Making Good Homes: A Scalable Solution

by Rolf Kielman

In the TruexCullins Home Studio, we are developing design solutions based on the concepts that we’ve been sharing with you over the past few weeks. As we explained in an April blog post, we’ve been working on the design of 3 different houses, each having similar components and spaces. The designs are intended to fit along a town or city street, placed in a village, or located in a more rural setting.

 

Our three models each have two floors and either a full or partial basement. Depending on buyer preference each house has a porch that covers the entry area and provides cover and transition from the street or public way.

 

The three houses range in size from 1400 square feet to 2100 square feet, with the middle option coming in around 1800 square feet. Each design provides spatial and value added options to ensure that each house can be easily expanded over time. This sketch shows how possible expansion could happen to the various models:

All of the designs present a long elevation to the south enabling natural solar light gain. This large, south facing expanse also provides roof surface for solar thermal and photovoltaic collectors. With proper attention to design and construction detail, these homes could easily achieve net-zero energy consumption standards, thereby ridding the owners of any utility bills.

TruexCullins is currently working with a builder and prospective client to construct several of these homes in a new neighborhood near Burlington that consists of an existing collection of historically based homes. Our designs connect with this historic character, although our intent in the long term is to design these homes to fit within any context.

First floor plan of 1400 square foot house

Making Good Homes: Beauty in Order

by Rolf Kielman

In a February blog post, Lee Grutchfield and I discussed the challenges involved in making good and affordable places to live. We’ve made some progress on this front, and we’re back to share what we’ve done to date.

The criteria, as we described it, is to design a home that is affordable, easy to build, healthy, beautiful, durable and energy efficient. We want to make these houses so they can be manufactured under controlled circumstances and then shipped in manageable parts to the building site. And we want to erect houses in 2 months rather than the 4-6 months often required for homes of modest proportion and size.

So together with Josh Chafe, our young and creative cohort, we have begun to define and execute homes that fulfill the criteria we described. Thus far we’ve been working with designs that are basically one room wide. We’ve looked at archtypes in the factory housing of Sheldon Springs, going back 25 years to work that Rolf did with Roland Batten, and we looked carefully at the houses strung along Mansfield Avenue in Burlington, Vermont. There are lessons in these houses worth studying, such as advantages in ventilation and ease of shipping attributable to building widths of one room.



We are also working on a standard system of dimensioning. This is not a new concept: witness Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian houses spread through portions of North America. Wright’s work exhibits both elegance and quiet beauty in the establishment of order and hierarchy. In this vein, we are utilizing modules of 48” increments and utilizing common window widths and room sizes to achieve this order.

In our work, we are utilizing a standard system of components applicable to homes of differing overall size. By this we mean that a single bathroom or kitchen layout can be used in a 1400 square foot house as well as one that is 1800 square feet. By using common components, we can drive down the cost and increase the efficiency.

In our sketches below we show 3 slightly different houses. They vary in size and program but have strong similarities. They exhibit options that will give home buyers discretion in how they arrange component parts. The designs can be pre-made or manufactured off site and they exhibit simple dimensioning systems that are economical and elegant. The designs run from 1400 to 2200 square feet and contain different program components for those with larger families or those who have chosen to work at home.

Our hope is to build several of these homes in a new development near Burlington. If you have suggestions, questions or comments, we would love to hear from you!

Making Good Homes: Conditions and Challenges

by Rolf Kielman

At TruexCullins we’ve spent decades contemplating the necessary requirements for good places to live. Twenty years ago we designed a series of modestly sized, affordable and energy efficient homes for a statewide competition sponsored by Housing Vermont. Now, we are picking up that banner again, developing the design for a prototypical home that meets all of the requirements and expectations of a modern-day family in an affordable and efficient package.

First, let’s define the criteria. What are our basic needs for the places where we live? The basic components of a house in Vermont include spaces to sleep, prepare and eat food, and wash ourselves and our clothes. Beyond these human necessities, we place great importance on having a comfortable place to socialize and entertain. Conversely, our homes are increasingly places where we work and study. The spaces just outside our homes are also valued, whether it’s a porch for protection from the elements or a garden within which to grow food and play. Finally, an auxiliary building such as a garage or shed is added to store vehicles and outdoor equipment. All of these components have come to be viewed as essential parts of our homes.

