Ep 205: How to Start Designing Your House

This is life of an architect, a podcast dedicated to all things architecture with a little bit of life thrown in for balance. Designing a house sounds like it should begin with drawings, because drawings are the visible proof that something architectural is happening. The better starting point is less photogenic but far more important. Understanding what the house needs to do for the people who will live there. The clients arrive with roomless, saved images, strong opinions and a few ideas borrowed from houses that had completely different budget sites and lives attached to them. The first real work is sorting through those once needs and habits, including frustrations, until a clear set of priorities begins to emerge. Welcome to episode 205, how to start designing your house. Today's episode is generously brought to you with support from construction specialties, maker of architectural building products designed to master the movement of buildings, people and natural elements. Welcome to the life of an architect podcast, I'm Bob Borson. And I'm Andrew Hawkins. And today we're going to be talking about the process for how I go about designing a home at this at the front end of things. So designing a house requires a process that turns personal needs and site conditions, budget, lifestyle and ideally architectural judgment into a home that feels inevitable rather than assembled. And there's a process that I go through. It's like my secret sauce. Yeah. That is an important thing for everybody. That's always the one thing that delineates a architectural design house from just average production house. That care that we're going to talk about today that happens at the very front end. Yeah, well, we're not selling style. We're selling judgment. Yeah. And I'm not selling drawings. I'm selling a better way to make decisions. Yeah. That's what this upfront part is. So when I started putting the notes together for this, I had an ulterior motive because I've said this. I don't know. I'm sure I said it before. It's not I say it in person all the time that we don't really have an editorial calendar here on the show. We tend to talk about whatever we're passionate about in that moment or something that we're currently working on or something that we're working through. That's of the moment. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah. So we have a little bit of a look ahead. But one of the things that I am working through was I have a residential programming questionnaire that I use for every single residential program. I do. And so I wanted to do a show based around that programming questionnaire because shockingly we haven't really ever had a dedicated show about what this process looks like. Interesting. So I was like, all right, I want to get into it. So I have an archetypal kind of arc that we do. But right out of the gate, this is just the room list problem. So the process for solving the problem is the older version of my residential programming questionnaire. It did a good job of asking clients. For example, you're Dick and Jane homeowner and you say, Bob, I'm hiring you to do a house. What's the first thing that happens? Well, other than us celebrating this amazing journey that we're going to go on. Yeah. As we recognize that we're now best friends. Yeah. As I would send them this programming questionnaire, it originally started with the firm I worked at 23 years ago or something. Yeah, they had a version of this. Sure. And I have added to it and edited it over the last two decades to the version that it is now. I think it's uncommon. Yeah, most firms have something like this for any of their processes, whether it's houses or schools or hospitals or whatever. Yeah. But they'll have a little bit of a different nuance to them. The take to it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was thinking for us, we just call it programming. Yeah. But if you're Dick and Jane homeowner and you're on the internet and you want to know what this looks like, I'm not sure that you would use programming in your search criteria is part of what this is. Yeah, I got you. I see what you say. So I would say here's this questionnaire that I have. And I want to say it was like eight or nine pages. And I was like, OK, I want to revisit this. But the version that I would send out. And it did a good job of asking people to think through all the rooms of a house before we started designing it and it moved through living spaces and dining room and kitchen pantry, mudroom bedroom, bathroom, closet, all that kind of stuff. All the collection of residential features that eventually show up somewhere in the conversation anyway. And it was useful because most clients have never been asked to think about their house with that level of specificity. And even fewer have been asked to explain those thoughts before somebody would start drawing up house for them doing stuff for the me. Yeah. So the document quite honestly just gave us a place to begin, which is no small thing. Since without some sort of structure, residential design can drift quickly into a fog bank of preferences and assumptions and Pinterest boards and everything that's kind of harmless. And so you start wondering how much you're paying per score for it for this house. Yeah. Into that realm of generalized assumption. The goal here is to try to make something that's really tailored to you, the new owner, the people that are going to occupy this place. Well, so I pulled this out because I've been using it for so long and I thought I think it needs a refresh. But the limitation of the questionnaire that I was using is that it was mostly organized around rooms and things that asked what kind of spaces do you want and what kind of furniture do I need to accommodate. What appliances matter are there certain features that need to be included in all this stuff that they're all valid questions. And they still belong into this process. The problem is that that room list, the way I had had it broken out can create an illusion that we understand the house only after we've identified all its parts. You know, like a list can tell me that somebody wants a mudroom, but it doesn't really tell me what the problem that mudroom is solving or who uses it. What lands there every day? Why they wanted the first place. Yeah. Because it just because we should have it. Oh, everybody's got one now. It's the trendy thing to do. So we're going to have it. But no, we've never used one in our life. Yeah, so that distinction matters because a good house doesn't begin with an inventory. It begins with understanding the people that are going to live in it and then turning that understanding into some kind of framework for making decisions. So a client might ask for a larger kitchen, a better closet, a guest room or connection to the outside. And each of those requests in and of themselves are pretty reasonable because it's how my brain would work. I don't have this and I would like it. Put it on the list. