No Small Subject-
Of course, there is a whole world history of
architectural knowledge, even just that part that applies to
residential design, that is plenty enough for people to devote
entire careers to. Far too much for anyone to condense into one
little internet article. But, for the purposes of most of the
clients I have had over the years, there are some basic concepts and
procedures that I go through myself on most projects that just about
anyone can grasp and apply. All you really need to get started is a
pencil, some paper (graph paper can make things easier), and a
ruler. Even one of those off-the-shelf at Staples or Office
Max design programs can also be a great place to start if you are
handy with the computer. More on that later.
The "Building Envelope"-
If you are already familiar with the process of
determining the building envelope, either through experience or from
other articles from this site, you may want to skip right to
Basic Space Planning.
As with most of the articles on this site, you
may already know a lot of this information, but I like to cover all
the steps carefully anyway, just in case you are not familiar with
one aspect or another. The first part of any workable design is
essentially a fact-finding mission to determine what we
professionals often refer to as a "building envelope". These are the
various limitations imposed by your local zoning ordinances, or even
your Home Owner's Association guidelines, on your design. No sense
in proceeding with your design until you figure out first what you
can't do. Please see the articles on the Permit Process for
New Homes or the one on
Residential
Addition and/or Remodel Projects, to find out how to find out
about these limitations.
Plotting the Property Lines-
The first thing I do with any project (after a
discussion with my clients about their objectives, ideas, tastes,
etc.- but you will likely already know this about yourself) is to
plot out the property lines on paper to scale. The smaller the
property, the more the accuracy of this drawing will be important.
For larger parcels where there is obviously plenty of room for your
project, this may be less important, but it is a good place to start
nonetheless. A good way to begin is to obtain a copy of the
assessor's map
of your property, usually available at your local County
Assessor's and/or Clerk/Recorder's Office and sometimes even
available online for download. See my
City & County
Links page to help track that down. The assessor's
map isn't always the most accurate map (and they always have
disclaimers about the map they give you specifically to this effect)
but by and large, it is usually accurate enough to get started. You
can take this map and make copies of it to sketch on, and you can
even enlarge or reduce it to make it easier to work with.
Scaling the Drawing-
Normally, you will see the lengths of the
property lines on the assessor's map. This will help you determine
the
scale of this drawing. You can take your ruler,
measure how long one property line is, and then write that down as a
proportion, or fraction like- one property line measures 3-1/2 in.
and the property line says 100 ft. From that you can divide this
fraction (100ft. divided by 3.25) to come up with some kind of
relative scale, in this case 1 in. = 28.57ft., which for our initial
purposes you can just round off to 1 in.=30f t. Now the fraction you
come up with may not be one of the standard scales that architects
usually use, put for basic site planning, any scale will work just
to get you started visualizing the size of your project relative to
the site. If you are a little more clever with the copy machine, you
can expand or reduce the assessor's map so that it is close to an
easier scale to deal with, like 1"=10ft. or 20ft. or whatever.
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