Lot

I’ve been designing a house that I’ll never live in, but I’m designing it as if I am.

The lot isn’t that big, and it’s the end of a triangular block, so it is also long and nearly comes to a point on the South end, so I can’t build a square or rectangular house on it. Well, I could, but I can’t, you know? That’s why they gave us this lot to work with; it’s an interesting problem the constraints of which create an environment for thoughtful answers.

I was pissed when I saw what lot we were given to work with. I had a plan roughed out already that would have worked great for the lot I had in mind before I found out we couldn’t just build wherever we wanted. I stared at that plan for a very long time, long enough to begin thinking about other things, like the story of how and why these two ‘Imaginary’ clients that I created (it’s me and Hez, but that’s a secret) would build in Kerrisdale when it specifically says on their client study that they don’t want to live in the city, and the lot, with a very old, but nicely maintained house on it, just sold for 2.5 million dollars.

The reasonings take some mental gymnastics to appreciate, but I stopped worrying about that, because I realized that it wasn’t my job to care about why because my job is to prove that I can make this all sum up to the best possible outcome for everyone. It sounds altruistic, and maybe it is to a degree, but I think this is more about me acting in my own best interests, and what happens when I do that. Things become a lot more interesting and even fun.

I like to solve problems. I like puzzles and games, well, I like some of them, but I really like to solve problems. I found though, that I work a little differently than is recommended by the program that I am in. Maybe someday, maybe even next project, I’ll start with a bubble diagram, shifting all the rooms around depending upon their connective requirements, and answering to the flow of the home, but I’ve yet to build a round room, and I have a tough time envisioning the Jetson’s bubble home coming together into something that makes sense to me. But floor plans make sense, even if they’re wrong.

It’s a favourite pastime of builders (as opposed to designers) to find what’s wrong with a plan. There’s always something wrong, and we always find it, but it’s best to find it before you have to unbuild something in order to fix it. Sometimes a post doesn’t have a foundation under it, sometimes, if you build with standard progression, you won’t be able to fit in that little spot to finish the siding. Sometimes you just have to buy taller ladders, or rent more scaffolding because it’s buildable, but you’re just not prepared. One hundred percent of the time, though, you blame the architect first because he’s probably never put anything together in his life. But I have, and now I’m the architect, well, I’m going to be. I’m not going to get a...whatever it is that REAL architects get because I’m not doing four years of schooling. I’ve already done thirty.

Part of the project that I’m working on requires that I do a technical study that includes details on my chosen method of building, and why I chose that particular method. I think in stick-frame, but I’m trying to think differently about everything, and there is a lot of different ways to build out there in the world, so I’m looking into those.

I get hung up and bogged down in the mundane aspects of the work sometimes, but when it comes to working on my plan, I’m excited. Once I get a few more details figured out, I get to build a scaled architectural model of the house and property, and I might lose sleep over that, in a good way.