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty straightforward. I think it's the architects job to understand what is underneath the request before treating it as design instruction. Because sometimes the answer that's provided is right. It's exactly what they want. But sometimes it's a clue. And the older questionnaire collected information. Yeah. But this new version that I'm making now needed to do something more valuable. It needed to help reveal priorities. That's the intent. Don't get me wrong. I like the programming questionnaire that we've had. It gave me a lot of information. What was interesting about that is we get to the like the section of what clients really mean, which is kind of a weird way of saying that clients come into this process with answers already. They don't even know the questions, but they've got answers. Yeah, preconceived answers to things. Yeah, they think they want to have. Yeah. That's not a shot at all. I mean, that's like, no, of course, it's a very reasonable thing to do. Not out of the realm of logical at all. That's right. So they've been living with the problem that they're perceiving that they're solving longer than I have. They know that they want better light bigger kitchen, more storage, a place for guests to be able to sit. That stronger connection to the outside. Yeah. They know what they want because either they don't have it now at all. Or what they have doesn't work right. Yeah. And so they're like, I want this. So just to put some context to this, I wrote an article in February of 2010. That's early. Yeah. You're one. Yeah. This is like, I didn't made it a month yet. And I wrote this article called clients and online dating. And it talks about in order to design its successful residents, you need to develop a relationship with your client that goes beyond functionality based on needs. Yes, it needs bedrooms of bathrooms and a kitchen living here is all that kind of stuff. But it's important to understand how each client will want to use the spaces in order to give them what they want, which does not mean what they are asking for. So I was trying to make a corollary between this process and online dating. And it's the idea that there's who you are. There's how you present yourself to others. There's who you wish you were. There's all these different variations that are all kind of layers of yourself. Yeah. That's right. I idealize probably in a lot of them. Yeah. I used to always say that I'd have clients come in. They say, we want a room to throw big parties. And we're like, well, do you have a room like that now? They're like, no. And so as a result, we don't throw big parties. And you've got to get into it and they go, well, they like the idea of throwing big parties, but they don't throw big parties. and it's not really because they have the space, it's because what they have isn't laid out, that would accommodate it, but it's just not who they are. Yeah, that's not really what they want to do. It just sounds nice. Yeah, so big parties might just mean six people, given the right kind of space, not just a big giant open box of space. We want to have the entire family over for Thanksgiving, and that's actually just a normal size dining room, not a dining room that seats 20. That's right, that's right. So you go through this process, and that's what the original program and questionnaire was really good, at dealing with. All these things say that they'll bring in images, because images are often the easiest way to describe something that they do not yet have the vocabulary to explain. And I want that material in the table. The mistake would be treating those early answers as fixed instructions, rather than clues, because a saved photograph might be about the cabinet, but it might be about daylight, it might be about ceiling height or simplicity or calm or proportion. There's a lot of different things that it could be. It's clean. There's a place to put all your stuff. It could be the furniture that has nothing to do with actually what's getting designed, but that's just what they like about it. Yeah. Yes. So I'm of the opinion for this process is concerned that many residential design references are not really about architecture at first. They are about a feeling the client wants to recover or to protect or to manufacture. Which is pretty ambitious considering that houses also have longer rooms and stuff like that that are required. Yeah. No, it's not all aspirational. Yeah. Boring storage closets and. Yeah. Well, then if you continue down this path, it's kind of funny when I was preparing for the show. I didn't realize I had so many opinions about programming questionnaires. So the deeper issue, as we continue into this client process, is that people are rarely only asking for the thing that they name. And we were talking about this before we hit the record button. Like a client might ask for a larger kitchen. And maybe they need one, but size might not be the real problem here. The current kitchen might just have poor circulation or bad storage or weak lighting or no place for people to gather or like it can just be a crappy kitchen, not a matter of how big the kitchen is. Yeah. Space doesn't always equal performance back to that big party room. Well, maybe this is something you need or I want my living room to be much, much bigger than it is. Well, I wrote down some of this kind of this and that. Uh-huh. So it's like a request for an open plan can mean several things of once as an example. Some of them are directly opposed to one another, which is something that we deal with with some regularity. Yeah. So people may want connection, but they don't want the noise. They want visibility, but they don't want the clutter. They want everyone together right up until everyone is actually together. And somebody wants to turn on a blender or take a phone call or yeah, you're trying to work and people are using your work spaces part of the hallway. Yeah, exactly. So it's something that you got to work through in the same thing happens with guest rooms and home offices and dining rooms and exercise rooms and all the other spaces that sound reasonable when they're discussed individually as a single room. Like an exercise room as a okay, I want these pieces of equipment in it as like a list, a little bullet point list of I want this room and this is the functionality I want in that room. Yeah. On paper almost every room can justify its own existence. Very true. Yeah. Yeah. They all deserve to be on that list of inventory or spaces that are required. Big bold required. Yes. Yeah. And I think that when you actually bring that list into the light of day and to real life rooms have to compete for space and money and attention. Yeah. And daily relevance. Use. Yeah. Yeah. This is when the truth or priorities start to show up. And that was another problem that I had with the original. It didn't prioritize anything. And so this stage of it before we've really gotten into the beef of things yet, the architect, me, you, we have to listen for the meanings behind these requests, not just the request itself. Yeah. Sometimes Tom and Jane homeowner, they're describing a need. And sometimes the need that they're describing is actually a habit that the new house should support rather than pretending it'll just show up if we have more square footage. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes they're describing something aspirational. And I don't think aspirations should be dismissed just because they're not currently taking place. Yeah. I mean, a custom house should make room for some version of how people hope to live. Exactly. Exactly. It doesn't make sense to do it otherwise. It's just an expensive envelope kind of study. But the risk in giving every request the same authority before anyone has understood what it's trying to solve is very real. And that's the work of this phase, this programming phase, this early phase is to slow down long enough to hear the difference between a preference, a pattern, or a problem. Yeah. Distinction may seem small before anything's drawn, but it gets a lot bigger once square footage and dollars start showing up as part of the response. Yeah. Of course. Like you say, setting those priorities for those things. Yeah. It would be nice if we had the extra time for you to have a craft room or a fly fishing room, but a is that something that you really do now and you don't have the space work because you're doing on your dining room table or B is it aspirational and that's something you hope to do. And so it's a lower priority. We need to solve the other must has first. And if we've got the room or the space or the budget, ensure we'll throw in that extra craft room and we'll consider that. But not unless you're crafting at your dining room table every day and then shifting it off to eat dinner and then shifting it back to do your crafting. Is it a high priority? Yeah. It's funny. You should use that as an example because I didn't get to finish the house. I left the place where I was working and I was like, I can't do your house anymore. So I put them in touch with another architect to help them to go through the process. And they were lovely, lovely people. But as we were going through this process, the wife who was a seamstress of the highest order, really like this is what she does. I don't think it was a job for her. It's just like what her passion was. Yeah. And we're going through this programming and treating it like a laundry list literally. And she's like, why have 8000 sewing machines? And I use them for different things. So I need them to not just be like piled up like bricks in a wall where I have disassembled the whole thing to get the one machine out. So we are, we are, we're starting talking about it might have been closer to like 25 or 30. It was a lot of sewing machines. Yeah. She wanted storage on the walls where she could just walk up and just reach out grab the sewing machine and take it off the wall. Yeah. And she goes, and I need a table and I need a table to be this big. And it was like 12 foot by six foot. Yeah. And she goes, and I need space to work around it. So I need like five feet around that. And I was like, this is the biggest room in your house by a mile. Yeah. When we talk about like living and dining and bedrooms and all stuff, you're sewing room to accommodate storage and functionality the way you're describing it. It's like a 900 square foot. It was like the biggest room you've ever seen your life. It's like it's bigger than your living room. Yeah. And she'd been making it work now with a room that was probably on the order of 12 by 14. Yeah. Something that was like 250 square foot. Yeah. What she was going for was something like almost four times bigger than that. Yeah. And so it's different. More from life of an architect in just a moment. Sharon Sheetler is a product specialist at construction specialties, bringing almost 17 years of experience across customer service, presale support, scope review and product education. Sharon began her career in construction specialties and customer service where she supported the company's independent representatives across the United States. After six years in customer service, she moved into presale role as a scope review specialist working on pricing strategies with representatives and collaborating closely with the estimating department. In her current role as product specialist, Sharon travels in the field with construction specialties representatives meeting with architects, designers, end users and installers to educate them on CS products and help ensure that they are used effectively on project. Hey Sharon, thanks for joining us today. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on your show. Oh, it's our pleasure. Yeah, always. Before we jump into the first question, today's conversation is focused on acrovent construction specialties wall protection system. We're talking about more than a finished material here. Acrovent is intended to help architects bounce durability, clean ability, code requirements, and design flexibility in spaces that take real serious abuse. So with that in mind, we're going to discuss how these systems perform and what architects should be thinking about when specifying them. So as an architect, I always have a very specific design vision in mind. How can I balance the aesthetics of the space that I'm thinking of with the performance requirements that I need? Well, acrovent is a perfect product for that because it is extremely durable. So wall protection is not made. wall coverings. They are two totally different things and many times they are confused or interchanged within the construction industry. So wall protection is much dirtier, more resilient than other wall covering. It has to go through testing in order to be classified as true wall protection. One of the things also with wall protection is that the colors integral, they're also very flexible and they can really take a beating. With today's wall protection sheets, they come in a variety of standard solid colors. We also have wood grains available and many manufacturers can even produce custom colors to help you coordinate and execute your full design. We have available textures to give it a different feel or a visual look. We have them from subtle little micro textures on up to more pronounced textures like a diamond plate or a beadboard texture. Depending on what's going through your halls or your corridors, they also come in different thicknesses to give you a range of durability and protection. So with sustainability, which is becoming an increasingly important part of the design conversation, what should architects be considering when evaluating wall panel systems specifically from a sustainability perspective? Sustainability has definitely come to the forefront on many projects and throughout the industry. With Acrovin, our focus is to create products which puts sustainability as a priority with our entire line, not just a few products. The big differentiator you want to look for in this is products that have changed their formula to include up to 50% post-consumer recyclables. We put that into all of our wall protection sheets. One sheet, which is typically around four by 10, we have on average 135 plastic water bottles that go into each and every single sheet. There are so many different sustainability programs out there on the market today and we contribute to almost all of them. Also, you want to work with Acrovin because we have no known carcinogens within our products and they are red list free. So you want to partner with a manufacturer who has a whole department dedicated to supporting these initiatives and we actually help you fill out your forms and provide the testing and certificates as backup for your customers. That sounds helpful. So what are some of the key characteristics that we as architects should evaluate when selecting wall protection? So a wall protection does include many different products. It's not just the wall protection sheet. You also have crash rails, corner guards, hand rails, bumper guards, bed locators and even a product called wall panels where we take the Acrovin, place it on a backer board to create different thicknesses for you. So one of the first things you want to look for is to have a variety of different products and sizes. So not just one crash