Month: November 2012

So, you’re an empty nester now. The kids are all off to college and you’re planning out the rest of your life. Think about that giant 4-5 bedroom house you live in now. Does it make sense anymore for you and your spouse and your pets? Probably not. There are two ways to approach aging in a large building, the first is to go multigenerational (becoming very popular with the college kids who can’t find a job) or trade-in for something smaller and longer-term if you were to look about at different real estate agencies such as Reali or others to try and sell your current home in place for the other. If you have a close-knit family or you expect to live with your kids as you age, then staying put can make sense, you just have to do some remodeling to make it a little more multi-family friendly and accessible. Call an architect about adding to an apartment or redesigning the bathrooms. If you want to live your life without your children, however, think about trading down to a smaller place.

It used to be, when working with an architect, that being able to visualize your plans was an important part of the clients job.  Architects typically draw in two dimensions, plans, elevations, sometimes sections during the schematic phase, and this can lead an owner to select design decisions that won’t look good in three dimensions.  Elevations are lies (in fact, if I had my way, I would stop drawing them all together, but the building inspectors do require them) and many people lack the ability to envision their future space.  There are several methods to deal with this, previously you were stuck with selecting an architect you trusted to see it for you and give you sage advice, but if you wanted to really own your building design, you were stuck without a skill that many people simply haven’t developed (most people don’t really need a good spacial awareness or ability to envision the 3d from a 2d, it takes practice and if you don’t do it, you don’t learn it.)

Architect’s have a lot of training in a lot of areas, but there are certain times we need to hire specialists.  For most residential projects, we can handle the entire thing, but when you start doing commercial, mixed use, or institutional buildings, we need to call on our engineers.  The most commonly used consultants are civil, structural, and mechanical engineers.