Studio Z is hiring!

Studio Z Architecture (www.studiozarch.com) is an award-winning, nationally-recognized residential architecture firm based in Plymouth, Michigan. We provide architecture and interior design services for homeowners in Southeast Michigan and beyond. We design custom homes, additions, and interior remodeling projects in collaboration with our clients, contractors, landscape architects, engineers, and other professionals to ensure that our clients’ visions and expectations are met. Our goal is to understand our clients’ needs and to produce functional, sustainable, and aesthetically-pleasing designs within the client’s budget and timeframe.

Studio Z offers a flexible schedule, a culture of transparency, generous paid time off, and a lively office environment.

We seek to add a senior member to our architectural team. Ideally, this person would be a licensed architect or someone on the path to licensure with a minimum of 5 years’ experience and a good understanding of residential construction materials and methods. The candidate must have the ability to manage multiple projects, juggle various tasks, and work efficiently and independently with clients, outside consultants, contractors, and internal team members. Knowledge of AutoCAD is a must, and experience with Revit or Chief Architect is desired. The candidate will be involved in all aspects of residential architecture, from initial meetings with potential clients to site visits during construction.

Send resume, salary requirements, and electronic portfolio to todd@charrettevg.com. Submissions without a portfolio will not be considered. No phone calls, please. Please limit submission size to less than 10 MB. The candidate must be legally eligible to work in the United States.

We’re in the paper!

I’ve been asked to write a monthly column for the Observer-Eccentric newspapers. Here’s a link to the first one. If you have any questions about remodeling homes that you’d like me to address in future columns, post them in the comments.

Studio Z is hiring

We are looking for an enthusiastic architect or designer with residential architecture experience who loves to help make homeowners’ homes fit who they are. Please see job description below.
161214-studio-z-job-description

Studio Z on HGTV!

Studio Z Architecture’s work will be on HGTV tomorrow.

We’re celebrating our part in the recent renovation of an Ann Arbor home which will be featured on HGTV’s Urban Oasis tomorrow!

The one-hour Urban Oasis special will air tomorrow (Wednesday, October 5) at 11:00 PM eastern time on HGTV.

My work will be on HGTV this fall!

The word is out! I am excited to share the news that Studio Z Architecture is the architect for ‪HGTVUrbanOasis‬ 2016. From day one, the project has been a rewarding and successful collaboration with the entire ‪#‎HGTV‬ team and Maven Development. Stay tuned for more details on the project in the near future!‬

 

Awarded!

One of my projects recently received a grand prize award from VELUX America LLC in a recent VELUX® Why Skylights Photo Contest for creative use of VELUX skylights! You can read all about the project here. The judges liked the fact that I used two skylights in addition to four windows to provide a light-filled space for my client, a local food writer, who takes photos of her tasty creations in the space.

Watch this space – in the future, I’ll link to a video about the project.

I love skylights. They offer a way to add daylight and ventilation to a space.

Featured on Designer Insights

I’ve been featured on Designer Insights!

How do people survive a major remodeling project?

I recently visited with a client whose home is under construction. She and her husband and their two young daughters had lived in their home for about 10 years before they contacted me a year ago to begin planning a major renovation to their first floor. They wanted to build an addition to house a new, larger kitchen and eating area and to expand their existing family room by a few feet. The existing kitchen and laundry/mud room would be used to create a new mud room, a bathroom with large shower, and a dedicated laundry room. Finally, they wanted to change their existing formal dining room into a first floor bedroom in case an ailing parent needed to move in with them.

Their design goals meant that almost every square inch of the first floor of their home would be torn up. The only room that would be left untouched was their living room. Luckily my clients were happy with the second floor of their home, which contains 3 bedrooms and two full bathrooms, so other than a change to a bedroom window to accommodate the roof over the addition and some new insulation, the upstairs would be mostly left alone.

Many clients choose to move out during the construction of such a major addition/renovation project. Moving out often means that the project can progress more quickly because the contractor doesn’t have to clean up so carefully at the end of each workday. Whether to move out during construction is often a difficult decision, though, because most people decide to renovate their existing home rather than move to a new home because they love their existing location or neighborhood. Also, remodeling is so expensive that it’s hard to find the additional thousands of dollars that it might cost to rent a place to live on a short-term basis while the contractors do their work, plus the funds to move their furniture and other essentials back and forth.