rail or one corner guard. True wall protection, one of the things you want to look for is that the colors integral throughout. What veneer and wood laminate, they are not true wall protection. They're more like a radish. So there's a color on the outside, but once they get scratched, you see a different color on the inside. So actual Acrovin wall protection is more like a carrot. You got the orange color on the outside, but if it does ever get scratched, it has the orange color on the inside. So the scratches are camouflage and you never really see them. They don't stand out. Wall protection materials also both fungal and bacterial resistant. A scratch will not harbor any or allow growth in that damaged area where laminate or wood veneers will. Another great thing to look for when you're comparing products is a test called the table abrasion test. So this specific test is looking for a rubber resistance. Think of a table or a chair rubbing against a wall. If it's just painted or it has wallpaper, you're going to clearly see where that chair or that table has been rubbing against it, where Acrovin will not allow that visual of the rub being in there. Sharon, thank you again for joining us today and for taking the time to walk us through Acrovin and the larger wall protection conversation. We appreciate you helping us understand what architects should be thinking about before we specify these systems. Great. Well, thank you for having me on. Yeah, thank you so much for being. So we move into what is the equal sign to this process look like. You know, I pull out my questionnaire and I look through it and then this is the section I look like I need to rename it from a questionnaire already. I'm going to rebrand it. Yeah. And so now I'm calling it the programming workbook. And I've been using this old questionnaire for so long that I was like, okay, I'm going to revisit it and I'm going to rename it to this residential programming workbook. And it's been a lot of effort to get it to this point. I'm not going to lie. More effort than I wanted it than I thought it was going to be. Then you thought it was going to be, of course, yeah, of course. Yeah. I thought it was going to be like a refresh. And it turns out I started over every door is a new rabbit hole. Yes. Yes. I blame World Cup for this, by the way. I haven't watched as much TV in years. Yeah. As I have been watching World Cup games, World Cup games. Yeah. And as much as I like it, there's a lot of, okay, they're just kind of kicking the ball back and forth tweeing themselves in the little bit of downtime kind of process. Yeah. Yeah. So I feel like I can do some other things. So I'm taking on these kind of little assignments on the side to work through this. So that previous programming questionnaire pulled it out and evaluated. And I've decided that it worked in the sense that it asked clients to identify spaces and custom furnishings and appliance needs and all that special features. The kitchen section, for example, gets very specific about refrigerators and sinks and ovens and warming drawers and ventilation and pantry. And how do you want to use your pantry and how do you want your cabinets to be? And questions like, do you want to hide your stuff or do you want a little bit of it on display? Yeah. And they may not understand why I'm asking that question, but some people are like, well, if I close the door and you can't see it, that's a win. I don't want to have to keep my spice rack perfectly clean and laid out on display. My plate's all pretty. My cereal box is perfectly aligned. Yeah. Yes. I don't want people to know I like corn pops or whatever it is. Yeah. What is it? Calc circular. Yes. I'm a grown up. I don't need them seeing that I have kids cereal. Yeah. Nobody needs to know that. So that questionnaire also did a good job because it moved room by room through the house like living rooms and Dan's great rooms, diner rooms, butters pantry mud rooms. I can went through all of the things and it asked general questions and discuss general systems. And it gave the clients way to think through the house and familiar terms. So people were able to follow it without a lot of instructions. What I decided where it underperformed is that the questionnaire asked a lot of what questions like what rooms do you want? What appliances do you need? And what furniture do we need to consider? What features belong in the room? Because you don't want to be surprised when somebody goes, oh, by the way, I have a grand piano. Wait. Yeah. You're like, okay, that's not a little thing. That's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or the house that we designed in Wyoming, the guy asked for an Alaskan King size bed. And I go, your room just got gargantuanly bigger. That is a gargantuan bed. Yeah. A few mungus bed. I don't even know what that is. But yeah. Oh my god. That's bigger than a California king big I'm assuming? Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. Well, there's actually a Texas king and there's an Alaskan king. Oh, no idea. Yeah. The Alaskan king is nine feet by nine feet. Oh, good. Who needs a bed that big? Good, gracious. That's insane. It's the largest standard oversized bed on the market. And what is it? It's like two queens or something. And not even because it's so long. I don't even know how you would do that. It's a single mattress. You can buy it as a single mattress. Seriously, it's a single man. Oh my gosh. That's insane. Yeah. So you would need to know that somebody has a request for a bed that big before you start blocking out square footage or needs for your master bedroom. Your bedroom just turned into a living room. Yes. Wow. So what was missing from that questionnaire? Where a lot of why and how type questions? And this is the nuance between I don't know, maybe me is a 30 something architect designing houses. Me is a 50 something architect designing houses now is my brain just works differently. I don't try to get to the equal sign as fast as I use as I use to. So questions like, why does this room matter? How often is it used to uses it? What problem is it solving? What happens here every day? Those are questions that I think actually give me more insight now to this process than how many bedrooms do you want? Like you need to know that it's missing all this how and why information. Yeah. I mean, in reality, it is a element of quantitative and qualitative work. And what you were doing before was mostly quantitative. Even though it's not numbers, it's hard factual things that can be verified where that was remmentory or what goes in it or what it is. It's very quantitative in its nature. And now as you matured and have more experience, you're looking at things in a more qualitative way in realizing that it doesn't provide that quality of why and how and what the underlying things are for those quantities that people are talking about, whatever they may be. Well, absolutely. Let's keep going down that path a bit. So like a questionnaire implies answer these questions. A workbook implies we're going to think through this process together. Learn some things. Yeah. Yeah. It's less bureaucratic, more useful, I think. Fewer check boxes that pretend to be inside. So the workbook is not a request list. This is another criteria. overlaying on top. It's not a request list. It's a tool for turning individual wishes, priorities. I should say shared priorities because users, there's two people in this process, daily