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Getting Started
A home that truly fits the owner, in its size, shape, features, budget, is one of the greatest comforts there is. But designing a house of any type, and a floorplan that uniquely fits your needs, is a complex process. Domes make the process extra challenging because of the curved spaces, and the need to create an airform that both accurately reflects the design and is technically correct. But the many benefits of thin shell houses also make the process extra rewarding. This takes a major committment of time by you and by us to get all the details right. It all starts with a piece of property, a construction budget, and your vision of your ideal home.
My goal is to help you find the home that best fits you. I'm confident that we can do this as successfully for you as we've done for others.
Services Provided
Complete residential dome design, including:
* Concepts
* Construction drawings
* Color 3D models and renderings
* Computer animations, as appropriate
...fly-bys
...walk-throughs
...virtual reality
...solar animations
* Builder & engineer interface
* Construction consultation based on actually having designed and hands-on built a dome start to finish
Highlights
2003: Rear Cover Picture, Aug/Sep 2003 Fine Homebuilding magazine
2003: Winner of 2003 Quality Home Comfort Award from Contracting Business magazine
2003: Profiled in the Travel Channel's World's Best series
2002: Profiled in the book Xtreme Houses, Prestel Publishing
2002: Profiled in HGTV's Extreme Homes series
1998: Profiled in HGTV's Dream Builders series
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Developing your Vision
Creating a vision of your ideal home is more about words than pictures. More about feelings than dimensions. More about wants and needs than shapes and sizes.
Your description of what you want out of a house--your word picture--will help you to collect and articulate and communicate those things that are important to you. The form it takes doesn't matter. The easiest is to pretend you're writing a long letter to an old friend or a relative telling them all about your new house. Along with that, you can draw sample designs if that makes you happy. For some, that's a useful way to communicate things they want in a house. But understand that the intricacies of the dome shapes and the rules for what works and what doesn't and what makes good use of space mean that there are likely to be significant changes from this. As a tool to communicate wishes, they're fine. As a way to save time during the conceptual design phase, they normally don't.
Typical Timeline
In the typical case, you should allow about two to three months for the development of a concept uniquely suited to you. Allow another month for the production of the construction drawings. Engineering can require a month or more, as can acquisition of necessary permits. Unless there's something unusual about your project, the entire design, review, and approval process will take four to six months. Faster is possible if that need is discussed up front.
Fee Structure
We offer a combination of experience and economy that is hard to match. Design fees are based on the size of the project, and are lower than practically all other experienced designers and architects. Once we are able to determine your space requirements, I'll be happy to commit to a budget that is sufficient for the scope of the project. I am certain it will be less than you'll find elsewhere for the same scope of work, especially considering our experience in designing, consulting on, and personally building air-formed, thin-shell structures. If the proposed fee and scope of work are agreeable to you, we'll prepare a contract, and can begin work immediately.
Budgetting Basics
Design (concepts, renderings, blueprints)...$2.50/sf
Other professional services (provided by others, may or may not be required):
Structural Engineering...$1.25/sf
Energy Load Calculations...$0.15/sf
Survey...$1000 and up
Soils Analysis...$500 and up
Permits, Land, Landscaping, Septic, etc...variable
Construction of basic residence (provided by others, costs based on averages):
Completed residence...$100-$120/sf and up built turnkey
or...
Dome shell construction...$50/sf
Remainder of house...$50/sf on up
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