Site Layout

Patterns made relatively few contributions to our general site layout. The shape of our lot, its relation to the street and utilities, and the setbacks and easements imposed by the city combined to make the placing of our house fairly obvious: our house would be at the east end of a long east/west oriented lot. Fortunately, these constraints ended up being fairly consistent with what we wanted out of the site layout patterns. (As before, problem descriptions and solutions -- the first two bullet points of each section -- are from A Pattern Language.)

Site repair (104):

• Problem: Buildings must always be built on those parts of the land which are in the worst condition, not the best.
• Therefore: On no account place the buildings in the places which are most beautiful. If fact, do the opposite. Consider the site and its buildings as a single living eco-system. Leave those areas that are the most precious, beautiful, comfortable, and healthy as they are, and build new structures in those parts of the site which are least pleasant now.
• For our home: The site naturally lent itself to fulfilling this pattern. Our lot is one portion of what was once a larger lot. The east side of our property had been disturbed by the construction of two new homes to the north. The west side is mostly wooded and partially a buffer zone for a nearby critical slope. Based on these constraints, it was natural to leave the wooded area intact and build on the disturbed land.

South facing outdoors (105):

• Problem: People use open space if it is sunny, and do not use it if it isn't, in all but desert climates.
• Therefore: Always place buildings to the north of the outdoor spaces that go with them, and keep the outdoor spaces to the south. Never leave a deep band of shade between the building and the sunny part of the outdoors.
• In our home: Our site is long east-west and short north-south, so we do not have a lot of flexibility for north/south siting. Part of the southern side of the property is taken by easements for a pedestrian path and for utilities. We have trees along the south western edge of our property, which decreases the amount of sunlight available. Despite the difficulties, we still have a sunny front yard in the east and a backyard in the west filled with tree-filtered sunlight. Neither requires going through deeply shaded areas for access. The shaded north side will be a terraced path down to the back yard.

Main entrance (110):

• Problem: Placing the main entrance (or main entrances) is perhaps the single most important step you take during the evolution of a building plan.
• Therefore: Place the main entrance of the building at a point where it can be seen immediately from the main avenues of approach and give it a bold, visible shape which stands out in front of the building.
• In our home: The location of the main entry was constrained by where we could put the garage (only on the north side). The garage also causes the entry to be nestled in instead of standing out in front of the building. We adapted to this difficulty and the site's natural elevation change by adding a large, bold stairway down to the front door. This extends the entry out so that it can be seen from all three approaches (driveway, sidewalk, and pedestrian path).

Entrance transition (112):

• Problem: Buildings, and especially houses, with a graceful transition between the street and the inside, are more tranquil than those which open directly off the street.
• Therefore: Make a transition space between the street and the front door. Bring the path which connects street and entrance through this transition space and mark it with a change of light, a change of sound, a change of direction, a change of surface, a change of level, perhaps by gateways which make a change of enclosure, and above all with a change of view.
• In our home: The design and placement of the entry were a good start for this pattern. The entry stairs (on the left in the image below) provide a natural change of level, material, and view. However, we need to make sure that this connects to all of the approaches. To aid in this, we are planning on adding some stairs from the sidewalk to the entry. These will provide a connection and allow us to add landscaping to further emphasize the sense of transition.

Car connection (113):

• Problem: The process of arriving in a house, and leaving it, is fundamental to our daily lives; and very often it involves a car. But the place where cars connect to houses, far from being important and beautiful, is often off to one side and neglected.
• Therefore: Place the parking place for the car and the main entrance, in such a relation to each other, that the shortest route from the parked car into the house, both to the kitchen and to the living rooms, is always through the main entrance. Make the parking place for the car into an actual room which makes a positive and graceful place where the car stands, not just a gap in the terrain.
• In our home: This pattern had a large influence on the design of our entry sequence. This pattern and past experience convinced us that we really didn't want to have multiple main entries into the home. We decided to just have one — there isn't even a door directly inside from the garage. The driveway, garage, and other approaches all funnel into the single (covered) entry. Architecturally, the car connection is not a positive place (i.e., enclosed on multiple sides). however, we are planning on using garden features to give it a feel of enclosure.