routines, and feature goals into a design framework, something that's clearer than just a laundry list of five bedrooms, five baths, two playrooms, outdoor space, place to eat dinner, under roof, that kind of thing. This big, this kind of stuff. This is the material for the walls, the cabinets, the floors, the floor, but again, it's really sort of quantitative kind of thing. Yes. So I feel like I need to get this part out there with the shift in mind going from a questionnaire to a workbook. The workbook becomes more than a document that collects information. It becomes one of the first real working tools in this process, right out of the gate. And I would introduce this workbook right after my contract. But before the first programming meeting, at the point where the project has moved from a possible engagement into an actual architectural process, that timing matters because this is not a marketing piece or an intake form. Clients have already decided to move forward. And now the work is to understand what the house needs to become before anyone starts drawing walls or ranting rooms or doing adjacent studies, that kind of thing. And you might care the bridges. If you give them the workbook right off the bat. Yeah. Before they've said yes. Yeah. Before hand. Well, you know, I would hope not because so the way that the clients complete this workbook matters almost as much as the questions themselves. If there are two decision makers, and I will tell you that so far in my life, all but two projects have had two decision makers. I would ask them to go through this workbook separately at first before they sit down together to compare answers. Yeah. Interesting. Because it's not a little document. Yeah. And that may sound like a small procedural move, but it can reveal a lot. So one person may think, for example, the kitchen needs to be the center of the house while the other is more concerned with privacy or quiet or the garage entry where they have to carry in grocery bags and drop off keys and all that kind of garbage. Yeah. Neither person's viewpoint or opinion is necessarily wrong. The value is in seeing those differences before they are softened into a vague agreement. Yeah. Before they start to have impact over the process unevenly, I guess is maybe the best way to put it. Well, I also don't want to be the referee and go yeah, exactly. Person A goes, I want this and person B goes, well, I don't. I want this and I have to be the one that arbitrates which way we go. Yeah. I go, hey, Mr. Architect, which one's the right answer? And you're like, well, there's always been that long standing comment that residential architects get paid what they get paid because of the therapy that comes along with the process. Yeah. They're marriage counselors for marriage. The marriage counseling. Yes. So having them get on the same page is useful, but that doesn't mean they're actually necessarily going to get there on everything. Yeah. For sure. So after they kind of get to a shared version, the goal is not to erase that disagreement or to force every answer into a consensus box. The goal is to identify where these two people are in alignment and where they are uncertain and where the project may need a deeper conversation because some answers are obvious, some are going to be incomplete, some are going to be contradictory in ways that are actually more useful than a polished response. And I think that's part of the point. So this workbook is not asking clients to solve the house before I get involved. It's helping them to figure out what they want, maybe why they need it and what role it might play in their future life. Yeah. So let me ask you a question here. Do you think that by going through this process, it also gives you a little bit of a evaluation of them as a client? In other words, there's a level of engagement. Again, if they're doing it separately, you can tell like one person's every answer is one word and the other person. It's all paragraphs or if they actually spend the time to do it and do it well. Does it help you as a tool to evaluate them? Or do you think by the time you get here, you've already done that for the most part? Well, considering this is very, very, very early on. Yeah. I think that you would end up picking up on those traits regardless. Sure. One person probably communicates more forthrightly than the other. Yeah. And one person has stronger opinions about how something gets resolved than the other person. Yeah. Ideally, I'm not grading homework. So it's not like Tom gives me his workbook and Jane gives me her workbook. And then I combine them and say, well, I see Tom, you said that you want this and Jane, I see you said, not only do you not want what he wanted, you want something different. The idea is that I get one workbook. The one that they have come together and talk through together. It would be interesting for them to go answer their questions. Think of it like the dating game. Yeah. Would you go in your room? You fill yours out. I'll go in my room for that. We'll come together, see where we're in alignment and where we're not in alignment. Yeah. Which honestly, that's important because it says, this is the things that are resolved. These are the things that we need to talk about more. And then what happens when they give it to me, it's not like, okay, now I know what you want. We go through it together. And this meeting when I go through the workbook with them is more than just a filled out document that I'm going to use as a design tool. I don't expect their answers to be fully articulated. Yeah. And one of the things that I think about all the time has to do with fatigue setting in and people answering questions like they're just trying to get through a standardized test. Yeah. Like I'm getting really thoughtful filled out answers on the first couple pages. Then they get a little bit more succinct in the middle in the end. They're like, whatever. There's some exhaust like you can make it too long. Yeah. Oh, for sure. I'm well aware of that. The odd thing about it is you go, somebody might like, you don't hire someone like me to build you a low budget house. Yeah. I'm not that guy. Yeah. If someone's going to spend a million dollars, 1.5, 2 million, 4 million, 5, whatever it is, this is probably a very good use of two or three hours of your time to really put some thought into the whole thing. Yeah. But I know that they may not have the ability to articulate themselves when providing the answer in the same way that I might be able to. So I know what's going to happen is I see, yes, you guys an agreement. Let's talk about this a little bit more because you've given me an answer that's not really an answer. And I can tell that you don't really know what you want here. Let's have some more follow-up questions or sometimes I just might need clarity to the answer that they did provide. Yeah. So it's very useful. So this workbook that I have, I don't want to sound like an infomercial. Andrew actually asked me, he goes, are you going to sell this book? I said, well, it wasn't my plan. Yeah. But I will tell you, the questionnaire just started front door and just kind of worked its way through the house. Yeah. Yeah. The new workbook, I started writing out and I'm trying to make it sound polished. I have basically into like 12 sections. There's instructions. I never had instructions before. And now I'm like, I should probably write some instructions as like to how to use this workbook. What