Don't Overlook Intangible Value and Cost

Focus on long-term architectural utility not short-term dollars and cents

Foremost on the minds of most homeowners about to embark on a residential project, whether it’s a renovation, addition, or new construction, is ‘How much will it cost?’ This is the loaded question that frequently stops a project in its tracks or sends it off in the wrong direction. A better question is: ‘How can value be added?’ or ‘How can intangible costs be avoided?’ Too often homeowners lose track of how a project could positively influence their lives, focusing instead on the dollars and cents spent today. Of course this happens in part because it’s easier to tally short-term financial costs than to tally long-term and non-financial costs or added value. We mustn’t overlook the intangible value that can be added to a project with one course of action, or the intangible cost of pursuing another, just because it’s difficult to measure. First we need to define our terms.

Value

For the sake of this discussion we’re concerned with two types of value: market value and utility. Market value is the easiest to quantify. It is the measure in the market place of worth. So, for example, what is the value of a tony parking space in Boston’s Back Bay? Well, apparently in November 2006 it was $250,000 according to a sale cited in the Boston Globe. Of course, it’s helpful if you and your architect are aware of the market value of the various components of your project, so you can make valuable choices.

Utility is more elusive. It’s an intangible value having to do with the usefulness or importance of something to someone. It is the key to your happiness with your project. Translating your goals and project wish list into spaces that will prove useful and important to you is the stock and trade of a good architect.

sun porch alcove

plan sketch with sun porch

For example, what if you mentioned how important daylight is to you on your wish list and in response your architect designed and oriented a sun porch for you that offered a unique, quiet, get-a-way space that was partially open (with French doors and interior windows) to a larger living space? Perhaps the creation and placement of the sun porch would suggest a wrap-around shed roofline, a nearby entrance porch, an adjacency to the family room, as well as proximity to the kitchen and thus begin to shape the design of your project. Further, suppose the sun porch would add no more square footage to the project’s total anticipated square footage, just re-apportion it.

Would the sun porch have utility for you? Maybe your first instinct would be to shift its footprint and absorb it into another space, resulting possibly in more kitchen floor area. Or you might elect to spread its square footage evenly among the other rooms. But what if you stepped back and further considered that the sun porch design would provide not only abundant daylight but distinct spatial relief from the larger living spaces? Could it become your favorite sunny spot to escape with a cup of tea and the paper? What if you could you use it for multiple functions: breakfast, light office work, kids’ homework, or entertaining? How many times a week and for how long at a time do you think you might enjoy it? How might it make you feel compared to the other rooms in the house? What percentage of your leisure or work time would you spend there? Would you appreciate the differentiation of space it affords?

Now, if you were told that you couldn’t have a sun porch for some reason, how would you feel? Would you be willing to take some action, make a trade-off, in order to have a sun porch after all? The answers to these questions would begin to gauge the utility of the sun porch to you. If it is ultimately useful and important to you, it’s also an example of the kind of hidden value a thoughtful architect could create for you.

cost

Without getting too bogged down in economics, there are two primary types of project costs for us to consider: tangible monetary costs and intangible costs, both short- and long-term. The monetary costs include costs for property acquisition, infrastructure, construction, and architectural design services including building engineering. Generally a property has already been acquired or is in the process of being acquired when the idea for a project is first born, so the cost to acquire it is known, but the other monetary costs are not at first. They can be roughly estimated by researching typical cost per square foot of building area according to local contractors or building professionals and by inquiring into the services provided by local site and building professionals as well as their fee structure. Once a project enters the design process, site and building professionals in conjunction with contractors can provide a more refined sense of both short-term and long-term monetary costs associated with particular actions.

The most elusive and frequently overlooked costs though are the intangible costs that are often expressed as a design opportunity cost. For every design decision made there is a potential design opportunity cost, the cost of not pursuing an alternative. When that cost isn’t tangible, it’s difficult to quantify and has a tendency to be dismissed. It’s vital that such intangibles are evaluated.

boxy house in the middle of the lot

Say you decide to build a two-story, boxy, symmetrical house parallel to the road in the middle of your flat, grassy site. You figure you’re saving in up-front excavation, construction labor, and material expenses as well as design services by making it a no-brainer. What are the intangible design opportunity costs?

• For one, you’re probably not taking full advantage of the solar and/or natural forces on the site that can be better captured with less boxy forms and careful building orientation and placement.

• You’re likely limiting access to daylight deep within the middle of your box due to the nature of its geometry, and you may be sacrificing privacy by bundling everything together.

• You’re also creating a landscape of remainder spaces around your box rather than using smaller attached and detached volumes to engage the landscape creating outdoor rooms, courtyards, and secret gardens.

• You may be missing out on celebrating or discreetly revealing a view or entrance sequence.

• Further, a big box in the middle of a flat field will probably appear out of scale and have little relationship to the neighboring buildings.

