Vermont Architect – Robert Swinburne

I’m Back from Cape Breton Nova Scotia and feeling slightly tired. The scenery was amazing and I got a 3 1/2 hour bike ride on the Cabot trail (through all the good parts) which was amazing. We stayed one night at Meat Cove and the rest was with the in-laws at a farmhouse on a dirt road in Port Dauphin. There was an empty rocky beach across the road where I had the profound pleasure of watching the sun rise over open ocean on a clear morning.


I found it particularly interesting to study the residential landscape of the Canadian Maritime Provinces as well as the scenic landscape. The residential areas where real people lived (as opposed to us tourists) reminded me of the Maine of my youth. The farther you get from Wal-Mart, the less “stuff” people have in and on their yards. Not just “toys” which seems to be a big cultural difference between Southern Maine and Vermont (the two areas I’m most familiar with) – (branch office in western Maine?) but also a difference in landscaping. The new American northeast approach seems to be to have many trees and shrubs and flower beds rather randomly punctuating an expanse of lawn. What I saw on Cape Breton was much simpler and cleaner. Many if not most houses didn’t even have plants around the foundation, almost unthinkable here in the states. The effect was very serene and peaceful. The houses as one would expect were much smaller and more compact as well. I probably should have snapped more photos but that would have slowed us down considerably and probably not gone over so well with the others in the vehicle.
I think I may have to take a vacation every year.

Dan Gregory, the editor at Houseplans.com had a good blog that I pay attention to. on August 6th he put in a ditty about my Vermont Simple House 1 on sale now. There is also a way cool toilet that has a small sink at the top of the tank to that when you wash-your-hands-evey-time-you-go-to-the-bathroom ( I sound like a parent – wait a minute, I am!) the water goes directly into the flush tank.

There is also a bit about Marmoleum which is a linoleum flooring product. My mother was told recently by several flooring stores including Lowe’s in Maine that linoleum doesn’t exist anymore. (in other words they didn’t carry it). She is also complaining that her new $100 toilet doesn’t flush very well. Duh! I didn’t even know they made toilets that cheap. Is it plastic? Gross generalization alert: Mainers like cheap stuff and rarely pay for quality.
I’m off for two weeks of visiting family and riding my bike on the Cabot Trail!

I have a new website designed by Good Bear Productions here at the Cotton Mill in Brattleboro, VT
Check it out! It is very beautiful.
I have learned that I take good photographs but that way too many of my projects are as of yet un-photographed.

I am a strong believer in not sitting your kid down and telling him to do “art”
Charlotte (age 3 1/2) and I have been collaborating on a series of paintings.

A recent small project to house a Mongolian “ger”

This is a sketch that represents nicely how I often start a project. It is a combination of floor plan, diagram, brainstorming, and notated thoughts. A very streamlined shorthand. Ten years ago my process was more traditional but how I work and think continues to evolve. This sketch is a good representation of this. Preceding the drawing was a site visit, meeting the potential clients to hear what they had in mind and seeing a few images that sparked their interest. A few nights later all that was simmering in the back of my brain came to a boil and I closed my eyes for an hour and laid out a basic design approach in my head which ranged from identifying basic relationships between spaces and the site to specific potential “vignettes” and “details” that could become a meaningful part of the design. The advantage and even necessity of doing this in my head with my eyes closed seems to be that it eliminates the filter of paper and pencil and the inevitable editing which occurs at that stage. I allow myself completely free association with no hierarchy of process – plans, details, parti, spatial relationships, etc. are all given equal importance in this process. This usually seems to happen before falling asleep at night and the next morning I am able to pick up a pad and get it all down in this shorthand. So here is a truly unedited view into the process.

I have resumed work on Providence house with an eye toward the stock plan market. Here is a video flyby of the sketchup model as it stands. There are a few adjustments I need to make to the windows and trim. It is a structural model as well with floor and roof framing so you can get inside and see how simple the framing is.

Tinyhouseblog.com, A fun blog with a rather large following just ran a bunch of photos of my Fern House. It is terribly fun to read the comments.

I have been a big fan of Steel for siding for a while now. It is often hard to convince clients to try it. Someday, I hope to use Core-ten Steel on my own house either in flat panel form or 7/8″ corrugated sheets. Here is a blog of interest: SIPs House It is a process blog about building a very cool small house in Portland, Oregon. The architects are SEED Architecture Studio. Of particular interest to me is the exterior siding. They Used Core-ten steel panels for part of the exterior. Core-ten is a steel that rusts to form a protective coating. It is very low maintenance and very beautiful. Pricing is unknown – they found a very cheap source. Locally, I have been unable to find it very cheap but I should pursue their link for a potential source. Look around and you may see examples of it in your area. There is a railroad bridge near the exit 3 rotary in Brattleboro made with Core-ten that is beautiful (other than the teenager spray paint thing) Here is a link to the SIPs house blog entry on siding. Also check out how they used old barn boards – beautiful!

