Stretch and Flex

One of the biggest problems I faced as a designer has been trying to fit stock plans onto existing lots. I'm usually trying to help people building their dream home shoehorn a plan they purchased from another designer onto their parcel. Sometimes the plan type and layout is not appropriate for the plot, that's another issue that merits its own post. 

Like the game of football placing a plan on a lot is a game of inches. By squeezing just six inches out of a room you might ruin the space. This is more of an issue with medium and small homes, obviously. This squeezing of the plan would lead to frustration for the owners. They often wonder why the plan was designed without any flexibility. They would wonder why the lot sizes where they purchased were too narrow by just one or two feet for no apparent reason. These were good plans done by respected designers, mind you.

These home owners didn't want a custom plan but simply wanted a good plan to start from that they could customize. Expanding the home can ruin the proportions and shrinking the home can ruin the plan. A different approach is to start off with a smaller plan that has been designed to stretch. That's how the KHASA plans were conceived. If larger bedrooms are desired, for instance, it's easy to make the plan longer or wider without requiring a complete redesign. 

By designing a house to certain minimums but in a way that can stretch in each direction it is possible to find the plan type that you like best and then adapt it to best suit the size and unique features of your lot. It is far easier to expand a home plan designed in this manner than to shrink a home plan.

This might sound like an extremely simple concept. Indeed it is. It's just exceptionally difficult to execute. Once you apply this philosophy, however, it's amazing how it clarifies and resolves the plan.

Posted via email from Kenneth Hitchens