• The symmetrical façade, though easy to predict and construct, might feel static and result in a mismatch between window placement and room use.

• Room size and circulation may also be controlled more by the rules of symmetry and the arbitrary box geometry than by function.

Need I go on? The intangible design opportunity costs of choosing a boxy form and locating it in the middle of your lot may be vast and far outweigh the limited up-front monetary savings that were initially assumed. Here is where a good architect can help, by illuminating potential design opportunity costs and steering you toward better alternatives.

in sum

A choice that creates value (in the sense of utility) reveals something that is important and useful to you and maximizes an otherwise unrealized opportunity. A choice that creates an intangible cost misses an opportunity and settles for far less than an opportunity’s potential. It is an architect’s pleasure to add value and advise against intangible design opportunity costs. It’s why we do what we do.

by Katie Hutchison for the House Enthusiast

Common Sense Green

Elements of good design are essential to truly green design

photo by Katherine Drew Dilworth

There’s a lot more to green building than green products and check lists. Yes, yes, bamboo flooring and recycled glass tiles are hot right now, but they’re only part of the equation. They’re not going to make much of a difference if your house (whether it’s existing or new) is oversized, poorly sited, and/or out of touch with fundamental environmental forces. Trademarks of good design such as efficiency, informed siting, and spatial sensitivity to the sun, wind, and other environmental factors are vital to common sense green design. That’s not to say that all good design is green design or vice versa, primarily because the role of aesthetics in the green paradigm is a murky one. But you can’t have truly green design without elements of good design.

re-use

Keep in mind that green design can mean renovating green rather than building green. It’s certainly greener to re-use an existing building than to discard it for a new one. Of course not all existing structures are suitable for re-use, especially if they were poorly designed in the first place. Many existing, quality homes, though, can be renovated (without prohibitive expense or alteration) to function more efficiently than they were. It’s a balancing act, but one well worth investigating.

I, for one, live in a 240-year-old antique. In the winter, wind whistles through the windows. In the summer, the attic level traps heat. But these are not insurmountable inefficiencies. We could splurge for new insulated windows, repair the existing windows where possible, or replace the failing storm windows with better-functioning alternatives. We already have plans for new, fully operable, insulated skylights to alleviate some of the attic swelter. Over time we’ve swapped-out inefficient appliances and fixtures for greener options. Mainly, though, I take pleasure in treading the same wide-pine floor boards that the sea captain, who built the house, trod. It’s probably the greenest thing that I do.

build smaller

photo by Katherine Drew Dilworth

If you’re going to build new and green, you’ll need to build less. Smaller buildings consume fewer resources. It isn’t rocket science. Good design can reduce square footage without sacrificing a feeling of spaciousness. Common sense green means eliminating rarely used spaces and merging functions where possible. It also means creating reasonable room sizes that accommodate relaxed conversation as well as opportunities to tuck away for privacy. The key is to incorporate semi-open living areas in which one space borrows visually from another while remaining distinct from it, thanks to any number of treatments that provide partial enclosure. Increase efficiency by allowing circulation to overlap with living spaces rather than cordoning it off in separate hallways. Maximize your property’s potential by bringing the outdoors in and indoors out with the help of decks, porches, patios, screen porches and/or exterior rooms that are framed by outbuildings, landscape features, and/or garden structures. Efficient design needn’t be a sacrifice. It can be far more comfortable, functional, and engaging than the over-scale, inefficient alternative.

work with the site, not against it

Good design and thus common sense green design will determine where you locate a new building on your property. Attention to site features, prevailing forces like wind and drainage, as well as solar orientation will lead the way. Of course zoning bylaws and other governing regulations will play a role too.

According to Christopher Alexander the author of Pattern Language, “We must treat every new act of building as an opportunity to mend some rent in the existing cloth.” He encourages us to “leave those areas that are the most precious, beautiful, comfortable, and healthy as they are, and build new structures in those parts of the site which are least pleasant now.” In other words don’t spoil the best part of the site with the disruption of construction. Preserve it to enjoy from your completed new home. (By the way, if you don’t own Pattern Language, and you’re embarking on a design project of any sort, I recommend that you pick up a copy. Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

photo by Katherine Drew Dilworth

If there’s a south facing meadow, relish it and site your building so you can appreciate it from multiple vantage points, basking in the southern light and view. If there’s a hill, avoid the temptation to build directly on top of it. Nestle into it instead, where you’ll be more sheltered from wind and weather and where you’ll presumably have easier access. Preserve the hilltop for outdoor pleasures: reading while sunning, sharing a picnic, visiting en route to a garden. If there’s a stunning specimen tree, site your building to take advantage of its shading properties or to appreciate the birds that nest in it. There’s nothing greener than preserving the green.

harness desirable environmental forces, deflect undesirable ones

In New England designing a new home such that the majority of spaces enjoy sunlight and solar heat gain in the winter while harsh, late-day sunlight and solar heat gain are deflected in the summer is fundamental to good design and, by extension, common sense green design.