A video of a current project – additions to a Brattleboro House

Along the lines of; How I spend my time when surfing the net, I spend some time every week looking for what’s out there in the architectural world with focus on residential and small scale projects.
Here is a Firm whose website is great, the work they do is inspiring and they have a great blog that fosters thought and conversation. They are located in Seattle.

TED:Ideas Worth Spreading is a collection of talks and presentations that help me keep the world in perspective.

We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we’re building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.

also GoLogic homes in Belfast Maine is worth checking out. They have some great prototype small passive house designs. When I look to the future of my own firm, This is a great model for one possibility. Although if I were to go this route I would worry that it closes me off from being the small town architect for lots of people and doing more non-residential projects.

Here is my new business card created by EM Letterpress in New Bedford, MA. The picture doesn’t do it justice I’m afraid. It is incredibly beautiful. I am not worthy. I went to school with Eli of EM Letterpress and he went on to not practice architecture. Check out their website and flickr photos.

check out lots more letterpress at ETSY.com

After about 8 years of post secondary education, a number of years working for other architects and a decade of running my own design firm with over 100 projects to my credit, I am starting to become a good designer. It is not that I am so un-talented that it took me so long and so much effort to reach this point. It is more a recognition of the standard I hold myself to. See my previous post “What Architects Don’t Know”. There is a certain amount of frustration when I see ads for local building firms offering design services or even architectural design (illegal) and realize that most people think of design as not much more than a floor plan or drafting. I’ve always been a good drafter but drafting is just a tool in my toolkit to get the job done, not an end in itself as some hand-drafting cermudgeons seem to view it. (more on that later) Floor plans whether for a new home or other project take more skill, talent and experience but are also a small part of the whole picture. I am often in a situation where I make a simple move on paper that will save the clients thousands of dollars and save the builder a headache during construction and no one but me will ever know it. Thus this blog. It allows me to pat myself on the back a little bit once in a while.

I am a fan of Marianne Cusato. She is the creator of the marvelous “Katrina Cottages” and has recently published a most helpful book “Get Your House Right” And she is a master at getting good press. I would love to work for her designing a series of small homes for a northern climate starting with my Providence House I recommend checking out her work at MarianneCusato.com

Architecture is one of those professions where the more you know the more you know you don’t know. Many architects don’t know this. There are some who “float” and others who are in a constant state of continuing education. I am reminded of this by the large number of architects who state on their websites “We have always been green” but then you look at their projects with a trained eye and see otherwise. Geothermal heating or solar Photovoltaics on a house with 2 x 6 walls, probably insulated with fiberglass batts is an infraction I commonly see. Those architects who read this and don’t see the hyppocracy in this example would be the example of “floaters”

This doesn’t happen to me often enough and, unfortunately, this is not my client. I have been following the process of a house being built in Northern VT on the blog Building Green in Vermont They had been working with a designer and had come up with a rather large and boring house (in my opinion) then this happened:

And the bids we received for materials like siding, roofing, windows, etc. were higher than we could really afford. It became clear that the best thing to do was reduce the size of the house.

The more we thought about the prospect, the more excited we got. We are all about going green and yet we missed the most obvious strategy of all…reduce the building’s footprint. In addition to cutting the materials needed for construction and thus saving resources, a smaller house means lower energy usage. It also means disrupting a smaller part of the site.

I think they went from 2160 square feet down to 1568, ended up with a much nicer house that any realtor worth his job would tell you they could sell quicker and for more if given the chance. I expect the owners would never give a realtor that chance. this is what they ended up with

My apologies for not posting much recently, overworked and sick kid are my two excuses. Here are some quick model views from a current project. I am developing two schemes for an addition/renovation to a small house, part of which used to be a “sugar shack” (In VT where you make maple syrup in February and March) Here also is a link to my picassa album with some project photos.

I Just put out an introductory mailer.  Click on the image to see.  There is a very pretty flash slideshow of images that I produced in Photoshop.

I realized I am not as well known locally as I would like so I put together a very pretty email campaign.

This is a flythough video I did in Sketchup. It is rather fast so hold onto something