The Ottawa Citizen ran a story recently on some local designers with experience in creating homes suitable to a rural setting. Some of their thoughts are worth sharing.
Barry Hobin, an architect from Ottawa, designed some homes last year for a development in a rural village not far from Canada's capital city. Some of his first thoughts on the project were to use eco-friendly materials, orient the house to take advantage of the natural landscape and movement of the sun, and to set the garage so that it was not such a dominant feature.
Another Ottawa designer, Jim Bell, echoes Hobin's passion for capturing the sun and scenic views. Bell likes to create a space in the mudroom or garage for rinsing off the dog or muddy boots, which can be accomplished by installing a basic shower base. (If you've ever had a dog with the freedom to roam a rural setting, you will understand immediately why this could be such a handy, time-saving addition.) He also creates custom storage spaces for outdoor furniture and garden and lawn equipment.
What I find interesting about these ideas is how little concern these designers give to the interior of the house itself early in their thinking process. Dealing with a rural setting, it's almost as though they design from the outside in, giving priority to garage location and function, storage spaces and transitions from outside to inside. With those decisions made, they can turn to thinking about the design of the house itself.
This is one of those thought patterns that separates good designers from the rest of use. They begin with how we use, live in and move through a space, and what materials ought to be used to construct that space, whereas we tend to begin by thinking about how the finished space will look.
We're all designers, but most of us aren't very good at it. Perhaps we just spend too much time thinking from the inside out. We're looking the wrong way.
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