INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND
- Before The Architect (BTA) designs custom home plans, including in-style design on the exterior and, occasionally on the interior
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Clients are discerning and appreciative of attention to detail –
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Determining wide-ranging sources of information to assist home planning prevails in the background throughout a BTA home design enterprise
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Before The Architect is known to include major reference library sources in the home plan set itself, particularly for clients' further reference and referral
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Such inclusion is not common in home plan designing
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Given perceived need or interest, it'd be shameful to absolutely rejects such inclusion after all the extraordinary searching, sorting, selecting, and studying
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In this instance, Before The Architect was commissioned to design a custom home interior in American Craftsman Style
THREE FORCES
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Three forces of intellect and will had to come together in responsible and respective home design herewith
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Modernity had its rightful place, especially in plumbing fixtures, bath and kitchen appliances and other features, e.g., luminaires, and aspects of features, e.g., coatings
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Good design done well overall had its rightful place, too, in lines of sight, natural and electric lighting, travel patterns, kitchen layout, pathing driveways, etc.
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In-style interior trim (more complex than the connotation of the American Craftsman Style, as of the common man's hands), colors (not entirely what might be expected and what is inaccurately applied) also belonged, with clarity, consistency, and concision
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The litany to follow includes home plan written reference library sources and a few URL's which guided this home plan set design in matters variously of modernity, good design, and in-style presentation
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Matters of interior decoration – what particular flooring, selected sconces, styles of mantels, etc. – are to be done by others
REFERENCE LIBRARY SOURCES – ACTUAL ENTRIES WITH COMMENTARY
1. A FIELD GUIDE TO AMERICAN HOUSES BY VIRGINIA & LEE McALESTER, ALFRED A. KNOPF, 1984. Kind of like comfort food, this custom home designer reckons both photographs and illustrations as firm bases of design. Most American home design styles are in this standalone reference library.
2. A PATTERN LANGUAGE: TOWNS; BUILDINGS; CONSTRUCTION BY CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER ET AL., OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1977. It's all about polarities of inspiration and grounding, to be read and reached for. To this custom home designer's way of thinking, this work's vitality is in the exposition on "the quality without a name."
"There is a central quality which is the root criterion of life and spirit in a man, a town, a building, or a wilderness. This quality is objective and precise, but it cannot be named. The search which we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the center search of a person, and the crux of any individual person's story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are more alive."
"This quality in buildings and in towns cannot be made, but only generated, indirectly, by the ordinary actions of the people, just as a flower cannot be made, but only generated from a seed."
"The more living patterns there are in a place-a room, a building, or a town-the more it comes to life as an entity, the more it glows, the more it has that self-maintaining fire which is the quality without a name."
"So finally the fact is, that to come to this, to make a thing which has the character of nature, and to be true to all the forces in it, to remove yourself, to let it be, without interference from your image-making self – all this requires that we become aware that all of it is transitory; that all of it is going to pass.
"Of course nature itself is also always transitory. The trees, the river, the humming insect – they are all short-lived; they will all pass. Yet we never feel sad in the presence of these things. No matter how transitory they are, they make us feel happy, joyful.
"But when we make our own attempt to create nature in the world around us, and succeed, we cannot escape the fact that we are going to die. This quality, when it is reached, in human things, is always sad; it makes us sad, and we can even say that any place where a man tries to make the quality, and be like nature, cannot be true, unless we can feel the slight presence of this haunting sadness there, because we know at the same time we enjoy it, that it is going to pass." The Timeless Way Of Building by Christopher Alexander et al., Oxford Press, 1979, Chapter 8, "The Quality Itself."
Now, if that doesn't scratch the itch you have not yet reached, the more's the pity.
3. ARCHITECTURAL GRAPHIC STANDARDS, TENTH EDITION, THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS (A/K/A RAMSEY/SLEEPER), JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC., JOHN RAY HOKE, JR. FAIA, EDITOR IN CHIEF, 2000. Expensive and indispensable. Like a gift that keeps on giving, where other reference sources subjectify, thin to hollowness, preach, prattle, postulate, and posture, Ramsey/Sleeper is akin to Dragnet's Sgt. Friday playing out "Just the facts, Ma'am. Just the facts." In this design enterprise, both several passes at anthropomorphic metrics (and a close study of driveway layouts for more mature operators were considered).
4. DECORATING W/ ARCHITECTURAL TRIMWORK: PLANNING; DESIGNING; INSTALLING BY JAY SILBER, CREATIVE HOMEOWNER, 2001. Silber's done more than this. It's for prodding the mind's eye in several home design styles, including American Craftsman. This custom home design, as well, is especially fond of butted and not mitered casings, well represented in this book.
