Element land planning . engineering . architecture . beyond

Function + Efficiency = Sustainability

In our fourth inside look at the NAHB’s Model Green Building Guidelines, we begin to look at Resource Efficiency. Resource Efficiency will be, ultimately, diving into a home’s design and construction detailing-including materials and methods. The overarching purpose of this section is to dig deep into the home from using fewer materials, using better materials – performance and environmentally, building the house in a way to maximize insulation, physically use fewer materials and minimize on-site created waste. Is this complicated? No. Is it different than the way 95% (there I go with throwing stats around) of homes are built? Yes.

This boils down to another one of those times that the Client/Home Owner will need to sit down with the Bowtie (Architect/Designer) and the Blue Jeans (Builder) and talk through the approach, the design, and the plan to execute. Is Bowtie and Blue Jean comment being stereotypical? Yes, but if your builder is dressed nicer or hipper than your Architect/Designer – one of the two of them may needs to be questioned.

This section starts off with a short section that may be one of the most important in terms of starting points of this Guideline. Titled: “Create an Efficient Floor Plan that Maintains a Home’s Functionality”. With a title like that, there must be something behind it. There are two areas of consideration – first, raw square footage and second, complexity of the design.

Square footage – how big is your home? People a lot of times get hung up on numbers. Truly, the mindset should be one of functionality. There are people and there are neighborhoods that require a certain size square footage – and there is nothing wrong with that. Element has designed a home with a “Present Wrapping Room”, so we are not above using some area! But for the “rest” of us interested in “right sizing” our spaces, square footage drops out of the equation. Determining how the occupant will live in the space and really learning and studying how spaces are used is an important, if not vital, component. It is interesting to note that secondary bedrooms were not that long ago 10’ x 10’. Then, 11’6” was the new 10’. Two years ago, 12’x12’ was the “perfect” second bedroom and, now, 14’ is starting to have a nice ring to it. Depending on how and what you are doing in those bedrooms, 11’ to 11’6” is a great size room for sleeping. This does not consider the Master – that is a different argument. Perhaps the growing of rooms has something to do with the physical size of our population – oh, wait, wrong column.

Regardless, there is a metric to determine if your home is above or below average. The NAHB Research Center has data supporting homes with different amounts of bedrooms and the goal is to be under the average to acquire “points” within the scoring system. The numbers are:
​2 Bedrooms = 1,382 sq. ft.
​3 Bedrooms = 1,890 sq. ft.
​4 Bedrooms = 2648 sq. ft.
​5+ Bedrooms = 3,424 sq. ft.
These are not numbers to get hung up on – they are simply a guideline to follow or a goal to set. The important part to remember is how the house lives, door locations, bed walls, furniture placement, where the coffee pot goes, and where to store the stuff that you haven’t used or seen in 20 years (oops, sorry about that last part – donate that stuff).

The complexity of the design is something that if thought through will result in a beautiful home that is not difficult to frame, sheath, construction or figure out for that matter. This is not to be read as “boring design is efficient.” There are just better ways, more environmental ways to design a beautiful home that doesn’t involve complexity. The less complex a home is the simpler it is to build, it’s a more efficient use of materials, and using the right metrics (which will be a column unto itself) will reduce waste.

Because every home is different, this is a tough discussion area requiring specific vagueness. Some will tell you I am the person for the job – the specific vagueness part, that is. Element describes this portion of the design as determining what color blue your sky is. We start to design a home by listening to the Client and, from that, determining what is important to them – there are general sizes that work for most people but the arrangement of those spaces can radically differ. This allows everyone to get a point of perspective. When someone tells us they want a big kitchen – it is good to listen to what size their current kitchen is, what they need this kitchen to do and a host of other questions. The great part about designing and building in this manner is it is a conversation about how people live and putting a volume around that to satisfy their needs, wants and desires while focusing on reducing materials, reducing waste and bettering the built environment.