The above statement was made by my mother on the phone to me a couple hours ago.
They've known since I was in 8th grade that I wanted to become an architect, and they've seen me designing bridges, houses, and other structures since I was old enough to pick up a crayon. They watched me play with Legos and Tinker Toys, and single-handedly build a primitive urban infrastructure in the woods behind our house... While all the other kids in the neighborhood were playing with Transformers and G.I. Joe action figures.
Later in life, they watched me get into an architecture program at college, and land an internship with one of the most well-respected architecture firms in the city.
Now, they're about 5 or 6 years away from retirement, and they want to build a home to retire to. Sounds like a noble idea.
So... They're flipping through mail-order floor plans from a book they found at Home Depot, and have settled on a "French Countryside" design. Their next task will be to buy a piece of land and hire a contractor to build it.
They explained all this to me, thinking I would be thrilled for them, and apparently without meaning to be ironic in any way... And this was after a 20-minute conversation about me getting my portfolio ready for grad school applications.
[bangs head against wall]
Sigh.... Parents: Can't live with 'em, can't legally shoot them and collect the insurance money to pay for grad school.
Become an anarchytect,...secretly sabotage the house after the frenchie builds it. tear up some floorboards, roof shingles, loosen some plumbing pipes , unscrew hinges of doors etc then tell them "Ha, this is the best what contractors do !
Last year when I was back home visiting my parents after finishing up grad school, my parents were replacing the stucco on their house with vinyl siding, and they were so excited to have my "professional expertise" there to help pick out the color of the siding from the Sears catalogue...
My folks just bought the 'retirement home' --after I begged them to let me design them something. The 'retirement home' is, at best, schlocky design, cheaply built, but entirely too expensive. It's redeaming point is that it's "waterfront property".
I assembled a true work of art as a proposal for them, and I *do* think this made them pause for a second...
but in the end, my folks just see me as the 'little kid' not as a professional.
oh yeah, and to add insult to injury, now they are trying to get me a job in their city - a city I fought for 18 years to leave...
this happens over and over again. the old adage 'the older i get the smarter my parents seem' obviously doesn't work for architect-types as well as for other people.
my most recent episode was the four-season room that i was to do for my mother. she decided she wanted it NOW - so bought one of those aluminum 'extra room' kits and stuck it on the back of her house.
Heh... I know that feeling. My parents live near Raleigh, North Carolina (although I grew up near Cincinnati, and they're looking to return to Cincinnati to retire)... But everytime I find myself in a job search, my dad tries to get me to move down there. His rationale: "Well, there's plenty of construction down here... They're building a new Target store up the road, and a big new Wal-Mart on Highway 64... We've also got some nice new restaurants under construction nearby, like an Applebee's and an Olive Garden..."
Blech... I can barely spend a day or two in that place before I develop an overwhelming urge to run screaming to New York City.
Oh, how horrible, LiG. Did you tell them that you could make them a better house for the same amount of money? Drastic measures are in order.
Sometimes people like that respond well to things like "market value". You could describe to them how houses like that fall apart after 5 years and won't be worth anything and they will have to do tons of repairs. Casually toss around a few really arcane bits of knowledge to back this up. "I bet he's gonna put in aluminum windows, huh? Pffff. And vinyl siding? I bet that'll trap some nice wetness in your walls. You might get black mold infiltration and develop spots on your lungs... yeah... that's pretty common. Guess he's gonna use regular fiberglass batt insulation? Pity, if you only used corabond you pay pennies for heating for the rest of your life..." You'd be amazed at how much these kinds of things impress them! Sounds real and concrete.
Then, look at their "plan" and immediately think of 3 things that they will understand that could make it a LOT better. "Boy Mom, I know you've always wanted a pass-through to your Dining Room... and what if I put in a dumbwaiter to the basement? And look at this room here--how will you fit any furniture in there?! Look--the closet door is in the exact wrong place, you'll always be banging it into your bed when you try to open it."