Second, we must come to term with the challenges we face. Externally, the need for shelter from our environment is perhaps more challenging now than it has ever been. Our climate is demanding and unpredictable, from the cold of winter to the heat and humidity of summer. Global climate change has brought an increase in extreme weather events that test the endurance of our structures, from flood to drought to the frequently returning 100-year storm. Meanwhile, the cost of fuels is accelerating, in economic costs and environmental costs. The physical land and materials with which we build our homes are also increasingly rare and expensive to come by.

We look forward to addressing these challenges over the next several months, continuing our exploration of designs for homes that sufficiently meet our needs while abundantly filling our souls. Ultimately, our goal is a product that could be acquired in any number of forms: a set of complete architectural plans for purchase at a modest cost; a set of component parts available for purchase with a manual for assembly; or even a complete home, pre-made and brought to the site ready for placement and occupancy.

In the meantime, you can expect that we will share our thoughts, present some designs, and keep you informed of our progress. We hope you enjoy this creative journey.

Designer Snapshot on New England Home

Today TruexCullins was featured on the New England Home Design Blog, the official blog of New England Home magazine.

Under the title “Designer Snapshot: No Boundaries”, the editors at New England Home chose three of our residential projects as examples of interior spaces that celebrate their natural surroundings and blur the boundaries between inside and out.

Read more about these three projects on today’s NE Home blog, then see the full article on the Shelburne home that was published in the magazine last year.

Stowe Home featured in Vermont Magazine

One of our recent residential projects has just been published in the latest issue of Vermont Magazine. 

“At Home in Vermont” tells the story of how this family’s home began from the small-house plans that Lee and Rolf developed during the depths of the housing crash in 2008.  The design was then tailored to the site and personalized for this client, who wanted an energy-efficient home that could support an active lifestyle.

Designed To Be Tops,

  from the Bottom Up

The concept for this home was one of a small, energy-efficient house that blended in with the land.

Lee Grutchfield likes to think that the path that led to his becoming an architect, and Principal with TruexCullins Architecture in Burlington, might be part of a tradition steeped in New England craftsmanship: apprenticeship, in which a potential architect learns to make a building from the ground up. Through hands-on experience, he believes an architect learns to intuitively understand acoustics, structural principles, mathematics, and the workings of natural light. Lee should know; he spent 14 years working as a carpenter prior to studying architecture at Norwich University, where he earned his master’s degree.

To read the rest of the article, pick up the March/April 2012 issue of Vermont Magazine at a newsstand near you!

Home is Where the Hearth Is

There may not be much snow on the ground this year, but there is still a chill in the air that reminds us of one reason we love winter so much: this is the time of year that we enjoy gathering around the fireplace.

As architects and designers working in a northern climate, we have designed many custom fireplaces that occupy a prominent place in our projects. We thought it would be fun to take a look at some of our favorites:

This is one of our newest projects: a home in Stowe that was just recently completed, built by Grist Mill Builders.  The Owner's son is an avid rockclimber and is practiving his moves on the face of the exterior fireplace at the covered patio.

This is a double-sided indoor-outdoor fireplace. On the opposite side, the fireplace faces the living room, with the same stonework rising to the exposed wood timbers at the ceiling.

The combination of stone and wood is a theme we often return to. In this next example, the stone fireplace is flanked by custom wood casework with dedicated space for firewood storage. A copper-lined box incorporated into the base of the wall provides a functional need – with logs close at hand – and becomes a prominent design feature of its own.

Sometimes it is desirable to close off the firebox opening when it is not in use. In this home in Jeffersonville, these fire doors are engineered for easy operation, and are designed to be a beautiful addition to the composition, even when closed. 

A mechanical fire gate closes off the opening with the turn of a crank handle set into the stone surround. The operation is assisted by a pulley system with concealed counterweights. The doors are faced with annealed copper, in a design that mirrors the view of the mountain range visible from this Great Room.

Not all of the residential fireplaces we design consist of a traditional stone surround. This is one residence that was recently mentioned on the popular website Houzz.com for the contemporary wood stove that terminates the main living space:

The author noted the location of this fireplace within the seating arrangement and pointed out that we made the modern stove the focal point of the living area by centering it, creating a dark, dramatic wall shield and flanking it with bookshelves.

Whether traditional, contemporary, or Classic Vermont, these fireplaces all serve as the heart of the home. But the fireplace is not confined to our residential work. Come back tomorrow and we'll continue this winter theme with a look at some of our favorite fireplace designs in our workplace, education and resort studio projects.

