Redesign without the Remodel: Future Wealth Creation and Sustainable Living Arrangements

Although the bread and butter of our residential work is working with homeowners who are building or remodeling, our design expertise applies just as much to thinking about your space as it does to laying out floor plans.  In September and October, each Monday design.banter will feature "Redesign without the Remodel, " since the vast majority of us are not currently remodeling our homes or building a new one. It also goes without staying that the greenest design is adapting your current home to your changing needs.  Need some personalized advice? We are always available for consulting on an hourly basis. 

During our series Redesign without the Remodel, we have been looking at how to think outsider of the drywall box, so to say, about the rooms in your house. Who says you have to use the rooms in conventional ways, if that's not what works best for you? Here's a summary of different ways rooms can be used:

• Have only one dining area
• If you use the breakfast nook as your only dining area, just add a table cloth, candles, and dim the lights for when you want a formal feel
• If you use the formal dining area as your main area, use a table cloth to protect a nice table for everyday meals
• A breakfast nook can make a great office: it's adjacent to the hub of the home, and parents can monitor homework and computer use while cooking. Bills and other clutter can stop at the kitchen/office and never make it into the other parts of the house that are used for relaxing, not working. 
• A formal dining area can also be used as a library. Add a few nice chairs and a small table to create a formal parlor area.  
• Switch your formal dining and family room areas. Make the formal dining room, usually the smaller room, into a more intimate TV watching area. Formal dining areas are usually more closed off from the kitchen than family areas-no more turning up the TV over cooking and dishwasher noises. Family areas are usually larger and may have taller ceilings, making them ideal for a combination formal dining area/library/parlor area.
• Designate just one corner or wall of a room as office space, and allow it to be closed off with a curtain or desk with doors. Office areas can also be carved out under a staircase or in a closet. 
• Let your cars live outside and use the extra 400 square feet for active space. An inexpensive shed can house tools and outdoor and sporting equipment. 
• Think of ways an existing house can generate income or provide a community resource. Create a shared home office in the garage or rarely used formal areas. Identify areas that can be rented out.                                                                      

During the presentation of our project for the AIA Seattle 2009 What Makes it Green Awards, the judges were most interested in this graphic, illustrating the built-in flexibility of the San Juan Channel House. 

The layout of the house and garage apartment allow for future wealth creation and sustainable living arrangements for the family, through rental of different areas of the house, cohousing with another family or allowing adult children a place to live while they find their way financially or take care of aging parents. There are also options for creating a home office, for the owner or for rent to others. So far, the garage apartment has proved its flexibility by acting as a temporary apartment for friends in transition, space for a temporary live-in nanny, and a home office. 

In tough economic times, or just in looking towards a more sustainable future, we may need to use our space in different ways, whether that be working from home, adding a rental unit, or sharing what was once a single family home. New homes should be designed with this in mind, but more realistically existing homes can be retrofitted to adjust to our future needs.
           

Book Review: Living Green: Communities that Sustain

"Living Green: Communities that Sustain," by Jennifer Fosket and Laura Mamo

The "Living Green" authors visiting many intentional communities around the country, interviewed residents, and spent time getting to know what makes each place tick. These communities ranged from a commune that has been around for decades that in order to be a part of you must give up all outside assets so that all are equal, to cohousing communities and eco-villages. The book focused much more on the social aspect of these communities than the built environment, but there was enough discussion of the physical makeup to merit a discussion here.

In the commune mentioned above, the focus of the community was a social sustainability: everyone is made equal by the fact that there is no outside income and everyone contributes somehow for the common good. In an eco-village, incomes are separate and the emphasis is on environmentally sustainably living.

The authors visited the Los Angeles Eco-Village (LAEV), located in the Koreatown neighborhood west of downtown LA. Their mottoes are "Demonstrating higher quality living patterns at a lower environmental impact" and "Reinventing how we live in cities." It is sponsored by the Cooperative Resources and Services Project, which is a nonprofit community development organization for "small ecological cooperative communities."

This community is what the Cohousing Association of the United States would call a form of "retro-fit" cohousing, that is, people live together in community, but they live in a building and spaces purchased by the LAEV, as opposed to the traditional definition of cohousing, where residents collectively design a community from scratch. Retro-fit cohousing like the LAEV is a much more accessible and attainable way to live in community. However, it is not without sacrifice. Their rules and regulations dictate the minimum and maximum amount of residents in each unit, for instance. But living here comes with many advantages of community, including "traffic calming" potlucks in the street, gardens, and a supportive bike culture. About half of the residents do not own cars, and those that do not receive a $20 discount on their rent each month. The eco-village is located close to transit and bus stops. The 48 units, owned by the Cooperative Resources and Services Project, are currently rented to residence, but in the future LAEV hopes to create permanently affordable co-ops.

Click here for more information on EcoVillages.

Fosket and Mamo list the 10 C's of Sustainability that they found in the communities they visited: Culture, Context, Citizenship, Commitment, Collaboration, Connectedness, Care, Contact (with nature), Commons, Continuity. 

I particularly like "Citizenship" as key to sustainability. So often the people have a will for living sustainably but what needs to be done is literally against the law (this subject could be dozens of other blog posts, but just for example, zoning laws that separate commercial and residential uses that discourage walking, limits on ADU's and granny flats which discourage density and affordable housing, and municipal covenants that limit the number of unrelated people living in a single family dwelling). The authors encourage people to take power over their circumstances and strive to change local ordinances that are outdated that limit sustainability .