End your pitch with, "tell you what, Mom--give me 3 months and I'll will design a house where everything is exactly where you want it to be, and I'll work with the contractor to get it built to a higher quality than what you'll get from this mail-order house."
can't hurt... that's how I got my parents to listen to me!
i feel your pain LIG... my problem is not so much with my parents, but with my in-laws... i think that i've finally been able to convince my parents to let me design their "retirement home", but that's still a few years away...
my in-laws, however, are another story... so far, since i've been married, they have built two houses and are about to build another... all of them have been built with home depot floor plans... what makes it even worse, is the first house... they bought a pretty cool mid-century modern house on a bluff overlooking the st. johns river in jacksonville... it was a little out dated, but could have been great with a renovation and addition... instead they tore it down and replaced it with a schlocky "french country" monstrosity... now they're trying to sell it and it has been on the market for over 3 years with little interest from the market.
they also built a beach house from home depot plans... although, as far as pre-packaged plans go, this one isn't too bad... still, really annoying none-the-less...
now they're preparing to build a mountain house "compound"... again using plans from a book...
all this without a single thought of having their son-in-law, the architect, design anything... and they have the nerve to ask me what i think about the plans once they are drafted...
LIG - Sounds rough but look at it from your parent's perspective. They probably want a house that they are used to. A Home Depot catalog spec house is probably just that. Since you are applying to grad schools I'm going to assume you aren't registered and don't have a portfolio of built work. Many times parents can be the harshest critics. You are basically asking them to trust in an educated, but not prooven designer with little experience, no? Apologies if my assumptions are off, but I think you are asking much of them because you are their child.
My suggestion is to give them help where they'll need it. As myriam hinted, work with them on material selections. Help them pick the floorplan. Suggest minor changes like moving doors, etc. to make the design better for them. Interview contractors for them. I think they'd be happy for that help and would be much more trusting of your opinions.
hey lilG
they truely need a place that they can age in.. and you can easily explain that the mail order is not ment for that. It should be all about increasing independence and decreasing risk of injury or strain. I think a serious talk about their future of aging with them would make a diff and explain to them that you can create the perfect environment for them.. and just think how proud they would be if their friends were to come over and see it.. maybe even more biz for you?
My mom keeps talking to people that I will built a house soon,... I just finished my b.arch degree, I have no idea how to built! I was never tought how to built!!! parents think that college suppose to teach! but it doesnt!! I guess I can build a 3D house and make it look photoreal to impress the ordinary people...
hahaha! stupid ignorant masses who pay our bills. who needs 'em.
LiG, jonathanharper makes a very good point. Tie that into my argument!!! DO EEEET!!! TELL THEM THEY WILL BE DEPRESSED AND LIKELY SUICIDAL IN A SPEC HOUSE! LIVES ARE AT STAKE!!!!!!!
seems to me that the story never ends!!! after living with my aunt -under the same roof-- and she always telling me how great professional I would become, my mom bought the upstairs's condo and we moved in.. One day my aunt decides to renovate her downstairs condo and guess what??? she didn't ask me for my opinion so I understood that I have nothing to do with it, but another day when I came home she was waiting for me, she asked "how can I fix this? " a stupid mistake the contractor made, I asked her for the floor plans to see what this guy had in mind, and guess what. there are no floor plans, the contractor said that they aren't necessary, OH MY GOSH!!! end of the story her condo became the ugliest around and lose a lot of market value.. she now wants to sell but nobody seems to be interested in that ugly thing.
ps. don't think I'm happy for that, but she deserves it!!!
I understand how this would sting, but count your blessings...
I've been working on the design of my parents' retirement house for YEARS now and have been sent back to the drawing board more times than on any other project I've ever worked on. One problem is that once they asked me to do it that didn't stop them from continuing to look at the stock-plan french country cottage stuff anyway. They're always getting some new idea from a magazine or a friend or even from the interior design of their dentist's office and wanting to "change course".
There are a lot of issues with family dynamics, expectations, habitual ways of communicating, etc. on this type of project. If ground is ever broken I'm not sure that I won't have died of stress-induced heart failure before I ever see it.