5. GUIDE TO STANDARD KITCHEN PLANNING DIMENSIONS, "40 GUIDELINES OF KITCHEN PLANNING" BY THE NATIONAL KITCHEN & BATH ASSOCIATION (NKBA), UNDATED . . . better yet, the more rigorous "KITCHEN & BATH PLANNING GUIDELINES with ACCESS STANDARDS" by the NKBA, http://www.nkba.org/guidelines/. Don't go designing a home without it. Nobody's guidelines are gospel, not to be adapted; nevertheless, it very most often doesn't take one far afield to reflect and respect these guidelines without getting obsessive. Practical. Welcomed. Most frequent concern – dining surface areas.
6. DRAWN IMAGES IN .PDF, .DWG, AND .DXF FROM VENDORS, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO BOSCH, GENERAL ELECTRIC, KOHLER, ETC. Gratefully, thankfully, more and more manufacturers are putting up their wares in Autocad-friendly formats. It's a two-fer – directly applicable, authentic drawings for insertion and mostly from the better makers and their better models.
7. HOME DESIGN STANDARDS-HOME BUILDING STANDARDS, 3Q07 EDITION: UNIQUE HOME DESIGN GUIDE AND UNIQUE HOME CONSTRUCTION GUIDE BY BEFORE THE ARCHITECT, AUTHOR, EDITOR, and PUBLISHER. Every day. Every way. It's not the tasting; it's the pudding. The real deal. The firm's daily work provides the essentials for the entries and the entries provide the basis for the daily work. [A 738-page 2Q08 Edition is just now e-published.]
8. NATIONAL ELECTRIC CODE 2006, NATIONAL FIRE PROTECTION ASSOCIATION, 2006. Safety minimums. Worth checking. In this undertaking, the local building authority having jurisdiction specifically warrants the 2006 edition. Since then, this custom home designer has stepped up to the 2008 version. Neither ever represents problems, since BTA's electrical and lighting designs are mostly over the code's top, but it's worth the effort to stay in touch with the minimum's of others. Gut check.
9. THE BUNGALOW: AMERICA'S ARTS & CRAFTS HOME BY PAUL DUCHSCHERER & DOUGLAS KEISTER, PENGUIN GROUP, 1995. One of only two (see below for the other one) credible, pictorial references on the American Craftsman Style's interiors. Could be others, but none but this and the one below impressed.
10. INTERNATIONAL RESIDENTIAL CODE FOR ONE- AND TWO-FAMILY DWELLINGS, 2006, INTERNATIONAL CODE COUNCIL, 2006.
11. THE MAGNOLIA SPRINGS HOUSE PLAN BY FRANK BETZ ASSOCIATES, INC. Another gut check. Again, safety minimums form the volume's platform, not more and not anything about durability and convenience. Still, it's a common reference onsite and you'd better stay at par or better.
12. SHOP DRAWINGS FOR CRAFTSMAN INTERIORS: CABS, MOLDINGS & BUILT-INS FOR EVERY ROOM IN THE HOME, MEASURED AND DRAWN BY ROBERT W. LANG, FOX CHAPEL PUBLISHING, CAMBIUM PRESS, 2003. Seminal. Phonies, philistines, fakers, and fools abound on Craftsman Style on the interior. This one's formative.
13. TECHNICAL DATA SHEETS, LATICRETE INTERNATIONAL, INC. Love these guys. Loved contracting with their products. Love ‘em designing. Among the first to put up their specs in Autocad-friendly formats. First-class tech reps with whom to work it out.
14. TRADITIONAL CONSTRUCTION PATTERNS: DESIGN & DETAIL RULES OF THUMB BY STEPHEN A. MOUZON ET AL., MCGRAW-HILL, 2004. The most authoritative, applied presentation on Classical home design. Be not misled, among Traditional home design in America, Classicism permeates, pervades, and, in better design today, persists. Be-Ware (a little pun, there), here and there the text goes Vitruvius, so bring your shaker of salt. Worth frequent reference. Treasured.
15. UPDATING CLASSIC AMERICA BUNGALOWS: DESIGN IDEAS FOR RENOVATING, REMODELING AND BUILDING NEW BY M. CAREN CONNOLLY AND LOUIS WASSERMAN, THE TAUNTON PRESS, 2002. This is the other pictorial presentation in-style that made this designer's grade for reference on interiors.
16. WALLS & MOLDINGS: HOW TO CARE FOR OLD AND HISTORIC WOOD AND PLASTER BY NATALIE SHIVERS, NATIONAL TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION, THE PRESERVATION PRESS, 1990. (LIMITEDLY.) General reference.
17. WOOD HARBOR DIMENSIONED ISOMETRICS FOR TALL CABS, BASE CABS, VANITY CABS, AND WALL CABS. Its strict application in latter stages of floor planning and elevating interior space was crucial in getting functionally effective cabinetry and saving huge bucks by avoiding custom cut and fit.
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