This is the second post in our “Designing Your Home” series. This series is about helping future home owners know what elements to keep in mind when designing their new home. The same principles apply for remodeling or adding on to your home.

If you haven’t already you, should read my introductory post in our design series here:
Designing Your Home: Introduction

In this series of blog posts, we are using the design patterns found in the book Patterns of Home: The Ten Essentials of Enduring Design by the authors Max Jacobson, Murray Silverstein, and Barbara Winslow. All three of the authors are internationally respected architects who published this easy to read and beautifully illustrated book in 2002. We highly recommend this book to you.

In this book, the word “pattern” is used for a group of design ideas which address a particular aspect of your home design. Pattern One in our book is titled “Inhabiting the Site.” All the homes we build are placed on a piece of ground and the design of your home should begin with where you are placing it.

“Like a tree grabbing a roothold in the slope, reaching down for water and minerals and arching up toward the available sunlight, a house must begin and grow from its site.  When the design of a house has grown out of the uniqueness of its site, it will seem as natural and as integral a part of the whole as trees are a part of the forest.”  pg. 23

For the Pattern One, “Inhabiting the Site,” the authors list the group of design ideas that make up this pattern as:

1. Protect the center of the site by keeping driveways and parking toward the edges of your property lines. And use the home or out-buildings and plants to block less pleasing parts of a site.

2. Put the main communal spaces on the more public side of the site. Usually this is a the front of the home. The front of the home should serve as a shield for the more private spaces around the sides and back of the home. This will prevent unwanted exposure to your family and visitors.

3. Examine your site and determine what part is the most special or beautiful and then preserve it. “You want to put the building close enough to enjoy it but far enough away not to destroy it.”  You don’t want to place your home right on top of the most beautiful spot. You want to make the beautiful spot to be a view from your home if possible.

4. Stretch out your home’s wings, decks, and garden walls out into the site to give the feeling that your home is a natural part of the land. The authors our of book describe it as knitting the house strongly to the land.  When your home design reaches out and “grabs” the ground, this makes your home feel like a living thing that is in partnership with the natural elements of your site.

5. Orient the wings and rooms to the best views. Remember to determine the four directions of the compass while on your site. Pay attention to the path of the sun. A south or southwest orientation means that you will capture warm sunlight during the day for most times of the year.

The planning of your home site is the first step in house design. Your home and your site should be fitted together. The shape and features of your site may help you be more creative in the design and placement of your new home. In order to achieve this remember the first pattern, cause your home to inhabit the site. 

Purchase Patterns of Home: The Ten Essentials of Enduring Design here on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Home-Essentials-Enduring-Design

Stay tuned for our next post – Pattern Two: Creating Rooms Outside and In.

Need some inspiration to start designing your home? Take a look at the plans on our main website.