In a firm I worked on a house for clients whose daughter was about to finish architecture school. We were very careful to find out whether they and/or she wanted her to have any involvement in the project and they said no, because first she was too busy with school and "starting a career", and besides they felt that the daughter was dissaproving of and uninterested in the type/style of house that they truly wanted. The daughter did come to one meeting when she was home on spring break - I think more because she wanted to see the office and her parents may also have harbored the idea that we might offer a job. But she really didn't seem to be too interested in her parents' project.
Maybe they just think you're too busy at this point in your life. Afterall, it's a lot of work (trust me!) and - depending on the arrangement with your parents - it might not be a paid, or at least fully paid design gig - so it's probably not the sort of thing you can devote yourself to fulltime. So your parents might just think that it's not fair to ask you to put all your spare time into this.
Or, they might just not be seeing you as an architect yet. Sure, they know that's your lifelong ambition - but by habit they probably see you as their aspiring architect, and haven't noticed that you're there or almost there now.
Maybe they feel that it's wrong to ask you to design it for free, or for less than the going market rate for an architect.
Maybe they don't know you're interested - maybe they think that designing a fairly traditional house is not a project you'd want.
Maybe they think (correctly or not) that you aren't at a point yet where you have the expertise to do the project. For instance pencebor's post indicates that he doesn't feel ready to design the house that his parents are saying he'll do soon. Maybe your parents want to be in this house before the point at which they think you'll be ready to do it.
Maybe they think that any architect house will be more expensive than a stock house - which is not always the case of course.
In any case, have a talk with them. If you want to do it let them know. If you want to do it for no pay let them know. If you're willing to listen carefully to what they want, and if it turns out to be a french country cottage afterall but you're still willing to work with that, then let them know!
One thing I'd talk to them about right away: if at all possible they should be encouraged to purchase a site BEFORE they get their hearts dead-set on a plan. Explain the importance of responding to the site - in terms of everything from heating and lighting and views and drainage and slope and parking and optimal overhangs and massing and shadows and where the garden will be in relation to the kitchen door - as well as in terms of contextual issues (how's that french country cottage going to look next to the neighbor's octagonal dome house?)
There's a fairly recent book called "A House for My Mother: Architects Build for Their Families". It's not the most architecturally interesting book ever, but it does a good job of showing the very personal responses to the problem of designing for family. You might want to give that book to your folks - it would be reassuring in that there are many very nice houses (some weird ones too though) in that book, sometimes done by people who were still in architecture school or not long out of it.
Another good book for parents thinking about building a house is "The House You Build". It does a good job of discussing why someone might want to use an architect rather than go with a stock plan, and realistic expectations about budget, timelines, etc.
"Sigh.... Parents: Can't live with 'em, can't legally shoot them and collect the insurance money to pay for grad school."
If i had kids who said this about me, i would surely run them over with my wheelchair exposing their guts to the elements - this amount of disrespect for parents is possible only in the US.
My brother in law is in his residency and he and his wife are talking about building a house soon. I told them if they built a spec house I wouldn't set foot in it. They think I was kidding, but seriously fuck 'em if they do.
I don't even care if I design it, as long as some architect does. It's like me going to a holistic healer and telling the brother in law that his medicine is all mumbo jumbo bullshit.
share some good horror stories of contractors and at the very least they will understand the woth of having a representative looking out for their interests and doing quality control.
this kind of discussion is going to fit well in my book entitled "round windows and laundry chutes". nearly all my client request one of each and to date none has recieved a round window or a laundry chute. opps.
i put a laundry chute in one client's house..don't know if it get's
used though...seems like a bad idea though...a metal chute
that goes down two floors.
I feel your pain LiG - my sister & brother in-law just dropped almost a mill on a disgusting McMansion waaaaay out in the 'burbs. I pleaded with them that if they had a million to spend, they should buy a 50s rambler closer into the city, then spend the other half mill for me to do the re-design/addition/upgrades.
They've been living in their brand-spanking new McMansion for two months now and have two unfurnished "bonus rooms" because they haven't decided what to do with them yet, all the low-voltage systems (intercom, security, etc.) got blown out in an electrical storm, and they've got a really bad leak at the bay window in the dining room.
Yup - a million bucks. Vinyl windows, Vinyl siding, "real" brick facade... Bleeech!!!
