Designing your dream home

After designing interiors for more than 15 years, I want to discuss what is involved in gathering inspiration and ideas for your dream home. I’ll focus on three main areas: finding inspiration, designing and building.

Finding inspiration:
1. Inspiration can be found everywhere – in sights, sounds and even scents. For example:
Flower arrangements are a great source of ideas for me. When I look at them I see colour schemes.
Here’s a tool to help you get a personalized colour palette.

2. Jot down your ideas wherever you are. This way you’re sure not to forget them overnight.

more ideas via freshlocations.com

3. Creat your own mood board with all your ideas. Use clippings from magazines, photos, memories from places you like and your favourite colours.

4. Great design doesn’t have to be big. Small can be interesting too. {here}

5. Talk to an architect as soon as you can to help you translate your dream into reality and your ideas into a viable construction project. They can also study the proposed site, help secure planning and zoning approvals, help you work out financing and offer a variety of other pre-design services.

6. Discuss with an interior designer how to best utilize your interior space and get the look that suits your lifestyle.

Building

7. One last thing: find a builder who can build your dream home to your specifications, not his.

I’ve left a lot of details out, each of them stressful in its own way. For example: regulatory requirements, selecting materials, scheduling and financing, dealing with traders, keeping your eye on every detail, tracking progress, panicking, checking everything, letting it go, knowing when to stop, sourcing, styling, solving problems, and patience … the list continues. The level of stress will vary with each project.

But it will all be worth it when you step over the threshold of your dream home.

I've been keeping my eye out for a loft in the city and continue to be fascinated with loft living for my very own dream home. I want one like {this}

What is your dream home?

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klein-bottle-house

A contemporary holiday home with an origami-like twist. As you can tell from the images below, these odd angles are fun on a grand scale!

The Klein Bottle House in Melbourne, Australia

www.mcbridecharlesryan.com.au

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+ Elysium Noosa

This prestigious, world-class community on the Queensland coast is fully architecturally designed - from the houses themselves through to the streetscapes and leisure facilities. Bringing together some of Australia's most acclaimed architects, no two homes are the same and every one is a masterpiece of contemporary Australian architecture.
Each dwelling is an inspirational statement in individual design and comes with a million-dollar price tag!

Check out Elysium and enjoy the browse.

Lot 186 designed by :: Bligh Voller Nield::

Lot 186 designed by :: Bark Design::

Lot 141 designed by :: Elizabeth Watson Brown ::

Lot 189 designed by :: Arkhefield ::

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+ portable holiday home

A bach is a traditional Kiwi holiday home, usually by the sea, which sells for vast sums.
New Zealand architecture firm Atelierworkshop created a bach-in-a-box fully equipped with everything you need!
A 35-square-metre shipping container cleverly designed to allow one side to fold down to become a large sunny deck. Even the container doors become the supports for a bed, which folds up neatly into a standard container. Fully enclosed exterior steel shell.
It comfortably sleeps four (very friendly) people. It’s self-contained with simple caravan-style electricity and water connections and a solar unit, which allows total independence in remote areas. It’s totally portable and a fraction of the cost of the average getaway.
More features from Port-a-bach:

A HOLIDAY HOME
- portable,
- secure,
- high-level finish,
- designed to be environmentally clean
- comparatively inexpensive,
- comfortably sleeps two adults and two children.

THAT ALLOWS
- transportation,
- an immediate, flexible and long-term solution that enables you to use your land without investing in a permanent property commitment,
- for future development, ideal for leased land situations.
- to be power, water and sewer independent, it is well suited
to remote or non-service supplied land
- also able to be connected to available services.
- quick and easy transportation (via truck or helicopter) and
installation to any orientation with minimal impact on site,
- unfolding to create a living space and refolding to create
a secure unit for in situ storage or relocation.

FEATURES
- fully enclosed exterior steel shell (when folded up).
- appointed with large internal storage cupboards and
shelves / stainless steel kitchen and fittings / bathroom
with open shower, sink, composting toilet.
- interior fabric screen system gives the versatility of
creating rooms within the large open living space :
includes bunk beds, double bedroom,
dressing room, kitchen and bathroom
- exterior canvas screen system allows shelter to the
deck area for comfortable indoor/outdoor flow and living.
- 6 concrete footings form a stable, non-invasive
'foundation', allowing you to situate the unit on a wide
range of ground conditions.

Visit Port-a-bach for details.

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+ living skin rooftop

NYC rooftops combat urban heat and global warming.
Rooftop and vertical gardens can be energy self-sufficient; irrigated by natural rainfall and water pumped to the plants with the energy created by solar cells.
A 1000mm annual rainfall is enough to support a self-sufficient rooftop or vertical garden. Choose the right plants for the local climate and they will thrive with little maintenance.

Below: A company rooftop
→ I wish I could have an office like that.

