![5 [BIG] Design Moves](https://i0.wp.com/yr-architecture.com/wp-content/uploads/5-BIG-Design-Moves.jpg?fit=800%2C533&ssl=1)
Whether building a new house or renovating an existing one, the design process starts with the big picture ideas and then winds its way to the smaller details. Big design moves that affect architecturally significant requirements are important upfront decisions because they have ripple effects on other design decisions and are costly to change.
Many novice designers and DIYers get anxious about the big challenge they embark on to design their home and oftentimes don’t know where to start or what to focus on. Naturally, they choose to focus on the small things because it’s easier (and sometimes more fun) to design a kitchen layout or pick the shower tile than it is to think about the big confusing things like how the home should respond to the sun or integrate with the surrounding land contours. Resist jumping right into the details too soon.
When we talk about the big design moves in this post, we’re talking about things like:
- building siting
- building massing
- space planning
- building envelope & structure
- materials and style
In slowly figuring out these big design moves, we start to establish a basis for making decisions later. For example, once we figure out the building orientation, and where solid walls may go versus windows, we know that when it’s time to start working on the smaller design elements like window sizes and styles, we are much more informed about whether the window should be operable (to let in the breezes) or whether we need to have a deeper overhang to mitigate solar gain.
If you take only one thing away from reading this post, it is this: Focus on the big design moves before the smaller ones.
If you don’t address the bigger things first, you’re faced with possible rework and redesign later (more time and money spent) when you realize you forgot to consider something like the slope of the land or that your large window wall faces west without any roof overhangs or sun protection, or worse yet, that your zoning department won’t allow you to build a two-story addition.
In essence, the big design moves start to tell the story of our home. Let’s go through these big design moves one by one…
1. Building Siting: Where to locate the home on the land
The first big design element to consider is the siting of the home. Each site is unique with different topography, solar orientation, climate, views, access, context, and vegetation.
Each site also has a unique set of challenges and opportunities. By exploring your site’s characteristics, you should be able to determine if the terrain is steep, if you have awesome views to the East, if you have a really old oak tree worth preserving, or if your lot is hemmed in with really close neighbors.
Image by Paulo Colacino via Flickr.
Depending on your location, you may need to address some or all of these siting elements. Homes on rural sites typically need to address topography, views, vegetation, access, and connection to the site. Those on urban and suburban lots without a view will most likely address zoning constraints, security, privacy, and the surrounding context more than anything else. Nonetheless, locating the home on the site (and site planning in general) is one of the first things you should do.
2. Building Massing: The size and orientation of the home
Another big design move is to figure out the building massing.
Think of your home in terms of volumes of space (forms) that enable a series of activities (functions) to be performed in them. How these volumes are grouped together starts to suggest the overall big picture massing of your home. Massing can take the form of a long linear shape (ranch-style, dogtrot), of a tall slender one (rowhouse or condo), a boxy one (suburban home), or of any shape in between.
Each massing shape has its own set of characteristics that make it uniquely suited for certain situations and certain sites. Depending on your particular site and circumstance, you may choose a simple rectangle form or a crucifix form. Or you may be forced into a certain massing given the zoning constraints or existing conditions.
In a similar vein, each massing shape has different impacts when it comes to not only its orientation on the land and natural daylighting, but also construction cost and foundation design. By exploring different massing schemes for your home, you can start to see what these impacts may be and how you can either minimize or optimize them.
For example, long slender forms are great for natural daylighting but also have a lot of exterior surface area to insulate. Boxy forms are more efficient and cost-effective to build but aren’t as visually attractive.
Further Reading: Here’s a book we’ve found invaluable in exploring ideas for our massing studies:
And then there’s the puzzle of ensuring all the rooms/spaces fit into the chosen building mass…
3. Space Planning: How the spaces are organized
Figuring out how to organize the spaces in your home goes hand in hand with figuring out the building massing. You can start with an idea for the building massing then infill the footprint with different spaces. Or you can start with figuring out what spaces want to be located next to other spaces and soon enough you’ll start to see a pattern and recognize a building massing start to form. Either way, the design process tends to go back and form between building massing and space planning until both are refined into a working design.
Many architecture students will be familiar with the book, Architecture: Form, Space & Order where Francis Change illustrates the five main patterns for organizing space: centralized, linear, radial, clustered, and grid pattern. These patterns are a good jumping-off point to start thinking about how to organize space.
Here are some additional (more actionable) themes to explore:
- Public versus private spaces – Finding a clear way to organize spaces makes for a better design. Strategies for this include grouping private spaces together and public spaces together in separate clusters (either on the same floor or different floors), organizing them along an axis (private spaces on the north side, public spaces on the south), or a spoke-and-wheel approach (public spaces are the nucleus with private spaces branching out from it).
