Site Design

Many people purchase a plan off the internet or through a magazine without any regard for the physical site. Site conditions should be one of the primary factors in developing a custom home. The understanding of the surrounding architecture, view corridors, drainage patterns, setbacks, topography, and adjacent properties are but a few reasons why site based design is so critical. When people purchase a stock plan with the goal of saving a few dollars, they usually compromise the original design and miss significant opportunities. They fail to realize that custom design fees are generally less than half of one percent of the construction cost. Consider the following example where site considerations were critical.

Our client purchased a hillside lot with a twenty five percent slope, a height restriction of fourteen feet, and a southwest view corridor of Vancouver Lake. The neighborhood boasted homes of 3,000 to 4,000 square feet in the $600,000 price range. Our client also had habitat buffers and setbacks that further restricted the design process. With a variety of surrounding architectural styles, our client chose a modern appearance that worked well with the height restrictions. We focused the most important rooms to take advantage of the view and natural southern exposure using the hillside slope to our advantage by locating bedrooms, storage and a media room in the walkout basement.