Attention Austin artists, architects, designers, creative’s, and Sketchup jockeys – Dwell and Sketchup are holding a little competition:

Design Your Dwelling Competition

Here is their description:

What does it mean to feel at home in the modern world? Dwell & Google SketchUp challenge you to explore what this means to you in the "Design Your Dwelling" design competition featuring Google SketchUp software.

Most people define their home as a place where they feel comfortable and secure. But what does that actually look like? What would make it personal to you? Is it scale, materials, sustainability, environment? Only you know for sure. Entry period is July 3-August 31, 2008.

Check out this website for competition details: Design Your Dwelling

Grand Prize Details

Besides the pride and prestige of winning, the grand prize sounds like a lot of fun:

On September 12th the competition winner will be flown to San Francisco, California to join Dwell editors for lunch at the Dwell offices in San Francisco, tour the "site" of their Dwell home, and take the Dwell/AIA architecture home tours in San Francisco. In addition, a physical 3D model of their winning home will be created and displayed in the Dwell headquarters and then gifted to the winner. Airfare will be provided by Google SketchUp and two nights accommodation in San Francisco will be provided by Dwell.

Sketchup Resources

There are several powerful 3d design tools in the marketplace.  Sketchup stands out because it is not only capable of rendering complex and detailed spaces, but it is also very easy to learn.  There are many online resources to help you get started.  Here are a couple:

• 3D Basecamp 2008 Presentations
• Google Sketchup Tutorials

Feel free to add others in the comments.  Let me know if you enter the contest and I’ll post your work here.  Good luck!

This is the third post about my modern remodel in Austin, Texas. Click here for all ‘My Remodel’ posts.

As I covered in the Home Search post, we considered our remodeling options when we purchased our home.  We found a small home on a big-enough lot and began to plan our project.

Starting Point

The original home sits towards the front of a long, narrow city-size lot with homes on either side.  There are several medium sized trees on the property and one large Elm on the North property line, all of which shade the rear of the house (West) from the afternoon sun.  Here’s a top view of my rough model (North is up):

While the existing garage was moments away from collapse, the house was structurally sound.  We wanted to re-use as much of it as possible.  Here is the floorplan:

You can see that the home was originally a 3 bedroom 1 bath with a small living room and kitchen.  We think the rear addition was a closed-in back-porch that was completed in the 1970’s or 1980’s.  It wasn’t well built, and had several structural issues. 

Here are some photos of the original house:

Design Goals – Fashion and Function

With a long and narrow lot, an existing house, and several good sized trees, we knew our remodel/addition design would be challenging.  We did our best to keep our program simple and to stay open to our architect’s ideas.  Here is a list of our ‘functional’ criteria:

• Open and connected common areas (living, dining, kitchen …)
• Strong connection to the outdoors (lots of glass, outdoor living)
• Energy efficient design (minimize solar heat gain, maximize breeze …)
• Main floor master and guest bedrooms
• Secluded office (I like quiet, my wife likes to hide my mess, win-win)
• Option for separate studio and workshop

As for fashion, our tastes lean towards Modern and MCM architecture/design, however we also wanted our home to relate to the design elements of our neighborhood (mostly Craftsman and some Victorian).  An interesting challenge, so we left this up to our architect .  Lets see how we did before this post gets any longer.

Read the rest of this entry »

I work with many people who are looking for what I call a ‘property with potential.’  This is a house or a duplex that may not fully meet their needs today, but has the potential to be made into their dream home.  Of course, some assembly is required .

One such client is now going through the design process on their dream home.  Last year we found their perfect ‘property with potential’ – a large lot near downtown with a livable but dilapidated house.

They are working on the design with Cottam Hargrave, and would love some input from others who are interested in design and modern architecture.  They are very open to feedback and would appreciate your thoughts and constructive criticism.

Design Feedback Contest

They have received some great feedback via posting on ModernAustin, however I’m hoping to get a few more useful opinions for them.  In fact, I’ll sweeten the deal by offering a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.com to the best comment, as selected by my clients.

If my readers don’t participate I’m open to awarding the prize to one of Ben’s commenter’s, but I hope I don’t have to do that!  Share your thoughts and you could earn Amazon spending money (my favorite kind).

Here are a few thumbnails of the design, but please see Ben’s Flickr set for the full-size drawings.  Email me if you have trouble viewing the design files.

Here is another link to Ben’s Flickr set of the design.  Add your constructive comment below and you can win a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate. I will accept entries until July 15, at midnight.

Update: The winner is…

Thanks to those who provided input on the design. See below for my clients’ thoughts. They appreciated all of the detailed input and suggested I offer the prize to SRC. So congratulations SRC! The check is in the mail.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted an update on My Remodel. Rest assured things are going well, I am awaiting a few details before posting on our design and builder choices. In lieu of such a post I thought another remodel success story was in order.

Whenever I am discouraged or nervous about some aspect of our project this post on Design Sponge always lifts my spirits: Design Sponge – Lisa and Todds PDX Bungalow.

Click on through to read the full details, but here are a few after/before thumbnails:

What an amazing transformation!