- Adjacency – Understanding each specific function and how it relates to the spaces around it can inform which spaces should be next to each other. Strategies for this include grouping spaces based on similar types (bedrooms together), frequency of use (kitchen near the pantry), related infrastructure (kitchen and bathrooms near each other or stacked to consolidate plumbing), privacy (bedrooms away from street-facing side), and related functional or performance goal (needing a bedroom on the first floor or needing outside deck access for the kitchen).
- Circulation – Creating a thoughtful approach to how you will circulate through the house can help define your organizational strategy. Strategies for this include defining a circulation axis or spine in which rooms are located off of (whether you justify the circulation to one side or bisect the house with rooms on both sides), stacking circulation paths (to improve efficiency and intuitiveness), and having discreet circulation paths through spaces (to reduce dedicated hallway space).
Being thoughtful about space planning and the organization of spaces has a lot of advantages. It feels better, it looks better, it flows better, it’s more efficient, it maximizes access to natural light, it minimizes construction cost, it centralizes support functions, it improves productivity, it improves accessibility, it minimizes traffic congestion, it eliminates redundancies, and it improves convenience.
Once we’ve thought about the spaces, we typically sketch out some space diagrams to convey our thinking about relationships, views, circulation, and massing. It’s super rough and sketchy, but it enables us to think through the project requirements and program in a way that starts to confirm the right design direction.
4. Building Envelope & Structure: The skin and bones of your home
Not only does your home need to be a place that keeps you cool in the summer and warm in the winter, but it also needs to keep the wind and rain out and be structurally sound. Deciding on the best strategies to enclose your home is another big design move to figure out early because it has lasting effects.
Solid versus Void
Based on your home siting and orientation, you know which walls will receive the most direct sunlight and which are more shaded. You also know which directions have the best views and which need to be more private. You can use this information to start to inform where you may want to solid walls and where large window walls or doors to an outdoor deck may be ideal. Where are the best locations for more transparency, and how much? Where do you want more natural daylight? If your project will have large windows facing a view, then you’ll need to account for this structurally and thermally.
Passive Solar Design & Thermal Performance
Based on your climate and local building codes, you’ll know how much insulation you need so you can start thinking about how thick your walls and roof assemblies will be. You can also start thinking about passive design strategies to passively control the temperature of your home through proper siting, orientation, massing, and shading. You can also start thinking about your roof profile and if you’ll have any roof overhangs to reduce solar heat gain and shed (or collect) rainwater.
Structural Requirements
With an understanding of the wall and roof assemblies as well as where you may want to have large window walls, you can start to think about what the structure may look like to hold everything up. Will floor and roof trusses be the best framing method? If you’re building something more modest in size will simple 2x rafters and floor joists be good enough? And what will the foundation system look like? Do you want/need to a full basement or will you raise the house up on piers?
With your home’s unifying support framework and envelope established, you now have a tangible understanding of the house’s superstructure.
5. Materials and style: How your home will look
Having an idea of the overall look and feel of your home is an important big design move to nail down. While it’s unrealistic to think you’ll have the exact materials figured out, you can at least have an opinion about the aesthetic approach.
If you want a particular style of design or mashup of two styles, this is good to know early on. Various architectural styles have certain characteristics that make them iconic and recognizable. Modern work is characterized by clean lines, simple details, and materials. Midcentury modern work tends to be one-story with long horizontal rooflines and natural wood elements. Rustic barn-like structures tend to have gable roofs with exposed structural elements and wood finishes. These style preferences start to suggest certain massing and space organization strategies that we mentioned above.
Other design aesthetic goals may consist of wanting the house to integrate with the natural surroundings, wanting to blend old and new styles, and wanting it to fit into with the surrounding homes in the neighborhood.
Lastly…
These are the big design moves that start to create an outline for the story of your home. Making these high-level design decisions early ensures that your home is thoughtful and cohesive. That’s the main objective of creating a good design concept. It helps enable you to go beyond creating a mere house to creating something that is meaningful and lasting for years to come, no matter the budget.
It’s also worth mentioning that all of these big design moves should be studied concurrently and repeatedly until you’ve settled on a good working conceptual design that you feel comfortable moving forward with. It’s not uncommon to work through the siting at the same time you’re exploring massing studies or work through the stylistic preferences and building structure at the same time you’re figuring out the spatial organization and massing. Don’t forget: it’s an exploratory process that is iterative. As you continue to study ideas you’ll learn from others and apply what you’ve learned to further refine other ideas. It’s all part of the process.
For an interesting read, try this article: Design, in the Big and Small. It describes a similar perspective (focusing on the big things and then the small) in the context of designing solutions to complex social problems like homelessness and education.