To revisit Christopher Alexander’s advice, he says, “A long east-west axis sets up a building to keep the heat in during winter, and to keep the heat out during the summer. This makes a building more pleasant, and cheaper to run.” His Pattern Language co-authors would later come out with another book, Patterns of Home, in which they tweak his teachings. They say, “Siting the building diagonally to the south takes maximum advantage of available sunlight.” (You might want to pick up a copy of Patterns of Home too. Click here to buy it from Amazon.) Both scenarios can be effective, though I’m partial to the latter since it places only a building corner toward the dimly light north, rather than a long side.

Good design takes wind patterns into account as well, which is also common sense green. Locate spaces relative to landscape elements, such as trees and berms, to deflect unwanted nor’easter storm winds, for instance, but to welcome southeastern summer breezes where available.

Good design also incorporates southern overhangs and deciduous trees for summer shade which, come winter, will still allow sunlight to penetrate deep within the house. This, too, is common sense green. Window sizes and placement are also critical to managing seasonal light and solar heat gain.

make green building-system and product choices and be mindful of every-day conservation

Once you’ve acted on the many basics of good design that are intrinsic to common sense green design as reviewed above, you’re ready to investigate the many green alternatives much discussed in the marketplace. True, it only makes sense to use high-performing, efficient and safe: building materials, systems, appliances, fixtures and finishes and to be mindful of every-day conservation. Simple measures like recycling household goods, attention to water usage, remembering to switch the lights off in un-used spaces, turning the heat down, grouping errands etc. can make a difference. Just remember that the first step in expressing a green philosophy at home is to employ good design practices that are inherently green.

by Katie Hutchison for the House Enthusiast

Welcome Fellow House Enthusiasts

Allow me to introduce myself, my mission, and the magazine

I’m an architect, but mainly I’m a house enthusiast. Ever since growing up in the cozy comforts of an antique New England farmhouse amidst rock walls and wildflowers, I have been fascinated with notions of home, how homes are shaped and how those within are shaped by them.

Early on as a suburban pre-teen, I was intrigued to visit friends’ homes of different eras than my own. To me, a contemporary house was some sort of exotic. Open plans with low slung roofs, glass sliders, interior stone courtyards, and decks piqued my curiosity. The smell was different, often the artwork more abstract. What did it mean? What influence did these homes, that were so unlike mine, have on these families and vice versa?  How, as a result, were we dissimilar yet also similar?

Soon my interest in the qualities that define home began to seep into my creative writing. My stories would center on my characters’ attachment to their childhood homes; in fact, often the homes would become central characters. A recurring theme focused on the challenge of grown children returning to their childhood home to decide the structure’s fate and that of their family and themselves. Their home defined them, yet they defined it. I needed to understand how, so I took that interest in home to art and architecture school.

ask more of your house

Today, as a residential architect I spend my time poking around other New Englander’s houses, listening to dream-house wish lists, and proposing physical dwellings in response. I’d like to do more. I’d like to influence the contents of the wish list itself. As homeowners, we are all too often asking too little of our homes. We are missing opportunities to create authentic dwellings that are efficient while beautiful, sheltering while embedded in the natural world, connected to our community while mindful of our need for privacy and quiet.

In a culture of consumerism and impatience, it’s easy to be led astray. Let’s stop creating over-scaled, isolating trophy houses plopped in the center of endless grass yards. Let’s stop accepting slap dash, cookie-cutter developments as substitutes for soulful living. Instead we can chart a different course. We can focus on quality rather than quantity, while thoughtfully shaping a home and lifestyle sensitive to our unique role in the natural and communal world. We can create a home that informs and accommodates a personal, meaningful life.

learn how

Much as I traveled to my friends’ childhood homes to marvel at the differences and similarities to my own, and later to art and architecture school to explore the possibilities of design, I recommend that you consider the diversions highlighted in House Enthusiast. They include noteworthy New England House and Garden tours as well as tangentially related Continuing education opportunities in art and design to inspire you. They may speak to you about shaping: identity, purpose, and potential. Check out the Special events listings too. Further broaden your design lexicon, by reading the Primer on residential fundamentals. Each entry will define basic elements and/or concepts of home design and demystify when, why, and how to incorporate them into a meaningful solution. Look at upcoming Opinion columns for commentary on topical home design issues and recommended action.

Find more food for thought in the Reading and DVD review area where design-related articles, books, and films are discussed. If after reviewing this website, you have an unanswered residential design question that may be of interest to other readers as well, send it to Ask Katie here at House Enthusiast. I’ll collect questions and then answer those I feel might be the most helpful to readers in general. Over time you’ll find previous Ask Katie questions and answers to peruse.

Together we can create authentic dwellings that reflect and inform our true selves. I hope you’ll visit this site often to explore how.

by Katie Hutchison for the House Enthusiast