Finding Our Floor Plan - Schematic Design Review

So, as you may recall from earlier posts, Katy and I had developed a fairly long and strict list of requirements for our home plan.

Energy-Efficiency Requirements:

• Earth Sheltered layout - Set into hill w/ minimal windows on north side
• Passive Solar Design - Capture as much solar heat gain as practically possible
• Super Insulated Building Envelope - I guess all concepts would follow this strategy anyway
• Slab-On-Grade Construction - Floor plans must be compatible with having no basement
• Masonry Woodstove - To be centrally located in home for maximum heating impact

Functional Requirements:

• Single Story Living - Keep most activities on main floor and accessible
• 2 bedrooms on main floor
• 2 bathrooms on main floor (one in master suite)
• Laundry on first floor
• Open Concept Living Area - Kitchen, Dining and Living all in one great room
• Ideally the plan would have an open loft in view of the great room (kids play area)
• Layout compatible with an attached screen porch and greenhouse - Without blocking all our views
• Aging-in-place - Provisions for future wheelchair access, means wide doorways and no steps on main floor
• Over, but as close to, 1200 square feet as possible - Also with 26 ft minimum sides (local ordinance)

Eh, those lists aren't Sooo long, right?  Piece-a-cake.  Good thing we have such an ace architect on our team!  Working with Giraffe Design Build, is Steven Varnum of Caddis Design.

So, Steven set about creating an initial slew of concept schematic designs that we could pick and choose from.  

Steven re-created our initial concept sketch to see it in CAD.

Lots of great plans here, but each seemed to have a couple missing bullet points from above  (to be fair, our requirement lists formed more concretely after this first plan review).  Steven had alluded to a vision he had forming, a so-called "two-part structure", something like two squares put together.  Even with just this brief description, we sensed promise, and asked him to pursue it further.

Round two of schematic design review was a lot more fun!

Also our own original layout, just squared up and shrunk a bit. Still a viable option!

But next, the two-part plan emerges!  Love at first sight, mostly.

It just felt like we had to go with the two-part design, a.k.a. plan SD3.  Architecturally speaking, it just felt so much more interesting than all the other square boxes.  Ok, so it was mostly still boxy, but, there's two!  Two boxes!  On angles!  toats cray.

We chose to commit, and then focus in on perfecting this plan over the next couple months.