Designing it yourself
Have fun designing your house.
There are several worthwhile advantages if you do your own design work (or at least part of it) -
- it may be the only way to get what you want
- you achieve a kind of creative act that you can do in very few realms of your life.
- you may save some money.
Here are the different stages
Bear in mind that a quirky site might pose challenges but it might also suggest unique design possibilities (although maybe at extra cost).
You might find that before purchasing the land it is worth doing some outline sketches of what you want to build (either yourself or by employing an architect) and then showing them to the local planners to get their reaction.
See also the page on Checking out Land and its sub pages
Then after buying the site move on to Design basics
be clear about your opportunities and limitations
- financial limitations
- cash flow, stage payments etc.
- time limits
- special opportunities
- skills you have or can call on
- materials - which might vary suddenly in price and any you can get at bargain rates
- incentives such as grants
see also Why self build? and Reasons not to self build
site analysis
Become as sensitive as you can to the place where you intend to build.
Visit it often in order to get a real feel of what the place is about. Try to experience it at different times of the day and night and under different weather conditions and at different times of the week (and year if possible).
Find out what the soil is like and what grows there and what kind of local wildlife there is.
Get a feel of the closeness and relationship with neighbours and surrounding buildings and how noisy it may be. Check what security feels like. See where the sun comes from and where the best and worst views are. Take photographs to help with the design process later.
design tools
There are many ways to go about designing a house and its surroundings and there are various tools that will help. Here is one method:
make a check list of all the basic areas and functions that you envisage being in and round the house. Here is a picture of a mind map created in Freemind.
It works as a checklist. You can also download this picture and edit and adapt it to your own needs by downloading Freemind (a free open source program) and then downloading this Freemind file called activities-and-areas. You will need to save it somewhere and unzip it. It will then open in Freemind. You can not only add and remove areas and functions but you can also make associations between them by linking them with arrows like the green one above.
Write your own Pattern Language using the approach outlined in the book and on the web site. A Pattern Language is an excellent approach to design. At worst it will help you avoid some of the major design pitfalls. At best it will help you create a beautiful, living, harmonious building. More about that here.
Put together a set of bubble diagrams and sketches of roughly what you want. Show how they interact. It might look roughly like this kind of thing.
on line design software
As your design develops you may want to try software on the net. One useful free program is Floorplanner which is quite easy to use and allows 3D visualization. With the free version you can go up to 3 storeys and work in metric or imperial. If you want to repeat room and wall layout on different stores then see here. A fairly similar program is ashampoo
storeys above and below
Get an idea how different storeys fit over each other. There are four main things to consider:
- walls. It’s a bit of a sliding scale with walls. If you are using heavy load bearing masonry then walls must go in a vertical plane from foundations to roof. You can deviate a little if you incorporate structural steelwork. At the opposite end, SIPS can be designed to follow all sorts of irregular shapes and patterns and give a great deal of freedom in the size and shape of rooms, one above another. In the middle is timber frame where walls can be put here and there but the posts tend to have to follow through vertically from foundations to roof. However interesting variations can be achieved with details such as jettying.
- stairs obviously have to line up between floors but you can achieve quite a degree of flexibility by using dog legs and returns and by extending half landings. Spiral stairs can also create interesting vertical alignments
- services vary considerably in the extent to which you can wiggle about between floors. See Service ducts
- chimneys and flues are very restricted. Particularly with chimneys there is usually no way to introduce enough amount of offset within a floor thickness to allow a flue to move to the other side of a wall on a different storey. (see the Building Regulations part J)
- soil pipes are very restricted (and they will need to connect to drains somewhere on the site)
- water and gas pipes are very flexible (although solar thermal pipes may need careful consideration)
- electrics, telecoms, security etc. are very flexible
- lifts, which are getting commoner in houses now need carefully aligning with the areas they serve, usually adjacent to stairs
consider how all this might affect the design of roofs and where fall pipes can be placed to connect gutters to drains.
check on the need for high level fire exits. Building Regulations part B1.v
get an idea how windows will need to be positioned and what kind of views they will afford.
