Trend No.1
Living Larger but with a Smaller Footprint

Our increasing concerns with environmentally sustainable design and along with tighter budgets comes the trend of smaller houses. A well designed house plan will give the feeling of expansiveness without the expense of building a larger home. Smaller homes use less energy too. In fact, a well designed smaller home can feel infinitely more luxurious than an enormous McMansion. Clever layouts, clear flow through the home, expansive windows, open floor plans and blurring the lines between indoors and out can all help to make a smaller home feel large, which brings us to…


Trend No.2
Blurring the lines between the home and the garden

These days and with our busy lifestyles we don’t seem to get out to stroll in the park or along the beach as often as we would like, but this doesn’t mean that we can't be surrounded by nature. Homes are increasingly being designed with large expanses of folding or sliding doors and windows that completely open up living areas to the garden, making it easy to move between the indoors and out. More and more families are wanting gardens with outdoor living and dining areas and outdoor kitchens are hugely popular right now – we are living outdoors more and more. Also the outdoors are being brought indoors with the increasing trend of interior courtyard gardens and living walls.
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Designing your dream home was the fun part - selecting beautiful finishes and designing incredible spaces for you and your family's future, imagining what it will be like to live in your perfect family home... The next stage is the most stressful part: Construction.

Yes, the construction phase will be messy, it will seem to take forever and there will be problems no matter how well the preparation has been managed - it's just the nature of the beast. However, you can reduce the likelihood and the number of problems that occur and there are ways that you can participate in the process to help keep the construction of your home running smoothly.

The best way to reduce the likelihood of issues arising during construction is for your architect to have prepared all the documentation for tendering and construction extremely thoroughly. The drawings should detail every single aspect of the build, the specification needs to include everything down to the colour of the grout on the bathroom floor, the schedules should include every detail of every item that will be supplied and installed by your contractor. This way your contractor will have ALL the information that will be necessary to build your home and won't be making quick decisions on your behalf (usually choosing the cheapest and quickest, and therefore typically not the best, option for your home).

If you are using different designers to design interiors, built-ins, gardens, engineering, colours etc. it's vital to make sure that all the work is being co-ordinated by one person and all are designing from the one master brief. This is because you need to be sure that all the different designers are working from the same information, for the same goals and that all their work co-ordinates together.

The most important way to reduce the stress levels of the construction phase if for you to have only one person designated to provide the contractor with instructions. This person can be you, your architect or a project manager. Many problems occur during the build when the contractor is being told to do different and contradictory things by different designers and by the home owners. This lack of clarity of communication guarantees that there will be time and cost increases and definitely increased stress levels for you!
 
Visit our website for more information and find out how we can help you to achieve your dream home www.archetypestudio.com.au