On my recent site visit, I was interested to see how my client’s family had adapted to living in one room (click on a photo to enlarge it):

My client’s temporary kitchen includes cabinets and a countertop from their original kitchen, their old fridge, a hotplate, and a microwave.

Opposite the temporary kitchen, my clients have a slow cooker that they use frequently.

The family’s couch faces the fireplace. The children’s craft table is on the right, in front of the sealed archway to the family room.

The family eats their meals at the round dining table. The room is accessed via the zipper door on the right side of this photo.

 

High Tech Meeting

Yesterday I met with clients in their home in Plymouth, Michigan, while they were in Cincinnati.

Not only was this my very first virtual client meeting, it was the first time I’ve ever had a meeting where I was in the clients’ home but my clients were somewhere else. They had planned to drive up to meet with me but their daughter was sick, so they decided not to make the trip. Since they want to get moving on their project quickly, we met anyway.

When I arrived at the clients’ home, I sent a text message to let them know that I was there. They used a mobile phone app to open their garage door from Cincinnati, and I let myself in. Once inside, I was able to access the homeowners’ Wi-Fi network and I fired up my iPad to connect with them via FaceTime. I walked around their home with my iPad while my clients explained the work they had already done to the home and their goals for the next phase of the project. Then I sat at their kitchen table and took notes as we discussed their project in greater detail, just like I would have done had they been in the same room with me.

It was so helpful to be able to see their facial expressions as we talked, to be able to hold up sketches to see if we were on the same page with our ideas, and to walk around and see their home with them as we spoke.

The only drawback to this method was that I was unable to hear what the clients were saying if I was speaking at the same time, so I quickly learned to nod rather than say “um-hm” or “yeah” when I was listening.

Isn’t technology amazing?

Charleston, Part II

The CRAN Symposium in Charleston was a lot of fun. After the oyster roast I mentioned in my previous post, we got right into the swing of things. We started out with a talk by Witold Rybczynski, author of the book Home: A Short History of an Idea, who spoke about the traditions of home using paintings of interiors from throughout history to illustrate the concepts of how people lived in their homes. I enjoyed reading Home when I was in college and I really enjoyed hearing him speak in person.

A view of our “classroom” – the second floor of Hibernian Hall in Charleston.

Other speakers on Thursday included Ellen Dunham Jones, Stephen Byrns, David Samela, and Gary Brewer, who spoke about various styles of architecture. That evening, we had a gala dinner after hearing a keynote address by Andres Duany, of Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company.

Andres Duany, FAIA

The next day was packed with activities, including a wonderful walking tour of renovated homes in central Charleston. It was really amazing to see that, despite being packed together on tiny lots, these homes had a sense of privacy and coziness.

This is the view from one of the homes into their walled garden. It was so lush!

This is another view from one of the homes.

The following homes weren’t on our tour, but we walked by them as we went from one home to another. The private gardens were mysterious and green!

A tiny pink house situated behind and between two other homes, as seen on the walking tour.

The private gardens were so green and mysterious!

Charleston was so green. There were many walls and other surfaces with plant material on them. Here we see the risers of brick steps covered with green. I wonder whether people ever trip on the plants.

This home was as crooked as it appears in the photo.

The front entry gate to the last house I visited on the walking tour. No drinks allowed inside, apparently. Hmm, I wonder what architects like to drink…

I think all the Symposium participants enjoyed getting out of the “classroom” and into the beautiful city of Charleston.

Later that day, we heard from Robert Adam, Calder Loth, Gil Schafer, Marieanne Khoury-Vogt, and Marc Appleton. Robert A. M. Stern gave the keynote address that evening, and he spoke about the history of suburbs.

Robert A. M. Stern, FAIA

On Saturday, we started VERY early with a bus tour of the Ocean Course Clubhouse and four homes on Kiawah Island. We arrived back at Hibernian Hall for an afternoon filled with talks by Alexander Gorlin, Sandy Isenstadt, Julie Snow, Lorcan O’Herlihy, and Robert Gurney.

The best part of any CRAN Symposium, in my opinion, is the networking dinners. We’ve planned these networking dinners for the past four years, and this year, we had a few hiccups, but I think people enjoyed them anyway. What we do is make reservations for parties of 6 to 8 people for various local restaurants, and then ask attendees and sponsors to sign up for tables. This provides an opportunity for unstructured networking, and typically involves good wine and food, too!

We’ve already started planning the 2015 CRAN Symposium, which will take place in Minneapolis from September 19 through 23.