I have only done one laundry chute. Usually this is a request early on, but when we show a plan organization that doesn't allow a chute that lines up with the laundry below, this is always quickly de-prioritized.
The one that I did was for a family with a lot of small children. We showed them that the diameter of an average laundry chute is bigger than a small child, but they said they weren't concerned about this since the child would "land safely in the laundry basket" below!
I haven't done any round windows, but a few clients have strongly insisted on ovals.
I'd just suggest talking to them. I know some people are beyond reason, but I also know most people don't try to educate family to the benefits of having their son/daughter design their home (better home, helping further their son's/daughter's career).
i once offered to design my in-laws a home on a piece of land they already owned. they had tons of ideas, but could never decide on exactly what they wanted. we talked about it for two years, but never really came to anything.
so one day i sent them a proposal. once they saw that i would cost 5% of the cost of their home (discounted from 10%) they decided a tract house would suit them better.
i wasn't bitter. they got a good house, and i did not have to deal with the inevitable rift in our familial relationship that would have happened once they saw that i was incapable of designing in the style of "hill country tuscan".
The 1.5 story bungalow that I grew up in had a laundry chute. It was almost as charming as the sun-filled front porch. I can still remember the sound of the floor-level 2X2 door closing. My mother hid Easter eggs in it one year - she's very clever.
I don't know if my mother and step-father would ask me to design their next house. Regardless, I think they are set in the house that he converted from a tiny lake house when he was 18 years old. He's a steel subcontractor and enjoys building complex projects, but I think it would be tough to sell him on delight over commodity.
we have a laundry chute in our new old house. or we will. right now all of the phone wiring and some power has been run through it and it's a haven for spiders. but after we get that stuff cleaned out...
I had a cousin who fell down a lundry chute as a small child and despite landing in the laundry basket below still had to spend months with a substantial portion of his body in a cast.
Has this been posted on Archinect befoer? Probably, and probably it's too small to read here, but follow the url and enlarge it - Matt Groening is a genius.
Wow, I just remembered that I know every little detail of Bongo's Dream House! I spent hours poring over it as a kid, after I tracked it down in my mom's books. Huh. Yet another obvious architect pre-cursor clue.
obviously you all aint been desingin to many upscale homes as the master suites all contain a nice stackable unit for mommy and daddy and the laundry room has moved from the basement to the upper floors. don't you guys reader the builder trade mags? put down the lacan and get jiggy with it.
gin, something similar happened to me. Folks wanted to build a "retirement home" in AZ, So as a gift (anniversary) I built up a model and drew some plans (this was back in the day before all these new fangled computers and modeling software). And presented it to them. At least they appreciated the effort, but didn't build my design. We both got a little something from the experience, I got something "indepedent" to put in my portfolio, and they ended up with the 3+ boat deep car garage with attached house they really wanted!
my mom rocks. last year, she said if she won the lotto they'd let me design her house.
i sat her down, and basically told her if she didn't let me design and build her house, i'd never let her see any grandkids.
well, throw in that i have a best friend who's itching to do a ground-up, and between us we've worked on a few houses - presto chango, my parents are now trying to convince us to take 2 years off to do their house.
My parents have promised to show me the "French Countryside" floor plan they've chosen when I see them in Cincinnati over Christmas... I'm already bracing myself. Stay tuned for further developments.
In the meantime, I've gotten them a gift subscription to Dwell... Maybe it will expose them to some better design ideas between now and the time they're actually ready to build.
"We've been looking at some floor plans..."
The above statement was made by my mother on the phone to me a couple hours ago.
They've known since I was in 8th grade that I wanted to become an architect, and they've seen me designing bridges, houses, and other structures since I was old enough to pick up a crayon. They watched me play with Legos and Tinker Toys, and single-handedly build a primitive urban infrastructure in the woods behind our house... While all the other kids in the neighborhood were playing with Transformers and G.I. Joe action figures.
Later in life, they watched me get into an architecture program at college, and land an internship with one of the most well-respected architecture firms in the city.
Now, they're about 5 or 6 years away from retirement, and they want to build a home to retire to. Sounds like a noble idea.
