ONE of the aspects I most enjoy about my job is the phase of seeing a house get built.
It's an exhilarating period in the design and construction process of a home and, I'll be honest, an intimidating one as well as your ideas and concepts get built before your eyes. For the architect or designer, it's the dispassionate moment of truth to see if they've done their work well or not.
There's something magical in scribbling a quick concept of a project at the early phases of a project and to see that graphic gesture evolve over time into fully resolved building but the concept as a scribble will remain exactly that without a commitment to fully resolve the details of the design.
The architect or designer's job is to take a conceptual idea or partie (the scribble) and transform it into a successful built project through a comprehensive scrutiny of the detail design right down to the smallest particulars. The famous quote by the German-born architect Mies Van de Rohe "God is in the details" makes this reality very clear:
It's very common to see stock house plans that masquerade as comprehensive construction drawings but are just caricatures of a detailed set. The plans, sections and elevations that comprise these packages articulate just enough to satisfy municipal planning authorities and are typically a bare minimum for construction. They're the scribble without the follow-through.
A good set of construction drawings will represent the critical analysis and resolution of countless connections and transitions occurring in a project - the detail design of a project distilled down to a set of instructions that a contractor will build from. The more resolved the detailing beforehand the more smoothly the project moves when being built. Trying to figure out details in the field is a guaranteed way to get unexpected surprises and unsatisfactory results. It's easier to erase a wall than to rebuild it.
For the architect or designer, having a strong grasp of construction detailing is essential to create a comprehensive set of drawings.
I remember in my early years as a designer - fresh out of school, working in a large architectural practice and only being involved on the design end of the projects I worked on - being routinely disappointed as the construction-document team at the practice would inform me that what I had designed could never be built the way I had drawn. It was a frustrating process that taught me quickly that I wouldn't fully realize a design until I completely grasped the means and methods of its construction.
One of the great things about single-family residential work is that the projects are typically small enough to have the same person working on the project from start to finish. Taking a project from the broad-brush strokes of schematic design through to the meticulous fine-tuning of its detail resolution is a very satisfying process and is the essence of the designer's job.
Kevin Vallely is a residential designer in North Vancouver. Follow along Kevin's "small house" design at cliffhangerhouse.com.