they're supposed to do. That's right. And then I need to define the process about the filled out individually. And this is why it has value for you to do it individually. And then for YouTube to come to consensus over what does that mean? Like what we're talking about right now. Yeah. I think needs to be part of that instruction. But then it gets into a household profile. And that's like, who does the house serve? The grown-ups, the children, the extended family, like who's living in the house a little bit. Yeah. Daily routines is a section. There's an audit of the current house. There is, I haven't figured out how to do this part yet. I want to sort a bunch of raw information into like once needs, habits and aspirations. Priorities is part of what we're assigning to this and trade-offs, lifestyle patterns. And then only now am I up to room by room program. That's a lot of stuff to get through. Yeah. Before you even get into I want five bedrooms. But I have questions in here now about site layouts and arrival sequences. And it can be superficial stuff. It came out of the experience of I had one client who said, I want my experience coming in the house to be just as rewarding as the visitors to my house. So when I leave the garage, I don't want to feel like I'm entering in through the laundry room. The back door kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's part of my daily experience. Yeah. And no one had ever articulated that in a meeting that I was in, every my life. And actually no one's ever articulated it since. It's only been said once. Interesting. Yeah. But I find it to be a profound way to think about your process. Because most time people go, well, I parked the car in the garage. It's protected. I feel safe. There's reasons why I pull in. I put my car lower the garage door for I get out of the car. I get groceries out of the car. I don't want to lug them across the house. I want to walk in and be able to set them down within 15 steps. Whatever the case may be. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a process that inherently supports lifestyle decisions. Yeah. That needs to be worked through. But then I have a section here for systems and performance. And that's the amount of performance data now that people are interested in. It's going up. Oh, yeah. For sure. Oh, because yeah, it's expensive. Yeah. For sure. And then I thought I need to figure out how to do like a programming summary. I don't know what that looks like yet. And I don't know how I make it part of this workbook. But I think it needs to be part of it. of the workbook, think of it as like an equal sign to the whole process. I guess what that means is it comes to me and then do I have to digest it and regurgitate it in some equal sign to what they've provided to me that makes sure that what they said and what I heard aren't alignment, which makes sense to me. Yeah, I think it would be good to try to force them to do that for themselves to come back and like we're talking about now there at least the way I think you're talking about this is now I'm taking a step back to a bigger larger scale of everything working together as opposed to all the individual rooms. So I step back to a bigger scale to go, okay now what does it mean or what should it mean or what do you as the client want it to mean now that you've gone through all this process and then you've probably thought about your house a different way than you have ever before and now what does it mean? How could you summarize that now back? The thing that I don't know a way to describe it but here's my shot at this, okay. It had to do with back in my early life. I did a lot of retail, did a lot of clothing store. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And there was a trend that took place during this period of my life when I was working on this and it was don't put mirrors in the changing rooms. The idea was hey Andrew go try on these pair of pants and you put them on you never leave the room to look and see what you look at and you go, "Oh, disgusting, I look terrible." And you go, "Not for me." Interesting. Whereas if you come out someone's there to say, "Maybe it's the wrong size" or maybe if it's in green like, "I got you." Yeah. My take when that used to happen to me and I was like, "Quit selling me." I don't need you to tell me if I look better in blue and green. I know this cranky and I thought it's just because they're trying to make a sale. Yes. When I could choose to look at it slightly differently and say, "They're just there to help." And if they're like, "I don't like the way these pants look." And they're like, "Oh, maybe it's the fit. Maybe it's the cut. Maybe it's the way the drape is. Maybe it's the color." Yes. "They're there to help you. That's the idea." Well, and you're always your worst critic. You make a terrible name. You come out and they go, "Oh, it looks great." And it might actually, to them look fine. Like it might look great. Not that they're just trying to. That's right. So you have their pants. So that programming questionnaire and how this evolves in. So I have this from life to layout. It's the order of the workbook matters here because the order tells the people who were filling it out the kind of thinking that we're trying to do here. The old questionnaire moved from room to room, which is familiar and useful. Yeah. And we talked about this before the show. But the downside to that, it encourages people to think of the house as a collection of individual pieces. Separate parts. Yeah. Yeah. And the revised workbook, it's supposed to start with the household and the people that live there and the routines of their life and the frustrations that they deal with now and the patterns that they live through because those are the things that can explain why a room should exist in the first place. Yeah. Yeah. In theory. So a kitchen is not just a kitchen. A mudroom is not just a mudroom. A home office. It's not just a room with a desk in it. Yeah. So each space has to earn its place in the house by solving something, supporting something or making daily like better in a way that can actually be understood before it becomes part of the bottom line in the score footage total of the house. Yeah. Easy. Because think about it. If you said, Hey, I want to talk about Lawner Room. If the question is, do you want one? It's not helpful. Yeah. Is it going to have a washroom and dry right? Is that what you think? Yeah. And then you start going, I could probably take 15 minutes and go, here's 300 questions about a Lawner Room. Like, do you want them side by side? Do you want them lifted up so you don't have to bend over it? Do you want a place for drip drawing? Do you want to sink in that space? Do you want storage enough of the things you're going to store? Are they just relegated to what's in the Lawner? Or is there other kind of storage? Is cleaning supplies stored in the Lawner? Oh my god. Do you want to fold in there? Do you want to deposit dirties in there? Are you going to iron in there? Yeah, exactly how those kinds of things. Yeah. Yeah. You can go on and on and on. Now I could literally do that in almost every single room of the house. Of course. Yeah. Of course. So the workbook moves from how people live into what the house contains. The household profile establishes who the house serves, but also who it may serve later. Daily routine questions. Look at how mornings and evenings are different. How meals show up. Yeah. How people arrive. How they leave. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pets. What role do pets play in the space? And it's not like do you have them? It's like what role do they play in the life of your family? Yeah. The questionnaire didn't really address these. And I used to always say it as if it did. But we would have these meetings to go through these questioner. And we would ask questions like who gets up first? Who sleeps on what side of the bed? Yeah. If I get up before the person who's in my bed with me and I go in the bathroom, turn on the light, is it going to bother them? Are they going to be disruptive? Yeah. Or if I'm doing that in the middle of the night. Yeah. So this whole process of working through like the current house on it that you've got. I haven't done that many houses for people that weren't currently living in a house. Yeah. Usually. I guess it feels gross saying that, but it's kind of the real. Well, yeah. I mean, it's the typical reality for most because by the time you get to the point of again, even if you're not doing a super high end house and you're going to build a house, you're probably living in one. Hey, maybe there's a high percentage that you're going to be. Well, you're not transitioning from under a bridge to because like a condo, a townhome. These are all homes too. Yeah, still think. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't mean you own it, but you've lived in one. Yeah. That's right. So the house audit that was part of this is supposed to ask what work and what fails or clutter gathers, what spaces are overworked, meaning they have to carry on more than the function they were intended to do. This whole process creates the evidence that's used to explain in the room list why things are there and where they fall in the priority. That's the idea. So the room by room section still matters. And I would never remove it like it's critical to have, but it needed to be a little more enlightened. It wasn't just that do you have it, do not have it. And I still expect to go through this workbook with people after they fill it out for me to say, all right, you said two things here and they're counter with one another. So let's set some scale to it. Let's set some priority to it. Sure. Maybe this one fog here. And then ultimately when you've got this document done, this workbook. And right now it's around 16 pages. And I can't decide if that's already too long. I feel like I'm on thin ice for the link. Yeah, I think that's getting there. There's space for answers. Yeah, yeah, I know I get you, I get you, but still sitting down in front of a 16 page document, can't seem a little daunting. And I wonder if there's a way, I mean, it doesn't sound like it really, but to break it into two exercises, possibly one, you talk about part of it and then you go, okay, here's what we talked about that now go do this part again, but I don't know. I understand the need for it to all be done at once, but it could be daunting, but at the same time, like you say, you guys are about to spend a big amount of money on what you're doing. So take this amount of time and let's just do it, consider, you know, it's worth it. Dedicate your time to this and be serious about it. Hopefully that's that's enough for a client to go, yeah, okay, you're right. Yeah, I don't think I would have to convince this is the slippery slope. I don't think I'd have to convince them the value of it before they do it. Because of course, of course, it makes sense. Yeah, you never know, but yeah, but maybe I don't want to take the time to fill it out because we can just talk about it and it'd be better. Yeah, right. That sort of thing. I also already have two versions of it that are in the works. Oh my gosh. I can't even believe I'm admitting it because there's a difference between if this is your primary house or if this is a weekend house or a lake house or a cabin or a retreat. Yeah, you're going to live differently there than you would in your primary house. Sure. So I was like, I don't want to just add on a page and go PS. Is this secondary house or primary house and if secondary, here's some more questions for you. Yeah, these are different things you're going to ask. Again, of course, 100 different lifestyle, different routines, different everything that happened. If it's not your primary day to day residents for sure. Yes. So the one thing and this was the last section that I had blocked out and it was this is still design. This is designed starts before drawing starts because this part of the process is easy to undervalue because nothing's been drawn. And for most clients where architects are concerned drawings are the first visible evidence that something architectural is taking place. Of progress of activity of service. Yeah, if there's no plan to react to or no elevation to study. Yeah. There's no work taking place. Oh yeah. And since the work at this stage is mostly conversation and interpretation and organization, it can feel like preparation, not actual design work. Yeah. Which couldn't be further from the truth. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's part preparation, but it's also part design work. I don't even know those are equally spit, but it is both for sure. Well, programming is not paperwork that happens before the real work begins. I guess this is what my equal signs trying to be. Yeah, of course. It's just the first act of the design process because it establishes what the house is trying to solve before we start presenting answers right out of the gate. Yeah. I also think the value of this as a first step for anybody, whether you're hiring me or Andrew or somebody else, like for all of them, the value of this step. is that it slows the project down at the one moment when slowing down is still cheap. Yeah. Yeah. Once a plan exists, people naturally start reacting to the shape of the solution rather than the quality of the question. And so it can pull the conversation into the wrong territory too soon. You know, think about this. I'm sure you said this. I know I've said it. I've heard it numerous times. We used to build models and we built them out of chip-borne or white museum board or whatever. We didn't try to make brick look like brick. Yeah. Because I don't want you to respond to like, I don't like that colored brick. Exactly. As opposed to, it's going to be brick. We just haven't decided what color it's going to be yet because that's a different design exercise. Yeah. Or it's not even brick. It's something else. It's whatever you're imagining it to be. Yeah. Whatever it's going to be, I want you to respond to what we're talking about right now, not you don't like the color of something that was arbitrary to really what we're trying to do right now. Oh, yeah. And honestly, it's a separate conversation. But this is where all the renderings tend to pull people off sides really, really fast. Super realistic renderings. I'm like, man, I don't like the style or color of that couch. And what is that fabric on that? You know, it's not about the couch people. It's not the couch. Yeah. Yeah. So clients starting to decide whether they like a dining room or a porch or a stair or size of the kitchen before everyone has agreed on what those spaces are supposed to accomplish. It tells you your order. It's not right. You need to understand what the goals are. And part of this thing we glossed over a little bit. And I'm still trying to figure out how to make it manifest in this workbook is how do you set priority to these things? Yeah. Because I wrote a blog post about this too. And it was quality versus quantity. And in my brain, the example I used made a lot of sense. And it was in one scenario, I've got a bag with a thousand dollars in it. And every time I want something, I take a thousand dollars out of that bag. And when there's no more money in the bag, I'm done buying stuff. That's how that works. Yeah. The other is I have a bag that fits a thousand dollars worth of stuff. So as I buy stuff, I put it in the bag. And when my bag is full, I just kind of smash it down a little bit. I can jam something else in there. Next thing, you know, this stuff isn't fit and right. It's broken. It's damaged. It's not what it was supposed to do originally anymore. Yeah. And it comes down to a quality, quantity conversation. That's a big part of what this ends up looking like. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And so when you get a well developed program and that process is in place, it gives the project a reference point that you can work towards. And when you put priority towards that point and space that you're working towards, it's what allows you to run out of stuff before your list. Well, I was you to say, all right, I want this more than I want that. So if I have to choose, I choose this. Yeah. It's a good way to be responsible and maintain a budget in reality, Mr. Approach it from that direction. And most people, regardless of who you are, you still have a budget for these things. There is still some limit. Yeah. I mean, whether it's a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand, whatever that budget is, there's still a budget there. So approaching it from that way to which are more important and not I have to have them all and I'm going to sacrifice the quality of those things just so that I can in your terms scoreboard and check out the boxes to say, yes, my house does have a movie theater and a library and a place where I store my fly fishing rods. Yeah. I smoke cigars in this room and I yeah cocktails in this room. Well, because there's a process that comes out of that because there's a big difference between having a budget and understanding the value associated with that budget because they might look at it and say, my budget is two million dollars. Yeah. But they don't know what things actually cost. Yeah. They don't understand the individual pieces. They understand the in aggregate, two million dollars is what I got to work with. Yes. So what ends up happening is you go through your list, they'll say, all right, I got all the things I wanted. It's five thousand square foot house and it costs two point five million dollars. Well, I need to cut five hundred thousand dollars out. So two million divided by five thousand score fit equals this dollar amount. I need to cut extra square feet. Yeah. They're like, just make this room six inches smaller and that one, you go, that's not how that works. Yeah. I can't just cut little slits and slivers out to reduce the price because that non-aggregate cost doesn't manifest dollar for dollar. You need to get rid of a program. You need to get rid of room, a function. Exactly. It's like, oh, if I make your garage a foot smaller, that's not the same thing as me making your kitchen a foot smaller. Yes. They just don't work that way. It doesn't work. So this process, and ideally, this workbook that I'm going to have, the goal is not to eliminate the uncertainty right out of the gate, even though that would be adorable. It's not how architectural works. The goal is to enter the design process with a better understanding of the people, the problems and the priorities that ultimately will shape or guide the work. So a good house should feel specific to the people who live in it rather than assembled from attractive rooms and familiar features. All right. We used to call that pottery barn design. Like every individual room looks great, but they don't all add up to something greater than the parts. Yeah. Because it's a pottery barn catalog. Yeah. Everything is it's something. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even know if they make this anymore, but yeah. While it's on paper, it also gives us the architect a way to test ideas. And it gives clients a way to understand why the decisions might end up mattering. Because the next step is once you get this, then I start doing a room matrix. We have written a post about that. Yeah. So once I go through the questionnaire and I understand how you want things to work, why you want things to be in existence, and then how in order for them to check the box of what you want the room to do, we start saying this is how big these rooms are. And next thing you know, go, this is not bigger houses. And this is kind of a, like my finger stick it in the air ballpark construction cost. Yeah. You realize, okay, I'm in the right zip code or I'm not in the right zip code or I'm not. Yeah. I'm not even in the same state. Yeah. So that's the process. This is literally meeting one stuff. Yeah. From my perspective, from a residential standpoint. Sure. And so I wrote out this will be a blog post for all this information. I was kind of like, okay, how do I explain like, why am I doing it? Why am I doing this? And I think the only answer I got, at least the one that makes sense to me, was that a good house begins with a clear understanding of the people who are going to live in it. And it's the architects job to turn scattered. Once inhabits and frustration and priorities into a useful framework, that's what we bring to the mix. And ideally, that's supposed to be what makes us professional and not hobbyists. Yeah. I agree. I think it's important to establish this frame of reference and framework as early as possible because it's something you can refer back to later to either reinforce decisions or reevaluate things. From your perspective, you're setting all that up before there's a single drawing a representation of those things that has even been shown. Setting those things without a graphical example or interface, but really about the qualitative ideas of those things. Yeah. Well, we're going to find out. We're going to find out, ideally, when I get hired to design house again, I'm going to unleash it on these people to see what they think. I feel like I got enough skins on the wall to where I know that it's a useful tool. And I know that it'll be set up with some rigor and intelligence and it'll have value to it. Sure. I'd be interested to know if it was something that people say, "Hey, send me your programming workbook. I'd love to take a look at it. Maybe I'll do that. Maybe. Yeah. All right. Well, I think we've reached a point where I'm going to call today's show, "Arap." Thank you for being with us for Episode 205. How to start designing your house. Special thanks to our sponsor, Construction Specialties, maker of architectural building products designed to master the movement of buildings, people, and natural elements. Construction Specialties has been creating inspired solutions for a more intelligently built environment since 1948. Visit mastering movement.net to learn more. To get even more content, head over to lifeamonarchitect.com for blog posts, links, and info about this informational episode and all the website has to offer. You can even add your voice and join the community. Thanks so much for tuning in. Take it easy, everybody. Cheers.