Category Archives: Architecture and Design

Forest Retreat House

by

 

BREN RESIDENCE

We’re pretty excited about our new “forest retreat” — this new house is situated in a large 2nd growth wooded parcel overlooking Puget Sound. We’ve designed what we hope is a timeless but contemporary lodge-like house, an architecture reminiscent of the early 20th Century National Park lodges, like Timberline at Mount Hood and Paradise at Mount Rainier. As you travel the driveway that purposefully circumvents the site, you get glimpses of a view but then first see the home with it’s masonry base, stained wood shingles, and metal roofing.  Arrival reveals how the house and the detached garage/studio creates both an arrival and greeting area;  inside you see large fireplaces, a double volume interior space, natural fir trim, steel and wood railing systems, a host of sustainable building materials, and an open and connected floor plan. Through big steel sliding glass doors in the “back”,  there are decks with large overhangs so you can stand out and enjoy the view of the Sound and mountains beyond, or grille in any weather. Strategically placed windows capture the sun through the trees, so that even in the forest, you can enjoy a light filled home throughout the day.

“Speed Designing” for Buying a House in a Fast Real Estate Market

by

It’s a pretty crazy real estate market these days. Many older homes in the metropolitan Seattle area are getting multiple offers with escalation clauses and bidding wars once again. There are not a whole lot of houses available for sale and so when  house come on the market, it seems like everyone is interested!  Sometimes a house will come on the market on a Wednesday and “offers are accepted” the following Tuesday. This leaves buyers without much time to make decisions, and less time to really understand what they can do with their homes.  That’s where we can help — that’s where design-build can really help. As experienced Seattle architects and as skilled contractors, we can look at a potential house and put together a design and a cost pretty quickly — sometimes, right on the spot. Then our client, the buyer, will know whether it’s feasible to improve the property and how much it will cost. Good information for a buyer in a rush!

We’ve done several of these “speed designs” lately– in Queen Anne, in Wedgwood,  and in Bellevue.  Potential owners were looking at houses in the $400K-$700K range and needed to know how much opening the plan and creating a new kitchen would cost, or how much a second story would cost, or how much a two story addition would cost.  We were able to brainstorm ideas at the property and rough price them.  In several of the cases, we sketched out plans and priced them so the owners could see what they were getting and how much it would cost.

The $415K house became a $650 finished house; the $650K house became a large two story 1.1M house, and the $525K house became a much more open,  larger and contemporary $850K finished family home.  As it turned out, these were better deals than the equivalent priced houses because not only were there additions, but the rest of the house house was upgraded as well.

 

5 Design Tips for the Perfect Mud Room

by

uber-functional mud-roomMUD ROOMS, DROP ZONES…AND MESSES….OH MY!

It’s that time of year here in the wet Northwest that we’re all going a little crazy with the weather, and trying to get outside in spite of the rain. And when we come back into the house, we face what seems like a growing mountain of wet coats, shoes, gloves, pocket junk….you name it…right at the entry area. Inevitably this mess creeps into other areas of the house. It can feel like a hopeless battle!

As Seattle Architects all too familiar with this problem, it’s our belief that if you can design a hard-working entry zone that can store all this stuff in a way that functions efficiently, the entire house will benefit and feel neat and organized. So what are the secrets? Here are 5 critical elements:

1. MUD ROOMS NEED SPACE

spacious entry and coat room beyondAllow enough room at the entry to enable someone to remove shoes, coats, look in a mirror to adjust hair or a hat. And space enough for 2 or 3 people to stand comfortably and chat… saying goodbyes before heading out the door. Flooring material here is critical: something that can handle wet shoes and dirt without high maintenance…like tile or linoleum.

 

2. HORIZONTAL SURFACE(S) BY THE DOOR


entry tableA little touch that is all too often forgotten  A nice flat space by the entrance and exit to this room is essential to put down keys, mail, a bag of groceries etc.

 

 3. SIT DOWN SPACE IS NOT JUST A LUXURY

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAA little extra thought here goes along way. Make sure to have a place where you can sit down to take off shoes or boots, or set down shopping bags as you take off coats. This might be a bench, seat, or chair.

 

4. PICK-UP & GO STORAGE

pick-up and go storage at entryMake sure to plan to add a cubby niche or drawers for storage of small door-zone items: handbags, keys, sunglasses, flashlights, and other “junk” that accumulates in this area. We also find that a small cubby/shelf that has electrical outlets for devise chargers is very popular; here is where all family members can dock their iPods and cellphones, then grab them on the way out the door!

 

5. COAT HANGING

coat closet and alcoveOf course the essential element of a good entry area is a coat closet. I don’t think you can ever have enough coat storage space!….and shelves for shoes, boots, hats and scarves.

So depending on the style of your home, the overall question is how formal or casual the design might be for this entry zone. If this zone is your front door where visitors enter the house, you might want to hide much of the items stored here behind closet doors and in drawers, giving the area a more formal feeling.

Ideally, this zone is where you and your family enter the house very time you enter, so if it’s a back door or garage entry, the space could be much less formal than the front entry. It’s design could be more open and casual, with coat hooks, cubbies for back-packs, a ball bin (for kids sports equipment!) etc.

A terrific resource to learn more on this hard-working component of a home is Sarah Susanka’s Not So Big website.