Fighting Climate Change in Vermont, One Net-Zero House at a Time

We are in the middle of one of the warmest winters in memory, with a noticeable lack of snow. Many are still cleaning up from Tropical Storm Irene, which hit a state not used to dealing with hurricanes and flash floods. As these examples of extreme weather events grow more common, fewer people are doubting that climate change is affecting Vermont in very real, measurable ways.

A new exhibit is now open at the ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center that explores the impact of climate change in New England. Seasons of Change: Global Warming in Your Backyard is an interactive travelling exhibit that will be at ECHO until March 25, 2012.

You may think you know what to expect with global warming, but this exhibit will open your eyes to much more. Developed by members of the New England Science Center Collaborative and Brown University, Seasons of Change looks at how climate change is affecting things in Vermont like invasive species, foliage, maple products, fishing and more.

This is a daunting challenge, but we are rising up to meet it.

This week we will be attending the Better Buildings by Design conference, an annual event hosted by Efficiency Vermont that brings together architects, engineers and builders for 2 full days of interactive learning about building efficiency. Global warming is often thought of as the result of pollution from cars and power plants, but buildings are actually an equal culprit. Nationwide, buildings are responsible for one third of all greenhouse gas emissions, equal to that of transportation and industry.

At Truexcullins, we are working for a better climate future by designing net-zero energy buildings. These buildings produce as much energy as they use. By intelligently managing the energy demands and eliminating the need for fossil fuels, we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow the spread of global warming.

One of our recent green homes will be recognized with an award from Efficiency Vermont at this week's conference. This net-zero energy home in Calais, Vermont will be receiving the award for Best of the Best in Energy-Efficient Residential New Construction. TruexCullins Principal Lee Grutchfield was the architect on the project, with general contractor Hobie Guion and energy consultant Andy Shapiro of Energy Balance, Inc.

 

Congratulations to the entire project team!  We have more of these projects in the works, and we look forward to working with all of our colleagues and consultants to develop net-zero energy buildings that help to solve our climate challenges. 

Grutchfield and Nelson Rise to New Leadership Positions

We are pleased to announce our newest staff promotions.

Lee Grutchfield, AIA, of Marshfield has been named the newest Principal at TruexCullins. Lee joined TruexCullins in 2000 and now leads the firm’s Home Studio. He has over 30 years of experience working on a wide range of projects in Vermont and San Francisco. After first working for 14 years as a builder, Lee has continued to pursue his passion for building design and construction as an award-winning architect. Lee’s recent projects include South Farm Homes, a development of six net-zero energy homes located in Hinesburg, Vermont, and six other net-zero and low-energy homes located throughout Vermont and New York.

Keith Nelson, LEED AP, of Underhill Center has also been named an Associate in the firm. Keith joined TruexCullins in 2002 and has over 15 years of experience in commercial and residential architecture, as well as in interior architectural design. As project manager and designer at TruexCullins, Keith’s noted work includes 4 Currier Place, a LEED Silver certified building, and the La Bella Vita Restaurant and Spa at the Samoset Resort in Rockport, Maine. Current projects include the West Street Hotel in Bar Harbor, Maine and a new guest wing at the Topnotch Resort in Stowe, Vermont.

Lee and Keith are joining Principals Rolf Kielman, David Epstein, Richard Deane, Kim Deetjen, Robert “Sparky” Millikin and associate, Matthew Bushey, as the leadership team at TruexCullins. Congratulations to Lee and Keith!

Unassisted Living

One of our residential projects has just been published in a book on homes that support the active lifestyles of the aging Baby Boomers generation. Unassisted Living, Ageless Homes for Later Life is a collection of homes that offer an alternative to traditional senior housing.

The Shelburne residence by TruexCullins is included as one of the examples in the book, and is featured on the book’s cover.

This multi-generational residence was the recipient of the 2009 Award for Excellence in Architecture by the Vermont chapter of the AIA.  It is a home for three generations, with a common entry that provides separate access to private living spaces for the grandparents and children.

From the publisher:

Unassisted Living documents the shift away from the senior housing that promoted disengagement toward architecture and design that promote active aging. The book is organized in six sections, corresponding to the concerns and special interests of Boomers—those who intend to remain in an urban setting, those concerned with sustainability, those with complex families and non-traditional households, and those who seek a community based on spirituality or shared interests.

Boomers are perhaps the largest generational cohort the United States has ever seen. Numbering some 78 million people born between 1946 and 1964, Boomers are not accepting traditional retirement or “senior housing” and are instead determined to remain active and engaged professionally and socially.