So... They're flipping through mail-order floor plans from a book they found at Home Depot, and have settled on a "French Countryside" design. Their next task will be to buy a piece of land and hire a contractor to build it.
They explained all this to me, thinking I would be thrilled for them, and apparently without meaning to be ironic in any way... And this was after a 20-minute conversation about me getting my portfolio ready for grad school applications.
[bangs head against wall]
Sigh.... Parents: Can't live with 'em, can't legally shoot them and collect the insurance money to pay for grad school.
I think you can still leagally disown them...
Are they getting the mortgage through Ditech?
Psst gin,
Become an anarchytect,...secretly sabotage the house after the frenchie builds it. tear up some floorboards, roof shingles, loosen some plumbing pipes , unscrew hinges of doors etc then tell them "Ha, this is the best what contractors do !
SAVE OUR PROFESSION !
Last year when I was back home visiting my parents after finishing up grad school, my parents were replacing the stucco on their house with vinyl siding, and they were so excited to have my "professional expertise" there to help pick out the color of the siding from the Sears catalogue...
My folks just bought the 'retirement home' --after I begged them to let me design them something. The 'retirement home' is, at best, schlocky design, cheaply built, but entirely too expensive. It's redeaming point is that it's "waterfront property".
I assembled a true work of art as a proposal for them, and I *do* think this made them pause for a second...
but in the end, my folks just see me as the 'little kid' not as a professional.
oh yeah, and to add insult to injury, now they are trying to get me a job in their city - a city I fought for 18 years to leave...
YEAH RIGHT!
this happens over and over again. the old adage 'the older i get the smarter my parents seem' obviously doesn't work for architect-types as well as for other people.
my most recent episode was the four-season room that i was to do for my mother. she decided she wanted it NOW - so bought one of those aluminum 'extra room' kits and stuck it on the back of her house.
Heh... I know that feeling. My parents live near Raleigh, North Carolina (although I grew up near Cincinnati, and they're looking to return to Cincinnati to retire)... But everytime I find myself in a job search, my dad tries to get me to move down there. His rationale: "Well, there's plenty of construction down here... They're building a new Target store up the road, and a big new Wal-Mart on Highway 64... We've also got some nice new restaurants under construction nearby, like an Applebee's and an Olive Garden..."
Blech... I can barely spend a day or two in that place before I develop an overwhelming urge to run screaming to New York City.
(cross-posted with not per corell)
Oh, how horrible, LiG. Did you tell them that you could make them a better house for the same amount of money? Drastic measures are in order.
Sometimes people like that respond well to things like "market value". You could describe to them how houses like that fall apart after 5 years and won't be worth anything and they will have to do tons of repairs. Casually toss around a few really arcane bits of knowledge to back this up. "I bet he's gonna put in aluminum windows, huh? Pffff. And vinyl siding? I bet that'll trap some nice wetness in your walls. You might get black mold infiltration and develop spots on your lungs... yeah... that's pretty common. Guess he's gonna use regular fiberglass batt insulation? Pity, if you only used corabond you pay pennies for heating for the rest of your life..." You'd be amazed at how much these kinds of things impress them! Sounds real and concrete.
Then, look at their "plan" and immediately think of 3 things that they will understand that could make it a LOT better. "Boy Mom, I know you've always wanted a pass-through to your Dining Room... and what if I put in a dumbwaiter to the basement? And look at this room here--how will you fit any furniture in there?! Look--the closet door is in the exact wrong place, you'll always be banging it into your bed when you try to open it."
End your pitch with, "tell you what, Mom--give me 3 months and I'll will design a house where everything is exactly where you want it to be, and I'll work with the contractor to get it built to a higher quality than what you'll get from this mail-order house."
can't hurt... that's how I got my parents to listen to me!
i feel your pain LIG... my problem is not so much with my parents, but with my in-laws... i think that i've finally been able to convince my parents to let me design their "retirement home", but that's still a few years away...
my in-laws, however, are another story... so far, since i've been married, they have built two houses and are about to build another... all of them have been built with home depot floor plans... what makes it even worse, is the first house... they bought a pretty cool mid-century modern house on a bluff overlooking the st. johns river in jacksonville... it was a little out dated, but could have been great with a renovation and addition... instead they tore it down and replaced it with a schlocky "french country" monstrosity... now they're trying to sell it and it has been on the market for over 3 years with little interest from the market.
they also built a beach house from home depot plans... although, as far as pre-packaged plans go, this one isn't too bad... still, really annoying none-the-less...
now they're preparing to build a mountain house "compound"... again using plans from a book...
all this without a single thought of having their son-in-law, the architect, design anything... and they have the nerve to ask me what i think about the plans once they are drafted...
