“As an architect, you design for the present, …with an awareness of the past …for a future which is essentially unknown” –

Norman Foster

DESIGN FOR TIME

Fact…your family will not always be this small, or this large….You will not always be able to fly up and down the stairs carrying groceries, and mattresses, and books and dirty laundry…

You will not need to heat whole floors, when you will be off in a single room for an hour or two, then go to bed…

So you design to be flexible for your daily use, design for this time of your life, design for the time of day, and the seasons of the year.

Your family changes too!!!..

Not every 20 years….but every few years…

And you just CANNOT MOVE with every change….

Your family will get larger, smaller, older, younger…

Guests stay over on holidays…

or friends need a place to escape…

Good design lets you open up parts of a house, or shut down parts…this means having large French doors, or twin pocket doors, not just a wide open floor.

…because, despite the commercial on TV…the majority of your life… you do NOT have a huge, expanded family at home!

Often, it is just one or two at home, grateful for the gift of time…to think rest and nap with 12lb cat or two on you lap.

Good design lets you be flexible even IF the weather changes… light changes…seasons change… so you can open all the doors, to light and air, and noise and joy…and expand the living room out to the decks & summer winds blowing IN.

As the seasons change, you can close-off rooms and just heat or cool the 1 or 2 rooms you are in for a few hours..…

Because, unless you are the Holy Spirt, or a ghost…you can only occupy 1 room at a time…

NICE PIC HERE!!!

Ok, here is some flex housing…..

Look at the genealogy records of the early 1900’s …a lady with her kids all gone, would have a huge house, she could take in boarders…often times men, that both needed a home a meal, that could help her do the constant repairs an old house needs…