The 240-page hardcover book is written by Jeffrey Rosenfeld and Wid Chapman, and published by Monacelli Press.  You can purchase it online thru amazon.com or at your favorite local bookseller!

Jericho Fieldhouse

On Thursday night we attended the 2011 AIA VT Design Awards ceremony and were pleased to receive a Merit Award for one of our new residential projects.  This is a home in Jericho that sits on the edge of a small meadow.

The house is a three-part composition of garage, studio and home placed about a parterre garden and edged to the south by a garden wall and linear orchard. In the tradition of Frank Lloyd Wright, the house is a grid-formed composition striving to generate economy from the beautiful elegance of formed geometry. The structures utilize modest exterior materials to shape a traditional but elemental form in the landscape.

We worked with H. Keith Wagner Partnership on the site plan and landscape design.  The photos below are by Jim Westphalen.

A Vermont Home

One of our latest residential projects has just been completed in Stowe, VT. 

Designed by Lee Grutchfield, this home is sited in a picturesque wooded landscape.  It has an open plan with exposed wood timbers and a double-sided indoor/outdoor fireplace.  The adjacent garage is clad with reclaimed barn board siding.

A special thanks goes to the entire project team, including Grist Mill Builders, Artisan Engineering, Thomas Engineering, and interior designer Jessica Carbone.  Photos below are by Steve Bronstein.

A New Home on Lake Champlain

We just posted another new project to the website:  this new residence that we recently completed in South Hero, Vermont:

This is a lakeshore residence that sits on the edge of a small bluff facing west toward the Adirondack Mountains. The house is modest in size and material and is scaled to fit alongside a series of lake camps in this area. The western sun highlights the traditional camp form.

The interior is predominately a large open living space that spills west to the lake. More contemporary materials were chosen for the interior such as a polished concrete floor and simply detailed wood and stone.

A Love Affair on Lake Champlain

The Crowe Residence in Shelburne was a labor of love for all who were involved.

This light-filled multi-generational home settles comfortably into the landscape, embracing the view  across Lake Champlain.  The project was the winner of the 2009 AIA Vermont Award for Excellence in Architecture.  And now, its story is being shared with readers beyond the borders of Vermont.

We are pleased to note that the Crowe Residence is the feature project in the May/June issue of New England Home magazine, with a beautiful photo gracing the cover and a 10-page spread inside.  You can read the full article online at nehomemag.com/article/instant-karma.  Or, better yet, go out and pick up a copy of the print version of New England Home, available at all major bookstores, convenience stores, grocery stores, drug stores, and corner newsstands near you.

Congratulations go out to the entire project team:  Architecture by Rolf Kielman and Lee Grutchfield; Interior Design by Kim Deetjen and Rebekah Bose; Landscape Design by Keith Wagner Landscape Architect; Contruction by Dan Morris and Ric Santa Maria from Roundtree Constuction;  and photography by Jim Westphalen.

Villa Verde Vermont

Building a house can be a deeply personal and consuming project.  It can be exhausting, it can seem neverending, but it can also be one of the most rewarding endeavors you ever take on.

Many of us have tackled renovations of varying degrees of scope, from a single room to a whole-building gut reno.  But building your own house from the ground up opens up whole new opportunities.  It's a chance to fulfill dreams and change lives.  It's an opportunity that usually comes along just once in a lifetime.

Some who embark on this challenge choose to share the adventure by recording each step of the process online.  You can find a few very good blogs by (future) Vermont homeowners who are documenting their construction adventures and posting photos of their home as it slowly takes shape.  If you're thinking of making your own dreamhouse someday, these blogs are a good source of ideas, advice and inspiration.

Tina and Michael are two of our clients who are currently building their own home about 20 minutes outside of Burlington.  They've been recording the process since January 2010 on their blog: Villa Verde Vermont.  The modern home is designed by Rolf Kielman, with landscape design by Keith Wagner.  Currently, the house has been framed and the exterior siding is going up.

You can follow the progress as the house gets closer to completion with each passing day.  As they put it: A modern/minimal design, we're including as many "green" and energy-efficient elements as our budget will allow.

Passive House design comes to Vermont

Posted by Rolf Kielman, AIA, LEED AP

The Passive House: it sounds like some kind of strategic mind game for buildings. In actuality, this is a very positive development for designing better buildings.

