Home Architects : More House With Less

Online, March 28, 2010 (Newswire.com) - These days, home architects are custom crafting smaller homes that seem larger and with more features.
Even though some clients are still after mansions, these custom home architects are seeing a trend that requires more house with less resources.

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Rand Soellner Architect is including high end features in smaller houses these days, like second sinks in kitchens and wider aisles between counters, 2-way fireplaces, multi-functional secondary bedrooms, and overlapping spaces in public areas to give the feeling of larger spaces within a smaller area. Soellner used to design projects for one of Frank Lloyd Wright's main apprentices. Wright was an artist with space and Soellner learned about overlapping "implied rooms" to give the illusion that the combined space is larger than the two. Most people believe that Soellner-designed homes are much larger than their actual size.

MORE HOUSE WITH LESS RESOURCES AND MORE UPSCALE FEATURES:
Soellner often includes luxury features in both smaller and larger homes. Some of these include: more gracious master bathrooms with 2-person showers, enclosed toilet rooms, double doors into master bathrooms, larger windows, affording better views of the exterior world and Outdoor Living Rooms oriented to views. Soellner also incorporates sliding glass doors that are wider and taller than normal, opening views and allowing the seam between inside and outside to evaporate when the doors are open. These features make Soellner's smaller homes seem much larger. They also add to the enjoyment of house occupants, even though the residence may be smaller than some others.

CURRENT "MORE HOUSE WITH LESS MONEY" PROJECTS UNDER DESIGN NOW:
Soellner is developing a 1,352 square foot 3 bedroom/3 bath one-story house that feels enormous, with some interior views of 41 feet, which many larger homes do not possess. Soellner's optimized design secret: he wastes nothing. No hallways, no spaces without function. Everything does two or three things and the result is high functionality and convenience with a feeling of spaciousness.

Soellner's current More House With Less is called the Cardinal Camp Cottage, so named by Merry Soellner, Rand's wife and Cashiers-Lake Toxaway real estate broker. She sees a market for homes that offer more features and a feeling of greater spaciousness for less money.

Rand Soellner is also developing a 2-story version. The footprint of the 2-story Cardinal Camp Cottage is around 1,000 square feet as a main level with a lower walk-out basement terrace level, which means the total heated size will be around 2,000 sf. This feels about twice the size, because it has a large main Living Room and Dining on the main level (about 24'x25'), a large Family Room on the lower level, a sumptuous Master Suite on the main level, large Gourmet Kitchen and pantry on the main level as part of the open plan design, 2 large bedroom suites on the terrace level, laundry room, mechanical space and walk-in closets. Wasted space: zero.
Soellner also offers an optional 2-car garage and Outdoor Living Room porches. Merry Soellner thought it was important for the flexible designs to allow homeowners to determine the cost of their homes by selecting the options they wanted.

MORE HOUSE WITH LESS MONEY:
People still want primary residences (1.2 million per year) and many still want vacation houses. They just want to spend less. But most of them are not willing to let go of the popular features they have seen in magazines and in other people's finely crafted houses that happen to be larger.

The answer is: better design and careful planning of every square foot. That is what the Soellner firm is doing. Designing "more house" with less actually means: designing a smaller house with more features that feels larger than it really is and that has upscale features not commonly associated with more compact residences.

The Soellner firm is also one of the leading green home architects, with each project incorporating Healthy Home Design and energy efficient features. Some other firm services: post and beam architects, arts and crafts architects.