This is about you looking for home designs and what you find and what you don’t find and what you can do to obtain the home designs that satisfy your needs.
You and Home Designs
You look and look and look but you never find that floor plan that seems to suit your exact needs. You might have found a style or “look” that appeals to you, but the exact plan just doesn’t seem to exist. Why? Because you are unique.
A floor plan is the graphic layout of one particular client’s desired lifestyle and response to their specific property’s characteristics. Let’s say that again: any and ALL of the floor plans you are reviewing on the Internet were conceived for other people, not you.
This means that the layouts you see in the existing floor plans suit the people who paid the architect to create that house design for them. You are looking for free, aren’t you? Floor plans and architectural design is a very complex activity, created by skilled professionals carefully listening to the dreams and functional requirements of clients who pay them to create a design that satisfies their programmatic needs and responds appropriately to their property as well.
So, you spend weeks, then months online in your leisure time, hoping against hope that you will find a floor plan that works for you and your site. Well … here you are, still at it after months and months or possibly years later and you still haven’t found that perfect plan, have you? You won’t. Why? Once again: because you are special. So are the people who paid that architect who created those plans for them. But you just want to take plans you find online and use them, right? Just because they are posted on the Internet does not mean that they are free.
There is the U.S. Copyright Act, which is very real. It protects the work of musicians, composers, singers, architects, artists, photographers, and others who create a work of intellectual property. Common law copyright protects any work of intellectual property automatically. However, many architects also indicate a “(C) Copyright 2010 Rand Soellner, All Rights Reserved Worldwide” notation by their designs so that you and others know that it is copyright protected. Penalties for unauthorized use can amount to $200,000 or more. It is not worth it to attempt to use an architect’s work without their permission and payment for their work.
It is far easier, cheaper, better, and more ethical to contact the architect whose work you like and pay them to create a floor plan and a house design just for you that suits your every need.
And let’s think about how valuable your time is. How many hours, weeks, months,or years have you spent trying to find something “for free” that suits your needs? Think about how much you earn at your job per hour. Multiply that rate times the amount of time you may have spent looking for “the perfect plan” online. You will probably be shocked to see that you have spent tens of thousands of dollars of your leisure time looking for something that does not exist. That’s not free. Your time is valuable. Wouldn’t you rather do something more enjoyable with your time?
So instead, why don’t you try this:
1. Do look on line for designs whose appearance you like.
2. Contact that architect.
3. If they seem like interested, responsive professionals, arrange to meet with them.
4. When you meet with them, review the floor plans for the house whose style you liked, and talk with the architect how those plans might be modified to suit your needs.
OR: consider starting a design for your lifestyle and your site from scratch.
5. After you have contracted the architect whom you wish to work with, have them meet you at your property and walk it together, taking special note of desired views and other situations that can affect placement of your residential design.
6. Proceed, with the considered opinions of your architect.
A house architect has likely spent decades designing custom residential designs for people similar to you. He/she has the skills necessary to turn your words and dreams into functional three-dimensional reality at your site. Even if you think you have found a plan that works for you before finding your architect, you may discover that there are things about it that will cost you much more for the construction or that may not be very pleasant, than if you had allowed your architect to adjust arrangements to best suit your specific needs and your site’s characteristics. In other words: listen to your architect. Their advice is valuable and helpful.
If you are going to be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars (or possibly more) for the construction of your dream house, don’t you deserve to have it designed to suit your personal wishes, needs, and land? Do yourself a big favor and hire your own architect who you are paying to listen to you to make a custom residence design to make you happy.
Home designs for me contact:
Rand Soellner HOME ARCHITECTS TM
1-828-269-9046
rand@HomeArchitects.com