Hey, Eric here with 30 by 40 Design Workshop, working on a few quick plans sketches for an upcoming client meeting and I thought I'd walk you through my sketch design process as I work up an idea into a floor plan. For context, this project is an addition to an existing residence, the existing living quarters will be all replaced as the foundation is in really poor shape. We'll be keeping a two-story portion over here, to the north on the site, and giving it a bit of an exterior facelift. Now, that building contains the garage on the lower level and a rather large master suite above and, importantly, it has a stair which we have to maintain access to with our new addition.
Now, before we can begin sketching the floor plan we need to know a few things: we need to understand the local code and zoning restrictions, the ones that govern our design, things like setbacks, the maximum building height, deed restrictions, things like that. With the code checklist complete, we need to understand the physical characteristics of the site: the Sun, the prevailing wind direction, views, topography, adjacent buildings, access, utilities, vegetation all the existing site conditions.
And lastly, we have to work with our client to determine the actual spaces, their rough sizes and we have to make sure that their budget corresponds with what they're actually hoping to accomplish. Now, I always make sure the budget is aligned with the program before I start sketching. There's no sense in designing something your client can't afford, right? Now, if you'd like to learn more about how I do this, check the video in the cards above With all this information in hand I start by printing out the existing site plan and I do this so I can sketch over it. Now, this is just my process, there's many ways to do this, so don't take this as being prescriptive at all. My favorite implements to have on hand when I'm doing this are a sign pen, an ultra-fine point Sharpie, a red and black Pilot Precise pen and I like the v7 version of that, my Muji sketchbook, and a roll of tracing paper.
You can check the cards for all the links to that stuff. Now, I also drag out some of my favorite monographs and this technique comes from one of my all-time favorite film directors Werner Hertzog. Before he begins writing a script, he reads poetry - like ancient poetry - things like: the Icelandic Edda, 9th-century Chinese poems, and really heavy stuff.
And he does this to fill his mind with the highest caliber language possible. Then as he's writing he plays Beethoven and Wagner at an ear-piercing volume. So as he's writing, he's mindful to always maintain that high quality; he's conscious to never let his writing slip below the highest of standards.
And, so too, you can immerse yourself with the work of other masters: Kahn, Corbusier, Ando, Zumthor; fill your head with these visuals before you begin sketching. And then, for me, just add metal. Now, we'll start with a diagram. The diagram is a simple representation of what you're trying to achieve and how your architecture is ordered.
The most basic diagram you can draw, if you're short on ideas, is one that divides public and private. More complex diagrams might talk about light, movement, material, another ordering principle like a courtyard, or an idea about massing. I usually start diagramming in my sketchbook and not using any particular scale.
I'll also grab a few physical materials to have on hand to kind of set the building in real terms and start thinking about how it will actually feel to live there. Here our diagram has to address how we're going to connect the two structures, how we’ll locate the entry, and where the living spaces will orient.
Diagrams are quick and they're inaccurate, and I use them to describe general organization principles. Although there's an infinite number of diagrams that might work here let's keep it simple, we'll use a bar diagram, and then another might be an L-shaped diagram, this will get us started.
Now, I want to be clear about the process here, it's not important to locate doors and windows at this stage. We're not after precision yet, we're gonna start with rough shapes only. We’ll allocate our public and private spaces according to our diagram, we want to locate the entry and understand the basic circulation patterns, how we're gonna get from here to there and that means hallways and stairs. Sketching over the site plan is a good reminder about the important site features that you need to consider: the Sun, views, adjacent buildings, the approach, and whatever you flagged as important on your site analysis. In our program sheet you'll see I list pretty exact sizes of spaces, but at this stage I sort of set this aside, I don't take this literally at all it's more important that the design flow together rather than meet these room sizes precisely.
If you scale these out as exact sizes and collage them together you'll end up with a mess. This stage is searching for the larger guiding principles of the design: think about light, think about how spaces relate to each other, how one moves through space, what does it feel like to be in the place; to arrive to it? What are the emotional aspects of the place that you want to invoke in your client? Designing a floor plan is to establish order from nothing.
A grid is one of the most basic forms of order and I typically employ one in the beginning, this keeps things sensible and it's just a hack that I use it may not work for you. Later I'll choose where and how I want to break from it as I develop the plans further
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