Next up in out pattern posts will be a discussion of the patterns that influenced our building envelope.

Trees

A small part of getting the site ready for construction was dealing with any trees that might get in the way of the building. There were only two trees to consider, a pair of tall pine trees near the top of the lot that we were hoping to keep. They would be right near the entrance, and looked quite nice together. Yuval had a botanist come to check them out before making a decision on whether to keep them or not. The results were that one tree was healthy, but the other was only in OK condition. However, the healthy one was about half-way into our planned entry!

These two trees supported each other via their root systems, so either both had to stay or both had to go. We decided it would be safest and easiest to remove both of them now. A couple weeks ago, they were carefully taken down. Yuval snapped a few pictures during the process, and allowed us to share them.

Some of the wood from various trees on site is being saved and cured. We hope to be able to use some of it later for pieces of furniture.

It looks like a house!

Design is progressing nicely. Markus modeled our house in CAD which brings us one step closer to permitting and construction. Moving from simple layouts to a computer model gives us our first views of the building's massing — how the house sits on the land, height, roof form, etc. This makes the building much more real. Clockwise from the top left we have the west, south, northwest, and southeast perspectives.

As the images show, our lot has a strong slope from east to west. The garage is actually elevated a few feet above the main level to decrease the slope of the driveway (bottom left image). The slope also gives us additional height: a limit of 30' from average grade gives us a total of about 35' on the west side. To take advantage of this, Markus added the 35' stair tower as a distinctive architectural feature (bottom right image).

We still need to decide on window placement and roof form. The images above show a flat roof. We like how the flat roof emphasizes the strong horizontal elements of the soffits and decks. However, all of the other homes in the community will likely go with butterfly roofs. We are going to look at several roof forms in the context of the neighborhood. As you can see below, in isolation the flat roof definitely looks best.

Computer models aside, we're not planning on having a home made out of gray, featureless pixels. Although we have awhile before we finalize the external colors and materials, we have found an inspiration for our exterior. It is another home from Whitney Architecture, the firm our architect works for:

We like the elegance and simplicity of the limited palette of materials and colors and the contrasts between horizontal and vertical, dark and light, warm wood and cool silvers/grays.

Location & Site

Location

The location of the Taltree development is right on the border between Redmond and Kirkland.


View Larger Map

This land belongs to a small area that was only incorporated into Redmond a few years ago. The land lies right on the border between Redmond and Kirkland (in fact, the street and possibly the sidewalk are part of Kirkland), so it feels more connected to Kirkland than Redmond.

It is just north of Bridle Trails, which is a large park area that feels fairly undeveloped -- there are a lot of old trees lining the roads, and many of the houses are fairly secluded. It is also located just north of NE 70th Pl/Old Redmond Road. This makes the location well connected -- one direction will take you to I-405 and then into Kirkland; the other way will take you into Redmond.

Right at 132nd Ave and 70th Pl is a small shopping mall -- it has a few small restaurants, Ace Hardware, Red Apple Market, Bartell's Drugs, Tech City Bowl, and other shops and restaurants. It should provide some good basic services within walking distance.

Site

The site itself is two half-acre lots that currently each have a small house on them. The rest is fairly wild. There are a lot of tall trees (hence the name), especially pines, and at least one mature oak tree. We also found some clumps of black bamboo, which is apparently somewhat rare. Overall, there is a nice diversity of plants, and a good selection will be retained once the site has been fully developed. Part of this will be a screen of trees and plants at the road to add some privacy to the site.

The site is moderately level, but slopes up from the street for a total rise of about 10 feet at the back. Since our house will be located at the far end, it will be raised up a good amount from the street, which should help to make it feel a bit more secluded.

The current plans for the site include saving a nice group of pine trees just to the north of our house, while the south will be a bit more open. However, on the next lot over to the south, there is currently a group of tall pines; hopefully these will provide us with a nice view, while still having enough open space to get some good southern light into the house.