Tuesday, April 19, 2005

The Program of the (More) Affordable Green Home

As we use it in connection with residential architecture, "program" means a list of spaces or activities that you would like to accomodate within your house and on your lot. It may also include specific requirements for each of the spaces, general ideas of the dimensions, and thoughts about the qualities of the space, or materials to be used. It can be quite general, or very detailed and specific. Often it starts out fairly vague, and gets more specific as the design process progresses.

Which is what we'll do here.... Let's see.

Main Floor
Entry - a place to greet guests, a bench to sit down and remove shoes, with a coat closet nearby.
Great Room - including kitchen, dining alcove and sitting area with a gas fireplace, possibly in an inglenook, plus a study alcove.
Away Room - a quiet room when the rest of the main floor in noisy, a noisy room when the rest of the main floor is quiet. Also will function as a guest bedroom.
Main Bath - actually two rooms, each accessible directly from a hallway, possibly with doors to the outside: one, a generous "bathing room" with a vanity and sink, a (non-whirlpool) Japanese soaking tub, and a walk-in shower big enough for two, and the other a "toilet room" with a wall-mounted dual-flush toilet and possibly a small sink. (This is the "Australian model" bath. In Australia there wouldn't be a sink in the toilet room—just a toilet.)
Laundry/Mudroom - near the kitchen. Front-loading washer and dryer. Hooks for coats. A "utility" sink.
Patio or Deck - exterior living space directly accessible from both grade and the interior of the house.

Upstairs
• Two Small Bedrooms (kids' bedrooms, or studies)
• One Larger Bedroom (the "master" bedroom)
• Powder Room Plus with a sink, bidet and a composting toilet.
• Balconies and/or possibly a sleeping porch. Some sort of exterior space accessible directly from the second floor.

Basement
• Depends on the site. We'll include one in our hypothetical house in order to investigate the issues of making a basement.

An Outbuilding
• for storage, workshop, car parking, potting shed, etc.

The Garden
• integral with the home, making the lot effectively part of the living space.
• edible landscaping (herb garden, fruit trees, edible flowers...)

Let's start with that.

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