Traditional rooftops, covered in black asphalt, are heat-absorbing surfaces that create the “urban heat island effect”, in which city areas tend to be two or three degrees hotter than the surrounding countryside. On a 23- degree Celsius day, the temperature on a black tar roof can rise to 45 degrees, while a green roof will maintain the ambient temperature. A report in Bio Science estimates that green roofs can reduce air conditioning costs by 25% and electricity by up to 50%.

Thanks to new technologies and growing green awareness, city councils worldwide are waking up to the advantage of giving buildings a living skin.
In parts of Germany, new buildings must now have garden roofs by law.
Earlier this year, London’s city council released a statement encouraging developers and building owners to install green roofs on their buildings.
Chicago, a pioneer in the green roof policy, has more skyscraper gardens than any city in the world.
And Tokyo recently introduced policies requiring green roofs to be installed on 20 percent of all flat surfaces.
Photo credit :: flickr "rich people rooftops NYC" by jwilly
Source :: The weekend Australian magazine, June 2008

Singapore's School of Art

ACROS building, Fukuoka, Japan

Quai Branly Museum, Paris, France

photo credit ::
www.gardenvisit.com
www.ntu.edu.sg
www.shinobu-review.jp

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+ Mineral reflection

Great design doesn't have to be big; small is often more interesting.

This unique 62 sqm. dwelling, built on a site of just 44.62 sqm. in a crowded residential area of Tokyo, is the brainchild of architect Yasuhiro Yamashita.

Inspired by the fantastic shapes of mineral formations, it makes maximum use of a minimal space.

For me, the interior design would be challenging, especially trying to create storage space amongst all those strange angles.

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+ building in motion

Dynamic Tower, the world's first building in motion, offers infinite design possibilities; each floor will rotate independently at different speeds, resulting in a unique and forever evolving shape.

Dubai

It is the first skyscraper to be built entirely from prefabricated parts that are custom-made in a workshop, resulting in cost savings. This approach, known as the Fisher Method, also requires far fewer workers on the construction site, thereby dramatically lowering construction costs.

Moscow

Renowned Italian architect Dr. David Fisher is the creator of the Dynamic Tower. He has spent more than 30 years working to redefine the technical and technological extremes of buildings in cities like London, New York, Moscow, Hong Kong, Paris and Dubai.
Each Dynamic Tower throughout the world will be unique, becoming an iconic structure wherever it's built. Together the Dynamic Towers will represent an era of a new architecture that will change the look of our cities and herald a new era of Dynamic Living.

Residents will be able to drive directly into the building via a special elevator that will take their car to their floor and park it at the entrance to their villa.

Dynamic Tower

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+ modern sustainable home

- Lots of glass
- Natural light
- Renewable materials
- Eco-friendly
- Solar panel heating

If this sounds like your kind of home, the gorgeously green Beitcher Residence might give you some great ideas for building your own.


Designed by W3 Architects out of Venice, California, with a variety of sustainable design strategies including passive solar design, state-of-the-art solar electric and solar thermal technologies, the dwelling is the result of a fruitful design partnership between an eco-conscious client and a forward-thinking architect. The Beitcher residence makes full use of the mild climate and the year-round sun in the City of Angels.

It integrates green technologies including direct-gain passive solar heating in the form of Trombe walls made of 8″ CMU block walls and earth berms. Passive cooling and ventilation of the house are achieved through a two-story thermal chimney which takes hot air up and out.

Floor to ceiling windows, sometimes stretching two stories, bring the maximum natural light into the space, minimizing the need for artificial light during the day.

The house incorporates a range of renewable materials, including bamboo, which is often seen as flooring, was put to use as a ceiling material. All cabinets throughout the house are made of Strawboard capped off by Cesar stone countertops and post-industrial denim insulation is hidden within the wall cavities throughout the house.

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LIKE THIS? THERE'S MORE!

+ cool picnic gear
a picnic basket with an insulated cooler section...


+ personalize your art
Simply select the design from their gallery and the colour combinations from swatches provided...

+ seanook
Among the many fascinating stalls, one in particular caught my eye ...

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+ f a b house

A single module & Combinations

Prefab houses are as innovative as they are flexible, easily scaling up from a studio to a vacation home or a corner shop.
Some modules are equipped with floor outlets, lights and plumbing. Designed for above-ground installation, it takes about two days to install a 10-sqm studio. Upgrading the plumbing or wiring is as easy as drilling through the floor.

If you’re considering buying land and building on it, a prefab house is a comfortable compromise while your dream home is under construction.

http://www.kithaus.com/

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+ matrix drainage

Design is everywhere! And so it should be. Honfay Lui shows us how he made a waste system that should be everywhere. This scrabble-like drainage system is made up of perforated metal squares corresponding to the 26 letters of the alphabet and the numbers 0 through 9.
What an original way to deliver a message!


All that’s needed now is some kind of locking mechanism to stop souvenir collectors taking them home. These wouldn’t last a day where I live. In every public-space project I’ve ever been involved in, everything has to be bolted to the floor to prevent theft … even the trash bins will mysteriously disappear!

via: yankodesign.com

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