ARGGGGHHHH!!!!!
LIG - Sounds rough but look at it from your parent's perspective. They probably want a house that they are used to. A Home Depot catalog spec house is probably just that. Since you are applying to grad schools I'm going to assume you aren't registered and don't have a portfolio of built work. Many times parents can be the harshest critics. You are basically asking them to trust in an educated, but not prooven designer with little experience, no? Apologies if my assumptions are off, but I think you are asking much of them because you are their child.
My suggestion is to give them help where they'll need it. As myriam hinted, work with them on material selections. Help them pick the floorplan. Suggest minor changes like moving doors, etc. to make the design better for them. Interview contractors for them. I think they'd be happy for that help and would be much more trusting of your opinions.
did they see this>>>>>http://www.archinect.com/forum/threads.php?id=43918_0_42_0_C
hey lilG
they truely need a place that they can age in.. and you can easily explain that the mail order is not ment for that. It should be all about increasing independence and decreasing risk of injury or strain. I think a serious talk about their future of aging with them would make a diff and explain to them that you can create the perfect environment for them.. and just think how proud they would be if their friends were to come over and see it.. maybe even more biz for you?
good luck!
My mom keeps talking to people that I will built a house soon,... I just finished my b.arch degree, I have no idea how to built! I was never tought how to built!!! parents think that college suppose to teach! but it doesnt!! I guess I can build a 3D house and make it look photoreal to impress the ordinary people...
those goddamned ordinary poeple got always go and ruin everything.
hahaha! stupid ignorant masses who pay our bills. who needs 'em.
LiG, jonathanharper makes a very good point. Tie that into my argument!!! DO EEEET!!! TELL THEM THEY WILL BE DEPRESSED AND LIKELY SUICIDAL IN A SPEC HOUSE! LIVES ARE AT STAKE!!!!!!!
seems to me that the story never ends!!! after living with my aunt -under the same roof-- and she always telling me how great professional I would become, my mom bought the upstairs's condo and we moved in.. One day my aunt decides to renovate her downstairs condo and guess what??? she didn't ask me for my opinion so I understood that I have nothing to do with it, but another day when I came home she was waiting for me, she asked "how can I fix this? " a stupid mistake the contractor made, I asked her for the floor plans to see what this guy had in mind, and guess what. there are no floor plans, the contractor said that they aren't necessary, OH MY GOSH!!! end of the story her condo became the ugliest around and lose a lot of market value.. she now wants to sell but nobody seems to be interested in that ugly thing.
ps. don't think I'm happy for that, but she deserves it!!!
I understand how this would sting, but count your blessings...
I've been working on the design of my parents' retirement house for YEARS now and have been sent back to the drawing board more times than on any other project I've ever worked on. One problem is that once they asked me to do it that didn't stop them from continuing to look at the stock-plan french country cottage stuff anyway. They're always getting some new idea from a magazine or a friend or even from the interior design of their dentist's office and wanting to "change course".
There are a lot of issues with family dynamics, expectations, habitual ways of communicating, etc. on this type of project. If ground is ever broken I'm not sure that I won't have died of stress-induced heart failure before I ever see it.
In a firm I worked on a house for clients whose daughter was about to finish architecture school. We were very careful to find out whether they and/or she wanted her to have any involvement in the project and they said no, because first she was too busy with school and "starting a career", and besides they felt that the daughter was dissaproving of and uninterested in the type/style of house that they truly wanted. The daughter did come to one meeting when she was home on spring break - I think more because she wanted to see the office and her parents may also have harbored the idea that we might offer a job. But she really didn't seem to be too interested in her parents' project.
