Quadra Village House DDes Research Victoria, British Columbia 2024
What is Being Subverted?
1 Contemporary asymmetry 2 Stair design 3 Front and back porches 4 Wood frame construction 5 Architect-designed houses 6 Expected modern design
Nonfiction Case Study Questions
If a budget is low, what normally expensive parts of an interior can be left unfinished? If a budget is low, is it possible not to design an exterior? Is there a new kind of modern architecture where construction conventions determine the exterior? Do classic forms and pure geometry benefit single-family construction?
Dictation
This project is a real commission for a couple relocating from Vancouver to Victoria. It was the first applied DDes case study. The new project’s timing was fortuitous. The scope of work was a great place to test the DDes techniques and themes. Our other applied case studies were for repeat clients. This project is not for repeat clients, so it provided a chance for clients to respond to our proposed ideas without any bias or preconceived ideas –that our designs would be successful for their own use once built. We experimented with a new type of fee proposal. I proposed that we try out some themes from our DDes research on their new house. We would only propose DDes ideas and themes that would suit their project and the budget. If these clients liked our ideas, I would credit $8,000 towards the fee. If they didn’t, our regular fee would apply. This created a very interesting working dynamic that was as interesting as the design outcome.
It meant we wanted to propose ideas that would be well-received so we could reference them here. If the ideas were so conservative and “ordinary” to win their approval, we would lose $8,000 and have a very uninteresting applied case study, possibly so boring it would be detrimental to our project’s thesis. But if the ideas were so outrageous and difficult, the clients could make the decision to forego $8,000 to avoid being guinea pigs in our wacky experiment.
When I first met these clients, their overall goals aligned with our past work. They wanted to build a new house in the Quadra Village neighbourhood. An existing house with major structural issues had to be demolished. They are both professionals who work from home in the tech and law fields. They both wanted confidential home offices. They need a music studio to play various instruments; they have a lot of books; they take cooking very seriously; they want a big working canning pantry; they want a complete mudroom for a future large dog. They are active, with guests and parents often coming to stay. They had a lot of things on their wish list, but they also had a meagre budget, lower than typical construction costs in the region. This part of their project almost seemed impossible.
One of the owners’ fathers is a builder in Nanaimo. He builds a house on spec every few years. He is not used to working with detail-oriented architects like DJA, yet he offered to be the general contractor for this project. His trade pool will be very conventional. He will be able to keep the costs down, but the trades and suppliers he will bring in, like himself, are not used to architecturally designed houses.
Our usual design method is similar for every project. After basic interior planning, we devise a unique exterior concept to prevent our new projects from looking like our past work.
To pre-emptively cut costs before interior planning started on this case study, I thought we should take one of the most significant parts of any project and do something completely new. For a while, we wondered if the exterior should be finished with a particularly cost-effective material. Then, we wondered if a super simple exterior form would let us create a striking house for a lower-than-average cost. After talking with the client’s father more, we realized the best way to convince building trades this house is more like everything else they have ever built than a custom architect-designed house is to have them build what they always build. This means the roof must use prefabricated trusses, normal perforated metal soffits, generic gutters, and standard fiberglass roof shingles. The walls must be clad in generic painted Hardie panel fibre cement siding, and the window sizes should be limited. The house will take on the same look as every other new or renovated house in the neighbourhood. It fits in. The most cost-effective roof is hipped, so there are no gable ends to finish with wall cladding. A square house and roof shape means all the proportions and dimensions are matched on each side. One architectural technique that our office has used in the past is using conventional materials on inventive new shapes. This case study takes that kind of thinking one step further, to take no design responsibility for it. The trade-off was to find a way to respond to this do-nothing exterior expression. We questioned how this project’s inventions could be more impactful than its form.
This happens with large bi-fold doors, mimicking the most cost-effective way to install doors in a typical closet. Triangular spaces behind the doors will make hot pockets for growing tomatoes and zucchini, a spot to store tools, and areas to hide the garbage and recycling since the project will not have a carport or garage. The building’s economic shape is literally torn open. We’ve taken the lowly bi-fold closet door and exaggerated it to the scale of the street. Occupants can shape entire new exterior spaces by opening sliding doors and creating outdoor rooms with movable doors.
The design has a lazy pragmatism, creating an ad-hoc appearance. Hose bibs, lights, electrical, doorbells, and air vents are doing their jobs in plain sight at the front and rear exposed facades. These elements are normally on the sides of the house to hide their unsightliness. The linty smell of a clothes dryer wafting towards a front door is a modern version of apple pie cooling on a windowsill.
