue reports to you and the builder to help keep your project on track and in compliance with the approved documents.
Passion & Enthusiasm in our home design philosophy
We are passionate about design and enthusiastically embrace every opportunity to create a unique house design project for you, custom-tailored to your site, lifestyle, family and functional requirements. In our home design philosophy, we embrace your vision of your project and share with you opportunities we see suggested by your site and objectives. We are here to help you obtain your Mountain Dream!
Friendship is part of our Home Design Philosophy
We extend our friendship to you. Friends are people who improve the quality of each other’s lives.
This is accomplished by Word (as in discussions with each other in which you give and receive wise advice and/or are supportive and nurturing),
Thought (as in positive thinking, intentions and prayer) and/or
Deed (through financial enrichment, acts of physical assistance, and beneficial administrative actions or other helpful acts).
We endeavor to enrich your life by designing a wonderful custom home, luxury home and mountain house for you. We are home architects here to help you realize your dream home design.
How our house designs & home design philosophy accomplish this:
- Logical, functional organization. Rooms, windows, appliances and other items are where you want them and where they work best for your desired lifestyle. All the things that have frustrated you in the past in other homes (perhaps in your present home) are solved, corrected and improved. As experienced home architects, we know how to accomplish this.
- Aesthetic enhancement: Your exterior, interior and site will be eloquently designed, if we are allowed to develop the design as we recommend. Our projects seem to typically be publishable, although we do not generally seek this exposure; the magazine and book publishers are coming to us. There seems to be an accepted trend in the special mountain home category that places us in the top mountain home architects in the world. Being highly versed in these matters as home architects allows us to make this happen for you.
- View/ window/ glass placement that enhances your enjoyment: Rand Soellner used to work for one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s main apprentices. He learned about View Systems and Organic Architecture. This technique allows us to electronically align your window locations so that they are placed to take best advantage of your views. As professionals who have chosen to focus on being home architects, we have special skills to help this happen.
YOUR PROJECT WILL BE THE BEST OUR LUXURY RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTS HAVE EVER DONE TO DATE
We regard each project as an opportunity to advance the state of the art in custom home design, timber frame architecture, post and beam design, log home planning, mountain home architecture. For that reason, each new project stands on the shoulders of those we have accomplished in the past. Therefore, yours will be better than what we last accomplished. We are constantly learning from structural engineers about things like lateral wind bracing or from contractors regarding constructability and how to design things more economically and deliver the best house for the best value. We embrace the entire design/engineering and construction as a team of people dedicated to providing you, our Client with the best possible home. After 40 years of designing buildings, you’d think we know it all, and while some of our clients think we know a lot, we know that we have to be eager to learn new things every day to make your project that much better.
The Appearance of Our Home Design Website as Compared with Other Architect’s Websites:
You may have noticed that most architect’s websites are much like their buildings: Spartan and minimalistic. Some might even call this cold. I really don’t; I used to be that way. It starts in architectural school: professors teach us that decorative elements are heresy and that less is more (actually that was Mies van der Rohe (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe), a great early to mid-20th century architect, who waged what amounted to a philosophical jihad against texture and decorative features and was able to help found an entire movement in architecture called Modernism. Today, even adoring apprentices of the late great architect have realized that it has been high time for something more interesting (e.g.: Philip Johnson, FAIA, who has become very eccentric during the last couple of decades, forsaking his earlier square glass boxes (except for his own lovely house from that era which has become an American icon)). So, because I matriculated through this modernistic education and practiced architecture in this mode for nearly half a century and even became futuristic, I understand it and I believe have earned the right to rebel against it, at least for nice custom homes, luxury homes, mountain homes and themed resorts. Clients have told me what they want: warmth, texture, coziness, distressed historic large wooden beams, stone fireplaces, big views, something that looks like it grew naturally from the mountain environment. So, that is how we do it now as home architects and our website has embraced this warmth and texture, to communicate the philosophic basis of our mountain home design philosophies. I always harbored a special love for the mountains, and in my work, for decades, this kept creeping out, well, now we have fully accepted and enjoy this loving, warm relationship with the mountains in which we work.
Responsiveness:
We have heard from some of our clients that they have never had responsiveness as timely as ours. Some call our practice Responsiveness with a capital “R.” You are paying us to design your dreams with you and we take that as a sacred & enjoyable mission. We will do whatever we can to respond to your phone calls and e-mails immediately (which is the norm for us; we give you our cell phone number, home office, and residential numbers). If we don’t do this, then we respond within the hour and if not that, certainly within 24 hours (and that is very unusual and too long, in our opinion). We are in residence and working on your project and others about 360 days a year. On those rare occasions when we might be visiting an out-of-town relative or perhaps on a vacation (which are very rare), or performing construction administration, we share with you our in-transit phone numbers, our hotel phone and room number, and we always keep our cell phones turned on, even when they are charging. I admit that I don’t keep a phone next to our bed (so that I can get a good night’s sleep to work on your job the next day!), but that is about the only circumstance in which you can’t get to us about 18/7/365. I answer my own phone 9 times out of 10 and I am usually here working on projects, so you will find the refreshing experience of actually getting straight to the guy you thought you hired when you contact us. Some of my clients have expressed delight that I am who they hired and that I am who works on their projects. They have recalled circumstances with “large” firms where the “front man” appeared, made the sale, then a low-level draftsman or other functionary took over, while they were still paying the higher rate for the “premier person” they thought they had hired. That can’t happen with Rand Soellner Architect, because he is his own draftsman!
Also, I am genuinely delighted to hear from you and you can tell this by the friendly tone of my voice, my patient and attentive demeanor, and conscientious focus on both the “big picture” and on those important details. I personally create your design and construction details; you get the top man doing your work for you, not some hired “draftsman.” I am a licensed architect in multiple states and I have a master’s degree in architecture from a leading accredited university and graduate school and I have about 40 years of experience in architecture. When you call me, you get me.
I think this is the way it should be and I have never thought of it as unusual; I just presumed that every Architect, home architect, or other professional conducted their business in this fashion. After all, I work for you. I know this and I am very appreciative of your business. I am here to help you realize your dreams. So give me a call!
Focus of our Architectural Practice
When you hire Rand Soellner Architect, you receive my undivided focus; my exclusive attention to your project. That’s what I do for you. Sure, I am working on several projects, typically, and when I am working on yours, my attention is focused on your needs. I have considerable attention to bring to bear on your objectives: 38 years of architectural experience. My specialty is custom home design. We are home architects. I create custom home designs, luxury home architecture, timber frame projects, post and beam designs, log homes, and mountain architecture. I have quite a comprehensive track record of projects, including projects for NASA, AFTAC (Air Force Tactical Air Command), Corps of Engineers, school districts, fire stations, world-class resort theme parks, multi-family housing, office buildings, major utility facilities and other project types, totaling over $3 Billion in construction value and millions of square feet of space. I bring all this considerable experience to bear on the design of your mountain home. I guess that’s one of the reasons why Rand Soellner Architect, is ranked by Google as one of the World’s leading home architects and often the #1 World’s leading mountain home architect and best home architect. When I work on your project, the focus is intense. It is like playing three-dimensional chess, evaluating how certain decisions affect other situations, finally coming down to the best solutions for your project. Some of the people I know are experts in Tantric Yoga and they say that what I do is very similar; that when I complete a design session hours later, I find that much progress has been made and that the design is very well thought out. This ability to “super-focus” is one of the reasons Rand Soellner is so good at designing custom homes and resorts.