Here are some examples of stylish and functional mud rooms

 

 

CTA Design Builders Presenting at Historic Seattle’s 3rd Annual Building Renovation Fair

by

We are excited to announce that one of our lead architects and interior designers, Julie Campbell, is giving a mainstage presentation at Historic Seattle’s 3rd Annual Building Renovation Fair on April 13th at Washington Hall.

According to the press release announcing Julie’s presentation “Remodeling Strategies for Mid Century Homes“:

Seattle enjoys a wide array of older architectural housing types, from early 1900’s Arts & Crafts styles to the 1950’s and 60’s “Mid-Century Classics”. You can probably think of many cases where interim home-owners “updated” their homes in ways that were insensitive to the original style of the house, requiring later remodeling once again.

Based on experience working on many homes of different vintages, including those designed by Northwest School Architects, Campbell discusses how you can enhance your home’s historic style, yet in ways that work for today’s more open and demanding lifestyle… and in ways that won’t look dated or out-of-context in years to come!

Join us on April 13th at the fair, and come say hi after the presentation!

You can read the full press release by following this link.

Inspiration, Empowerment & Architecture (1 of 5)

by

Our team at Architects Without Borders have taken on a project to design a school in a particularly
impoverished area outside of Port Au Prince, Haiti. We have just finished the first phase of our work which is to provide our client, a private non-profit foundation, a brochure that talks about the project and presents ideas on how to achieve certain goals. Our client will be using this brochure in fundraising activities and in getting the local community excited about the possibilities that lay before them. Our first task has been to figure out what is needed and then we work on how to go about doing this.

But the school is more than a school as we know it – it is of course a place of learning, but it is also a truly sustainable refuge, soundly built with local labor and materials; that teaches health and hygiene; a landscape that cools, that teaches; and a series of buildings that optimize the equatorial sun for energy and captures the abundant rain for washing, for drinking, and recycles wastes; a place that by its design creates community with gathering spaces to foster exchange; and a thoughtful architecture, that truly INSPIRES…

We consider all of this “Empowerment through Design”.

Below is the full project brief.

Empowerment Through Design

G8QEN8VV56ZS

5 Tips For Seattle’s Remodeled Home Tour

by

The Remodeled Homes Tour in Seattle is this coming October 20th and 21st. This will be the fourth year we’ve featured one of our Seattle remodel projects on this tour, so we’ve come to learn lots of tips from Tour-goers! Here are 5 must read tips for the tour…

1.  Plan Ahead

Peruse the Tour website and make a short-list of the homes that appeal to you based on the photos or descriptions. There are too many homes to visit in one day! Then make a driving plan.

2. Dress Properly

You’ll be taking your shoes off in each home, so wear shoes that are easy to slip on and off! Socks are a good idea, too.

3. Think About Food (and bathroom)

Food and drink are not allowed in the homes, so pack snacks and water bottles in your car. Plan a lunch stop at a favorite spot. It could be a long day! P.S. bathrooms are also not available in the houses, so “go first”!

4. Prepare Questions

If you’re planning a remodel or construction project yourself, plan to ask specific questions to the contractors and designers at each stop. For instance it’s important to know who was on the “team” that played a part in this project, how the design was arrived at before construction started, and how selection decisions were handled. Some simple questions that should garner information:

  • Was there someone who guided you through floor plan changes and overall design strategies?
  • What process did you go through to decide on interior finishes and fixtures?
  • Who chose the toilets, lights, and countertops?
  • How did you decide on paint color?

5. Get Lots of Information

If you’re interested in finding out more about a particular contractor or architect for your own project, it’s essential to speak to former clients! Get their names and contact info, and ask basic questions like:

  • Did the project come in on-time and on-budget?
  • Would you hire this contractor / architect / designer / firm again?
  • What is one thing you would do differently?
  • What wouldn’t you change?

If you have any questions about making the most out of the Remodeled Home Tour, please don’t hesitate to email us and ask, check out some homes online, and also be sure to check out the main Seattle Remodeled Home Tour website for rules and information on tickets.

Before Architecture can help…

by

We’re Seattle architects working on a new school project in Haiti, in a particularly underserved community. As part of the Architects Without Borders team, we itch to get started designing, but we realize that we live such a different life here we must know what it’s like living there, to work there, to go to school there.  We don’t want to design a school for North America and plop it down in the middle of a different and unaccepting world.  So as we learn, we begin to see that we have to back up, way up, to the point where the basics are not what we’re used to, they are survival:  we have to understand such things as where the CLEAN water is going to come from, what to do with human wastes, how we can provide electrical power, how and by whom the school would get built, etc.  As idealists, we think of municipal services providing water, not digging a well on site, away from contaminants; we think about composting toilets, but we have never cleaned one; we think of photovoltaic electric not realizing how much cheaper a generator and some gasoline is; we think the community will pitch in with their sweat equity, but we’re not working earning $7-12/day and having to decide whether to feed our family or build a school… First things first, and as we solve these problems, we’ll move on to designing a school.

Seattle Architects and Contractors combine efforts for a new school in Haiti

Aerial View of School Site

SAVE THE DATE – OCT 20 & 21 HOUSE TOUR

by
Design Build residential remodel by CTA Design Builders

New steel columns & mantle complement the fir cabinetry & trim in this 1960′s rambler remodel

This design build remodel of a Kirkland area rambler will be open for touring and we’d love to have you and your friends visit! It shows how the architecture of the 60′s can be made fresh, new, lively, and very much a part of today’s lifestyle. Stay in touch for more details.