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"Design is not about taste.
Design is the application of universal truths to a specific situation to reach a desired result."
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| Creating the places where you live and work takes a team - you, the subject of the story; your architect, landscape designer, and interior designer, giving form to that story; the engineer, surveyor and contractor making sure it functions correctly. When this team works in harmony, and in a logical sequence, the results are vibrant, powerful, and timeless. |
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What is Integrated Design?
When you first decide to build or modify a house the first thing you may do is retain an architect whose style appeals to you. The architect designs a house that seems to answer your needs, and then hires an engineer to decide on the necessary sitework – location of the house on the property, drainage, grading, erosion control, position of the driveway, location of utilities. You get a permit from the local authority to go ahead, and the house is built.
Next, you hire an interior designer, who helps you furnish the rooms and make them comfortable. Last of all, if you are like most people, you hire a landscape designer or landscape architect to make the property beautiful. By now, though, the driveway turns out to be exactly where you would like to put a pond. The finished floor level of the house has been set so high that there is nowhere you can go outside without having to negotiate steps. The large trees that the builder carefully saved from destruction are dying, while many of the smaller ones that were removed turn out to have been valuable hardwoods or beautiful spring-flowering trees. The drain lines, which can’t be moved, prevent you from terracing the land as you would like, and there is a permanent swamp where you wanted an outdoor kitchen. In effect, your landscape design has already been determined by the engineer – whom you’ve never even met – and making it right is either impossible or prohibitively expensive.
If you are practicing integrated design, you do things a little differently. You retain an architect, a landscape designer, and an engineer at the beginning of the project, and they work together to make a Master Plan for building and grounds. During this process the interior designer is also involved so that transitions between inside and outside are harmonious. A contractor is brought in to contribute the point of view of the person actually doing the work. If there are any unresolved problems, they are solved by the whole team.
Integrated design not only produces a better result, one more likely to meet all your requirements and dreams, it also avoids the common, and expensive, change orders, that are the curse of most building projects. Best of all, it turns your building project into a lively, engaging, and fulfilling collaboration. |
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"Outside space and inside space are not two separate entities. Properly addressed, they are halves of a harmonious whole which is the perfect expression of your life."
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