The house is wearing a Hardie panel housecoat. This project’s concept is to effectively renovate an exterior shape and form we might not want or choose. The exterior will have little to no potential to be distinctive. Instead, it will be almost like a Monopoly board game piece, a silhouette of what a normal house should be. It will not stand out. It is a new model for diplomatic architecture. But not on the inside.
A big coniferous tree blocks the light on the property’s south side. This is not bad since south light is often overrated; it’s hot and intense. The house only opens to the east and west, claiming morning and afternoon light. East and West sunlight have more personality and are well-suited for long breakfasts, home offices, and front porch cocktails.
Central ambient light is desirable in a house with a perfectly square plan. A pyramidal skylight will make a three-level bookcase come alive with light that constantly changes throughout the day.
Exposed rafters are quite difficult to build in an aesthetically pleasing way. If the floor joists between levels are exposed, plumbing, lighting, sprinklers, smoke detectors, and soundproofing are displayed. We like the ambience and texture of a house with exposed framing, but hiding all the services adds costs to a project when it intuitively should cost less. DJA has designed projects where we exposed all the services but replacing garish plastic piping with visually appealing steel pipes added back the costs that we hoped to save by deleting the ceiling’s drywall in the first place.
A large open-riser stair is a coveted design feature in many residential projects. This project’s stairs satisfied this cultural urge but in an unusual way. Typically, during construction, a temporary, simple, and functional “construction” stair is made, which is always replaced later with a fancier stair with more expensive components. We proposed leaving the first and more economical stair as-is for this case study. Its importance is exaggerated by placing it in the center of the house, exposed and lit from above by the skylight. This elevates standard “low brow” building materials and construction techniques. Our idea celebrates the carpenter’s skills, whose work is typically buried under drywall and carpet.
We will apply a water-based urethane to the naked bones of the house and call it done. A central bookshelf will run up the middle of the stairs and will be made from equally common 2x10 framing. Plastic coroplast polycarbonate panels from Home Depot will be screwed to the framing to make sure no one falls. Polycarbonate is used most for backyard greenhouses. In this case study, its use is reversed to let light escape from the skylight core rather than let light in. This strategy costs less than any other suburban stair, but it will feel unlike any other house we have designed. This bookcase core will have a behind-the-scenes appeal, like poking around a house under construction.
It is irreverent and a reversal of convention to make the core of a house feel unfinished when, paradoxically, it is the part of custom-designed houses where a lot of money is spent.
Common pre-hung mahogany-skinned interior doors are readily available at any local building center. They are very affordable, but hardly used anymore. They were most common in post-war North American homes. They have fallen out of favour and have been replaced with ubiquitous white raised panel doors. Anyone raised in a suburban house in North America from the 1950s to the 1990s remembers these kinds of doors. With the right details, this applied case study’s mahogany-skinned doors will have a nostalgic pleasure –a reminder of basement playrooms everywhere.
Inside the case study’s front foyer, we needed to overcome the privacy problem without blocking all the light or closing off the main floor’s otherwise generous openness. To avoid using custom screens, we will simply “pull the pants up” of a typical drywall interior wall to let some light through while blocking unwanted sightlines.
This project has been fast-tracked for permits, and construction will start just as this DDes is complete. It is a few blocks away from our Double Header duplex, which is a precedent for this DDes. That project has a much different personality. More of the budget was required for a very expressive exterior design with metal siding. The Quadra Street House is as introverted as the Double Header is extroverted, inspired by the seven DDes themes.
This case study successfully proved a business case that will be scalable for collaborating and co-investing in research with clients. The design subverts what an architect-designed house is. This design’s inventive and customized parts are also irreverently the ones that could become universal.
Super Short Criticisms
D’Arcy Part of it wants to be ignored, and part of it feels inside out.
Kelsey Oversized shutters to close off the windows. Innovative or unnecessary?
Jonny Showcasing a gas meter is a dream for Fortis, but does everyone feel the same?
Jesse POV from a pedestrian: Is this just a giant garage?
Alex Two elevations, pointy hat.
Mary New “Victoria Special”?
Shane Suburban smoothie: blend equal parts Palladian villa, Groverhaus, and ice. Serve in a big coke glass.
Breana A normal house with a bookcase around the stairwell.
This exploration is part of an ongoing speculative project that began as doctoral research. The collaborative case studies test ideas that will inform future built work. A new design methodology using unconventional techniques explores how to delay aesthetics and form in a search for utility-driven, human-focused projects. Architecture’s status quo is questioned through an optimistic but contrarian lens.
