The last in our Mitate House Collection for Bennett Custom Homes is the Sorrel.

Again, the heart of the design is a courtyard garden, which is bounded on one side by the open kitchen/dining/living room and the guest suite on the other. Large doors open each space to the garden.  Privacy is critical in most developments and by making the garden central, we are creating a private interior landscape, daylighting, and ventilation without compromising to shield the neighbors eyes.

For more information and plans, jump below the fold:

One the key elements to this design is that the pathway from entry to living spaces shifts, bridging across the garden, to create a emotional transition point from the outside world to the interior of the house, similar to the stone bridges you often see in Japanese gardens:

First floor:

Second floor:

We have been working with a couple who are planning on moving out of the original house, and into a new backyard cottage.  We're pushing the limits within the ordinance--almost exactly 800 square feet--in order to build a 2 bed room, bath and a half cottage. Although the house is small, the spaces inside feel just right.  And we'll be able to include a lot of high finish touches and crisp details because we aren't spending money on lots of square footage. Having a finite perimeter and volume really focuses the mind on the priorities of the design.

The character of the house the client's wanted is very craftsman and the scale and roofline fits right in with the neighborhood in general--certainly not the scary developer vision that opponents of the ordinance summoned during the public hearings.  It reinforces that these projects are for people with a vested interest in both their property and their neighborhood and are very sensitive to the impact on their neighbors.

Here is another view which shows off the walkout patio off the dining space, the entry mudroom and the band of windows that wrap the living room, dining and kitchen:

We are also going to integrate a rain water harvesting system, radiant floors on a super efficient combination boiler, vaulted ceiling upstairs, and a extra height crawlspace with a rat slab to make up for some of the storage space lost in the downsizing.  For floor plans, follow the jump below:

First floor plan:

Second floor plan:

I am giving a presentation with Kevin Spence, AIA this Saturday morning at the AIA's downtown office about the process of selecting and working with an architect.  If you have questions about the design process, costs, contracts, design-build, etc., this presentation is a comprehensive guide to getting the most out of the your custom design project. Here is a link to the AIA where you can sign up for the presentation. If you can't make it, but have questions, you can post them in the thread below and I'll respond...

We've completed the first community design workshop for the Sunset Substation pocket park and we've started a blog for the project at www.SunsetSubstation.org.  The results of the workshop are posted here and you can read a write up from the Ballard News tribune here and another article from KOMO's neighborhood blog here. Now that we have some community input, we can start shaping their unique goals for bringing solar power generation and community space together.

In other news, Stefan is working through designing a micro-hydroelectric generation station for an eco-retreat/outdoor recreation center and meditation retreat in Colorado, and should be posting an introduction to the project and more information about micro-hydro.  Suddenly, we have a lot of projects which have some active or passive alternative energy components--very exciting stuff.

Tim is leading the charge on backyard cottages.  We have two custom cottages currently in design, and another design which will be available as a prefab.  We're finalizing the pricing, so we will have a more comprehensive information available soon.

We're also working with a homebuilder  to develop a series of spec homes bases on a fusion of asian design, modern spaces and out of the norm materials (see image above).  We're especially excited because the house's function emphasizes a series of landscapes integrated into living spaces, so we'll have courtyards, pocket gardens, and salad gardens for growing your own vegetables off the kitchen.  Our big presentation is on Tuesday so I'll post the schematic renderings afterwards.

Finally, this is the last weekend to see our WASTE NOT installation in the alley east of First Avenue, south of Occidental Park.  Anyone need 2500 2 liter bottles?

While a bit delayed by seasonal colds, office deadlines, and the holidays - much appreciation to Tim and Diana for hosting a fantastic CAST dinner last night. Fun was had by all - with an especially enthusiastic kids table leading the charge. Further raising the culinary bar for our quarterly dinner - good food, wine and great company was enjoyed by all - thanks everyone!

We've completed the second round of design on our CAST architecture case study backyard cottage.

The plan has been fine tuned to optimize it for advanced framing. We adjusted the spaces to work better with Kate and Ric's needs and have started looking at potential materials and finishes.

We've also started talking about systems - at this point everything is on the table, solar hot water, energy efficient boiler, hydronic floor heating systems, rainwater cistern for flushing the toilets and watering the yard, super insulated walls...

I suspect that our choices will narrow as the reality of our budget forces us to separate the wheat from the chaff. Right now however, the possibilities seem limitless!

