Week 3: Still trying to make that first impression.
Towards the end of last week I started working on a project with the head architect of the firm. It's a pretty interesting program and design for new house on 30 acres of land (by far the largest site I've worked on) in Western Mass. The client is a couple that worked with the firm on a house in Metrowest about 10 years ago and they have a good relationship with the architect and he understands their idiosyncrasies well which is why they've come back to him for this project. He had me start off by reviewing his sketches and then we talked about it for a while so he could get could get a feel for where I was coming from and while he agreed with several of suggestions for tweaking the design, he didn't go with them because of he knew that the client wouldn't go for them. Getting to know your clients mindset and perspective on how they want their home to be is critical part of the work we do, and as you might imagine, isn't always easy, so I understood why he didn't take my suggestion to the client. He's met with her twice since then and gotten good feedback which I've started to put into Revit. The design process has been going on for months and they haven't progressed past small-scale hand-drawn plans and I get the feeling that he's been spinning his wheels lately and needs to break the client out of it with some views of what form house the can take.
Revit is of course perfect for this so I've spent a few days now laying out the house and working through several possible schemes for the first, second and third floors. It's coming together pretty nicely and we both like the massing and rough aesthetic the I've put together so far. One area that we've butted heads on slightly is the dimensions of rooms. He drew his sketches at 1" = 16', which means that one sixteenth of an inch represents one foot in real like, and is about the smallest scale that you'd ever want to work in by hand because the width of your pencil or pen tip is large portion of the 1/16", and so as someone (in this case me) tries to use a scale (a 3-sided ruler that architects use to measure things) to understand the size of something, there's a decent amount of wiggle room. I was very careful to double-check measurements as I laid out the walls in Revit and there were still several spots where I was off from his intended dimension by 3-4 feet, which is something that sometimes happens at this stage, but in this case is frustrating for both of us. I've caught and corrected most of these discrepancies, but there's one room that I have 3'-5" too big, and it's a room that is critical to the design. He mentioned it to me this morning when we met about the project and then I went and worked a full day on the project. I came up with 3 options that refined the way the owners and their guests will enter the house, I adjusted the layouts of rooms on both floors, made general improvements to the exterior details and updated the graphics that I'm using to visualize the design.
At one point I realized that I had a great idea on how to solve a problem that had been vexing us and the client and that even thought the solution is a bit outside the guidelines that I'm supposed to be working on, it was worth the risk to draw it up so that we could properly evaluate it. This kind of a moment doesn't happen every day, but I think a lot of designers know what I mean; it's a bit like lightning and you have to follow it through even if you're afraid it might be a dead end. This one is not a dead end, I modeled it up and it looks good; easily the best of the 3 exterior options that I have done at this point. I showed the architect and he liked it too, which felt great, but he is concerned that the client isn't quite ready for it yet. I hope that she goes for it because the solution strikes just about the perfect balance between the function of how she says she's going to be using the house on a daily-basis and how it'll be used when she entertains large groups, something she does in her home often now, and there's a good chance this new house will be full of grandchildren while she lives there.
But, remember that room that was 3'-5" too big? The one that was critical to the design? Well I didn't get around to shrinking that down amidst all the other work I was doing. It would've been easy to do and I should've done it straight away but it just didn't click with me as being a priority and it fell off my mental list. The architect caught it while we were talking at the end of the day and commented on it like it should've been done already (it should have). The next meeting with the client isn't until Friday and there's plenty of time to fix it (first thing tomorrow!) but I can't stop feeling uneasy about him noticing that I hadn't made the adjustment after being reminded of it. I know it's not the end of the world and that I should let it go, but I feel like I have a lot riding on this right now. This is the first project that I'm doing with my new employer and in many ways I'm still making the first impression. I mean, I know he likes me which is why he hired me, but there's a lot that can't be seen during the interview process, so he's seeing a lot of what I do/who I am for the first time as we go through the design process and assessing what my strengths are. Overall he was happy with what I had done, but I can't help but feel that he was a little let down by that. I've said it before that I'm hard on myself, and that's certainly factor here, but this is what's on my mind at home this evening.
I am excited about this house and am looking forward to sharing images of it here when I can!
Revit is of course perfect for this so I've spent a few days now laying out the house and working through several possible schemes for the first, second and third floors. It's coming together pretty nicely and we both like the massing and rough aesthetic the I've put together so far. One area that we've butted heads on slightly is the dimensions of rooms. He drew his sketches at 1" = 16', which means that one sixteenth of an inch represents one foot in real like, and is about the smallest scale that you'd ever want to work in by hand because the width of your pencil or pen tip is large portion of the 1/16", and so as someone (in this case me) tries to use a scale (a 3-sided ruler that architects use to measure things) to understand the size of something, there's a decent amount of wiggle room. I was very careful to double-check measurements as I laid out the walls in Revit and there were still several spots where I was off from his intended dimension by 3-4 feet, which is something that sometimes happens at this stage, but in this case is frustrating for both of us. I've caught and corrected most of these discrepancies, but there's one room that I have 3'-5" too big, and it's a room that is critical to the design. He mentioned it to me this morning when we met about the project and then I went and worked a full day on the project. I came up with 3 options that refined the way the owners and their guests will enter the house, I adjusted the layouts of rooms on both floors, made general improvements to the exterior details and updated the graphics that I'm using to visualize the design.
At one point I realized that I had a great idea on how to solve a problem that had been vexing us and the client and that even thought the solution is a bit outside the guidelines that I'm supposed to be working on, it was worth the risk to draw it up so that we could properly evaluate it. This kind of a moment doesn't happen every day, but I think a lot of designers know what I mean; it's a bit like lightning and you have to follow it through even if you're afraid it might be a dead end. This one is not a dead end, I modeled it up and it looks good; easily the best of the 3 exterior options that I have done at this point. I showed the architect and he liked it too, which felt great, but he is concerned that the client isn't quite ready for it yet. I hope that she goes for it because the solution strikes just about the perfect balance between the function of how she says she's going to be using the house on a daily-basis and how it'll be used when she entertains large groups, something she does in her home often now, and there's a good chance this new house will be full of grandchildren while she lives there.
But, remember that room that was 3'-5" too big? The one that was critical to the design? Well I didn't get around to shrinking that down amidst all the other work I was doing. It would've been easy to do and I should've done it straight away but it just didn't click with me as being a priority and it fell off my mental list. The architect caught it while we were talking at the end of the day and commented on it like it should've been done already (it should have). The next meeting with the client isn't until Friday and there's plenty of time to fix it (first thing tomorrow!) but I can't stop feeling uneasy about him noticing that I hadn't made the adjustment after being reminded of it. I know it's not the end of the world and that I should let it go, but I feel like I have a lot riding on this right now. This is the first project that I'm doing with my new employer and in many ways I'm still making the first impression. I mean, I know he likes me which is why he hired me, but there's a lot that can't be seen during the interview process, so he's seeing a lot of what I do/who I am for the first time as we go through the design process and assessing what my strengths are. Overall he was happy with what I had done, but I can't help but feel that he was a little let down by that. I've said it before that I'm hard on myself, and that's certainly factor here, but this is what's on my mind at home this evening.
I am excited about this house and am looking forward to sharing images of it here when I can!
Comments
Post a Comment