In the quest for more knowledge about these passive houses, I spent last weekend with Marc Rosenbaum at the Yestermorrow Design-Build School. The course he was teaching dealt with the comprehensive process involved in the design of Passive House. The Passive House is a rigorous process for ensuring dramatically improved energy performance. This process has been stringently refined by (who else?) German design professionals. It is applicable to larger scale buildings as well, and many European structures are being built to these standards.

The continued increase in world-wide energy costs has led to higher performance expectations for the buildings we design. The Germans and the Japanese have established standards that mandate a low level of energy consumption per square meter of building area. These standards will soon be coming to North America. I would not be surprised to ultimately see performance criteria established for our buildings much as we already have mileage criteria for automobiles.

During the 1970s, I (and many others) designed low energy homes. These homes often had renewable energy collection systems and were either super insulated or double envelope houses. At the time, we did little to rectify air leakage or utilize much more than the crudest methods to measure building performance. Nevertheless, those buildings became the precedent structures that our design colleagues around the world are now emulating and improving on.

The principal behind the making of Passive House is simple: provide houses (or any building) with an exceptional thermal blanket. So exceptional, that all one might need to heat the house is a single candle or some form of minimally fueled heating device. The higher cost of fuel has spurred the European Communities to accelerate their quest for the more “perfect” building. Many of us in North America are again in quest of this perfection.

A Passive House is more than just an ultra thick blanket of insulation, however. The “blanket” must be designed to minimize air leakage, and as we all know, it can get stuffy under a blanket that doesn’t offer some modicum of ventilation. Enter an effective ventilation system that supplies fresh outdoor air. Ventilation is essential, but when we ventilate in our cold climate we dump lots of warm, stale air into the winter night. So, we ventilate with what is called an energy or heat recovery ventilator. In slightly more moderate climates (such as much of Germany), an ERV is about all that’s needed to heat a super-insulated and non-leaky home.

Here in northern Vermont we need a little extra heat, and this can be provided by an electric heating coil placed within the ductwork of the ERV. Or, if a little romantic bio-fuel is desired, one could install a pellet or wood stove, perhaps with a hot water coil on the back to provide supplemental hot water for showers and washing dishes. Increasing in popularity is a mini-split air-to-air heat pump. These devices extract heat from outside air and add it to your interior heating needs. The advantage to these little babies is that they can run in reverse in summer and help cool your house. This device runs on electricity as well. It should be stressed that the heat load, even in our climate, is minimal. For the electric heating coil or heat pump, a photovoltaic array on the roof would supply the electricity required for the coil/pump as well as supplying additional renewable power for your home’s lighting and electrical needs.

I believe the idea behind passive House is sound. Spend a little extra money on the building envelope and save money on the cost of a heating plant and distribution system. The Passive House has fewer moving mechanical parts and very high overall building performance. Save money on heating fuels (the cost is only going up), and dump less carbon into the air. All is good.

A couple of other points worthy of discussion: with a sound building envelope, fresh air supply and a modest heating source, we still need natural light to live and grow. While windows are vastly improved with regard to thermal effectiveness, they still fall far short of a well-insulated wall. So Passive House logically places windows on the south side with more modest amounts of glass on the east, west and north. A good window on the south side of our houses, even in the Vermont winter, is still a net heat gain, so this glazing contributes heat to the house’s needs.

Passive House is a great idea. The certification process looks complicated, but the design and calculation principals are sound. A good rule of thumb is keeping the shape of your home straightforward… even box-like. Think of our ancestors who populated much of the New England landscape. Their buildings were remarkably straightforward and often the more elegant for that simplicity. That simple beauty lies at the root of our building traditions and Passive House seems like an idea that New Englanders will embrace.

TruexCullins Goes PreFab

In a recent article in the Champlain Business Journal, we talked about current trends toward building smaller homes that we have experienced in our residential practice.  We also showed a couple of images of smaller homes we’ve worked on, one of them was in fact a model of a prototype for what we’ve been calling our prefab homes.  These smaller, (2000 sf +/-) energy efficient homes could be built either on site in traditional fashion, or made in more controlled conditions and brought to the site in modules.

Our intention is to offer the design and construction drawings of these homes at a fixed price, for folks who feel they might otherwise not be able to afford traditional architectural services for a custom designed home.

Since the posting yesterday we have received requests for more images and so have included them here.  Please have a look and let us know what you all think.

Thanks!

Lee Grutchfield, AIA