Good turnout for the Phinney Ridge Home Fair.  I spoke to a few friends who had exhibited and the consensus was that the outlook for 2010 was pretty good.  Their anecdotes reinforced my feeling that we'll see a bounce in work and the industry will get back on track (although not the bubble-hot track we'd been on).  Since architects are the canaries in the construction coal mine, it was great to hear other design professionals seeing the uptick in new projects that we have been seeing. Also, I wanted to hit one point I missed in my presentation about How to Work with an Architect - taking the first step:

As part of the interview process, get the architects that you are interested in out to your house, your site.  It is critical to get their impression of your project, and plus in talking through the project on site you'll get a window in to how they process information, how they work, communicate and if they have good ideas right off the bat.

We offer the first consultation free of charge, of course, because it is also critical for us to get an understanding of the project, the challenges, and get to know you as a client.

If you have additional questions about things I said in the presentation, or topics I didn't have time to cover, please email me at matt@CASTarchitecture.com and I'll be happy to address them!

We're looking forward the annual Phinney Ridge Home Fair this Sunday, the 31st, from 10 am to 4 pm.  Usually we have a table there, but we jumped on it a little too late. I'll still be there.  In fact, I'll be giving a little talk on How to Work with an Architect to help people looking to build understand the role of the architect, and the design process.  I'll talk about how to select an architect, how much it will cost, and go in deep about what to expect every step of the way.

If I'm lucky there'll even be time for some questions!

Starts at 1:50 and runs to 2:30. I'm going to hang out afterwards as long as there are curious minds with questions.

In case you can't make it, I'll post the handout that goes through the process afterwords.

The Seattle channel recently interviewed myself and CAST clients Kate Lichtanstein and Ric Cochrane regarding the backyard cottage we are currently working on together. They included our project in a broader story that profiles an owner of a recently completed backyard cottage and gives a basic outline of the new Seattle backyard cottage ordinance.

Seattle Channel Video can be played in Flash Player 9 and up

Here's another new project in the office, an addition to a residence on Capital Hill. The existing house is a tiny 750 sq. ft. bungalow on one of Seattle's steepest streets. The owners found the compact plan a perfect fit when they first moved in, but two kids later, they desperately need more room. They are drawn of the core values of modern architecture: emphasis on natural light, spaces that flow together, honest and straightforward materials and want a house that expresses that. They are comfortable making a pretty bold statement, but they also want the addition to feel comfortable in the existing fabric of the neighborhood. They are interested in sustainability that is designed in from the ground up, which led to the early decision to preserve the existing structure instead of starting from scratch on the site.

How to add onto an existing building that has a well-defined or historical style is a perennial architectural puzzle (and hip roofs are especially difficult to achieve seamless integration). In this case, we approached it by creating a clear contrast between the new and the old through form, material and color. But it's not enough to just plunk a contemporary form next to an old house and expect a real conversation to take place. In this addition, the new and old talk to each other both in how the volumes intersect and in how the two differing styles overlap.

Intersection Our early drawings all show a long, narrow addition running north-south to hold the downhill edge of the property. However, after looking at dozens of alternative schemes, we realized the potential for a very special outdoor space, between the south-facing wall of the addition, the steep hillside and the existing house. Private, yet with almost ideal sun exposure, this patio is the heart of the design but it sets up a tricky problem: we wanted to the public and private wings of the house to fit up against one another while at the same time creating a space between them.

In the rendering above, you can see how we resolved this conundrum: the charcoal-colored wall literally acts like a giant door, swinging out of the (blue) addition to carve space from the (yellow) existing house and define the courtyard. This dividing wall gets a different material and different detailing show a clear relationship between the planning and the way the house is actually made. Creating a courtyard at the joint between the new and old helps to differentiate the two volumes and separate the bedrooms from the public spaces. The slight angle of the addition's south wall also provides enough solar exposure so that a concrete trombe wall behind the south-facing glass is effective in reducing the use of conventional heating by about a third. (More on the passive solar design of this house in a later post)

Overlap While they are separated by their overall form, the old and new portions of the house are tied together by elements that extend the language of one style into the other portion of the house. The largest example of this is the secondary level of detailing we are developing for both structures. The large-scale metal sun canopy of the addition is repeated at a smaller scale as a canopy at the front entry and then inside the original house as a pair of room-divider screens that create separate zones within the loft-like space (and incidentally help act as shear walls).

The language of filtering light through parallel vertical columns even extends the site design: the wide sideyard on the west creates the perfect bamboo garden outside the kitchen's horizontal slot window and a verdant path to the courtyard.