Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: design review

[Berrins (Berrins]

In a message dated 12/17/99 1:07:55 AM, howard [at] poly.polyamory.org writes:

<< This sounds similar to what was done at River Rock.  It was a good idea.
The only problem was, some of the defaults were pretty brain-dead.
For example, in the largest unit (the kind I bought), the default kitchen
opened right into the front doorway.  You walk in the front door, you're
basically standing in the kitchen. >>

Actually, Howard, I forgot to mention that we did hire an architect for the 
project.  We saved money by having them do only four basic plans instead of 
twenty four.  It doesn't sound like you guys had an architect, because the 
front door / kitchen arrangement you have doesn't sound like anything a 
decent architect would design.  And those garages!  An architect would have 
known to build large enough for larger cars.  If you did have an architect, 
the group must have insisted on smaller garages.
If you haven't already, you may think about hiring an architect to retrofit 
your existing spaces.  They may have creative ideas you haven't thought of.  
Good luck!

The reason we hired an architect was that we wanted efficient small house 
designs; both to hold down building costs (for the uninitiated, house cost is 
directly tied to square footage) and to help get the interior floor plans to 
match up with the site plan.  For example, the kitchens, dining rooms and 
main entry, in general, face the common areas, and the living rooms tend to 
be oriented towards the private views.

The design process with the architects went relatively well.  There has been 
some griping, but nothing serious; I think they did an fine job dealing with 
twenty four different households.  It certainly helped that both of the 
architects (Laura Fitch and Mary Kraus) live in Pioneer Cohousing in Amherst- 
their experience has been invaluable!  Laura did most of the house design and 
Mary is a nationally known expert on Common House design.  If any of you 
folks out there hire architects, I highly recommend you suggest they use 
Laura (MJarch [at] shaysnet.com) and Mary (marykraus [at] aol.com) as 
consultants (this 
plug was unsolicited... :-) ).

Finally, I also recommend you hire a landscape architect, not just for the 
basic site plan and site construction engineering (which we did) but also for 
design of the landscaping (plantings, garden location, fences, rock walls, 
etc.) which we didn't.  And since we didn't put money in the budget for that 
part of landscape design, I have the difficult task of convincing everyone at 
this point (halfway through construction) that we should find the money.  
There are two local schools that have students do projects, under 
supervision, for relatively low fees (approx $2500), but even this is high 
when you feel broke.  But the payoff is high- we may be able to avoid an 
outdoor scenario analogous to Howard's entry/kitchen poor design, and the 
beauty of a well designed site quickens the heart as it calms the soul.  It's 
worth it.

        -Roger