Maybe they just think you're too busy at this point in your life. Afterall, it's a lot of work (trust me!) and - depending on the arrangement with your parents - it might not be a paid, or at least fully paid design gig - so it's probably not the sort of thing you can devote yourself to fulltime. So your parents might just think that it's not fair to ask you to put all your spare time into this.
Or, they might just not be seeing you as an architect yet. Sure, they know that's your lifelong ambition - but by habit they probably see you as their aspiring architect, and haven't noticed that you're there or almost there now.
Maybe they feel that it's wrong to ask you to design it for free, or for less than the going market rate for an architect.
Maybe they don't know you're interested - maybe they think that designing a fairly traditional house is not a project you'd want.
Maybe they think (correctly or not) that you aren't at a point yet where you have the expertise to do the project. For instance pencebor's post indicates that he doesn't feel ready to design the house that his parents are saying he'll do soon. Maybe your parents want to be in this house before the point at which they think you'll be ready to do it.
Maybe they think that any architect house will be more expensive than a stock house - which is not always the case of course.
In any case, have a talk with them. If you want to do it let them know. If you want to do it for no pay let them know. If you're willing to listen carefully to what they want, and if it turns out to be a french country cottage afterall but you're still willing to work with that, then let them know!
One thing I'd talk to them about right away: if at all possible they should be encouraged to purchase a site BEFORE they get their hearts dead-set on a plan. Explain the importance of responding to the site - in terms of everything from heating and lighting and views and drainage and slope and parking and optimal overhangs and massing and shadows and where the garden will be in relation to the kitchen door - as well as in terms of contextual issues (how's that french country cottage going to look next to the neighbor's octagonal dome house?)
There's a fairly recent book called "A House for My Mother: Architects Build for Their Families". It's not the most architecturally interesting book ever, but it does a good job of showing the very personal responses to the problem of designing for family. You might want to give that book to your folks - it would be reassuring in that there are many very nice houses (some weird ones too though) in that book, sometimes done by people who were still in architecture school or not long out of it.
Another good book for parents thinking about building a house is "The House You Build". It does a good job of discussing why someone might want to use an architect rather than go with a stock plan, and realistic expectations about budget, timelines, etc.
Good luck.
so sad to have parents rather than patrons...
"Sigh.... Parents: Can't live with 'em, can't legally shoot them and collect the insurance money to pay for grad school."
If i had kids who said this about me, i would surely run them over with my wheelchair exposing their guts to the elements - this amount of disrespect for parents is possible only in the US.
My brother in law is in his residency and he and his wife are talking about building a house soon. I told them if they built a spec house I wouldn't set foot in it. They think I was kidding, but seriously fuck 'em if they do.
I don't even care if I design it, as long as some architect does. It's like me going to a holistic healer and telling the brother in law that his medicine is all mumbo jumbo bullshit.
Good advice, Bloopox... This whole ordeal is still at least 5-6 years away, so I'm not too worried about it yet.
At the very least, I'd encourage them to get in touch with a local architect who can look out for their interests and keep an eye on the contractor.
sameolddoctor: Dude, lighten up. It was a joke.
share some good horror stories of contractors and at the very least they will understand the woth of having a representative looking out for their interests and doing quality control.
tell your parents to move to france
I was lucky, my parents hated the additions I asked me to draw up on their house! I'm off the hook!
My in-laws actually built the addition I drew up for their house, but they claimed the design as their own. I don't care, it looks really good.
they asked, not I asked....
this kind of discussion is going to fit well in my book entitled "round windows and laundry chutes". nearly all my client request one of each and to date none has recieved a round window or a laundry chute. opps.
i put a laundry chute in one client's house..don't know if it get's
used though...seems like a bad idea though...a metal chute
that goes down two floors.
I feel your pain LiG - my sister & brother in-law just dropped almost a mill on a disgusting McMansion waaaaay out in the 'burbs. I pleaded with them that if they had a million to spend, they should buy a 50s rambler closer into the city, then spend the other half mill for me to do the re-design/addition/upgrades.
They've been living in their brand-spanking new McMansion for two months now and have two unfurnished "bonus rooms" because they haven't decided what to do with them yet, all the low-voltage systems (intercom, security, etc.) got blown out in an electrical storm, and they've got a really bad leak at the bay window in the dining room.