By now you will probably have done some sketches of elevations to see how walls, roofs and windows line up. Cardboard models are an excellent way of visualising how all the bits come together. They don’t have to be perfect to give you an idea of how different parts of a building relate to each other. When you are getting close to a design you like you can print off drawings of the floors and walls and then glue them to card. Cut out the shapes and glue them together to produce a more accurate model.
final design
At this stage you may feel you need professional help to knit all this together accurately. Often the devil is in the detail and it takes considerable experience to make sure everything fits together correctly. See Architects and Architectural Technicians.
However if you want to continue then you will need to start doing some accurate drawings and although a traditional drawing board and tee square are fine, it is difficult to make changes as you go along. Better is a CAD program, and there are several free ones available for download on the Internet. Probably better to go for a lightweight 2D version than any of the industry leaders like AutoCad, which take a long time to learn. Try A9Tech and B4UBUILD.com who have lots of information on CAD and object oriented design software.
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The shell which basically provides protection from
- the weather
- floods
- theft
- noise
- vermin
it may also act as a collector for
- rain
- solar energy
- wind energy
It will then include a set of rooms and areas based on the functions such as eating, sleeping etc.
- creating delight and a sense of well being for the inhabitants of the house. This is about such things as
- imaginative spaces, colours, lighting, views etc.
- feeling inviting, cosy, relaxing, stimulating, secure etc.
- impressing or informing other people. This often includes
- conspicuous consumption
- an impression of wealth
- associations with value systems. This can take many forms such as
- some kind of historic or traditional appearance where the building resembles some historic period. ‘Tudorbethan’ is often a sad example of this. More complex and contentious is the situation where town planners insist on some kind of mimicking of the past. ( see Christopher Alexander’s Schumacher lecture, covering morphogenesis and this bit about fake traditionalism)
- modernism with all its myriad forms. This is a vast subject. At its heart is the maxim ‘form follows function’ and it is all about wanting to be seen to embrace modernity. It may be closely associated with the basic functions of a house (see above) as functionalism often creates its own set of visual references. It may also only be a veneer of whatever appears to be cool or trendy at the time with little relationship to the real needs of people. This is a failure of real functionalism and there are plenty of examples from the last century, particularly the 1970s.
- a spiritual or metaphysical dimension such as New Age, or a religious significance
- a statement about the interests and ideals of the designer / builder. People sometimes incorporate symbols of what they hold dear into the design. For instance the prominent placing of a garage or swimming pool or a stable may indicate what that person is all about.
- a statement of individualism, idiosyncrasy, eccentricity, rebellion or whimsy.
- conforming to norms. This has several aspects to it which overlap and get very messy.
- Conforming to what the planners want. Planners want an easy life. In most cases planners work quite democratically but usually to a kind of ‘lowest common denominator’. When neighbours object to what you want to build (and many of them usually do) the planners try to get rid of any contentious bits to placate the objectors. These may also be the most interesting bits. It creates institutionalised boredom.
- What will the neighbours think? Maybe there is that fear of being branded those weirdos who built that strange looking house.
- Mortgage providers. Their first question is usually ‘Does it have brick walls and a slate roof?’
- Building insurers. Ditto.
- Will it be saleable? Well maybe there is nobody out there who has your strange creative taste.
- National conservatism (small c). All this can add up to a strange kind of atmosphere where imagination is frowned on and innovation discouraged. Well have a look out there! And then strengthen your resolve to create something you are proud of.
If the above two aspects of design (basic function and aesthetics) are the only ones you consider then you are liable to miss the mark. Design aesthetics, when not deeply linked to the context of the building, risk being a fashion fad and the whole idea of the function of a building simply being a set of boxes to eat, wash and sleep in is a shallow approach to design. The quality without a name (to use Christopher Alexander’s phrase in A Pattern Language) is what makes a building really feel alive and function at a deep level. See more on A Pattern Language.