Yup - a million bucks. Vinyl windows, Vinyl siding, "real" brick facade... Bleeech!!!
thats where the cats go
I have only done one laundry chute. Usually this is a request early on, but when we show a plan organization that doesn't allow a chute that lines up with the laundry below, this is always quickly de-prioritized.
The one that I did was for a family with a lot of small children. We showed them that the diameter of an average laundry chute is bigger than a small child, but they said they weren't concerned about this since the child would "land safely in the laundry basket" below!
I haven't done any round windows, but a few clients have strongly insisted on ovals.
I'd just suggest talking to them. I know some people are beyond reason, but I also know most people don't try to educate family to the benefits of having their son/daughter design their home (better home, helping further their son's/daughter's career).
i once offered to design my in-laws a home on a piece of land they already owned. they had tons of ideas, but could never decide on exactly what they wanted. we talked about it for two years, but never really came to anything.
so one day i sent them a proposal. once they saw that i would cost 5% of the cost of their home (discounted from 10%) they decided a tract house would suit them better.
i wasn't bitter. they got a good house, and i did not have to deal with the inevitable rift in our familial relationship that would have happened once they saw that i was incapable of designing in the style of "hill country tuscan".
The 1.5 story bungalow that I grew up in had a laundry chute. It was almost as charming as the sun-filled front porch. I can still remember the sound of the floor-level 2X2 door closing. My mother hid Easter eggs in it one year - she's very clever.
I don't know if my mother and step-father would ask me to design their next house. Regardless, I think they are set in the house that he converted from a tiny lake house when he was 18 years old. He's a steel subcontractor and enjoys building complex projects, but I think it would be tough to sell him on delight over commodity.
we have a laundry chute in our new old house. or we will. right now all of the phone wiring and some power has been run through it and it's a haven for spiders. but after we get that stuff cleaned out...
I had a cousin who fell down a lundry chute as a small child and despite landing in the laundry basket below still had to spend months with a substantial portion of his body in a cast.
I've got a laundry shoot. Perfect way to pass beers down to the basement.
My dream house has a laundry chute, a garbage chute, and a dirty dish chute.
I want a mail chute--the kind that sucks!
Has this been posted on Archinect befoer? Probably, and probably it's too small to read here, but follow the url and enlarge it - Matt Groening is a genius.
Wow, I just remembered that I know every little detail of Bongo's Dream House! I spent hours poring over it as a kid, after I tracked it down in my mom's books. Huh. Yet another obvious architect pre-cursor clue.
obviously you all aint been desingin to many upscale homes as the master suites all contain a nice stackable unit for mommy and daddy and the laundry room has moved from the basement to the upper floors. don't you guys reader the builder trade mags? put down the lacan and get jiggy with it.
gin, something similar happened to me. Folks wanted to build a "retirement home" in AZ, So as a gift (anniversary) I built up a model and drew some plans (this was back in the day before all these new fangled computers and modeling software). And presented it to them. At least they appreciated the effort, but didn't build my design. We both got a little something from the experience, I got something "indepedent" to put in my portfolio, and they ended up with the 3+ boat deep car garage with attached house they really wanted!
Hmmm... things get worse when your dad is actually an architect... now that's for a totally different post!
my mom wanted to buy one of those tuff sheds or some kind of prefab shed from home depot...that hurt...
...hurt bad...
my mom rocks. last year, she said if she won the lotto they'd let me design her house.
i sat her down, and basically told her if she didn't let me design and build her house, i'd never let her see any grandkids.
well, throw in that i have a best friend who's itching to do a ground-up, and between us we've worked on a few houses - presto chango, my parents are now trying to convince us to take 2 years off to do their house.
of course, now we have real jobs.
has she won the lotto yet?
My parents have promised to show me the "French Countryside" floor plan they've chosen when I see them in Cincinnati over Christmas... I'm already bracing myself. Stay tuned for further developments.
In the meantime, I've gotten them a gift subscription to Dwell... Maybe it will expose them to some better design ideas between now and the time they're actually ready to build.
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