House and Home as a Journey

While a house is a journey, a home is a journey also. A home is about making a house into one’s home. At Building Arts we believe that a house is more than a collection of rooms (even well decorated ones), and while your house may constitute your arrival home, it is also continuation of your own journey. A good home design should facilitate this journey, and it can do this in a number of ways.

The extent to which your house supports your life includes not only the comfortable and secure places into which you can retreat, but also those that incorporate passage or mystery.

A window, for example can simply be an opening in the wall, or it can be a place for your imagination to reside.

A window can also be a place to rest.

A wall may be punctuated with doors or windows.

One’s journey can be enhanced by creating discrete yet interconnected rooms.

Long views with marker points which break the view into segments make a house feel larger without feeling voluminous.

Through the hint of a room beyond, rather than simply a door into a room, we create the feeling of passage to that room.

Why should a house be a journey? For one thing it is analogous to each of our lives as a journey. We reside in our house and our house resides in us. 

The idea of the permanence of one's home within ourselves is poignantly expressed in this NYTimes essay by Alan Wightman, The Ghost House of My Childhood, in which the author describes a return to his childhood home:

I turn onto West Cherry Circle, drive past familiar houses. Flowers are blooming, it’s spring. But something is wrong. The house isn’t here. There’s a hole in space where the house used to be. Slowly, I inch up the driveway and park the car. Something is terribly wrong. I feel as if I’m not in my body any longer. My body is a distant, cold moon. There was a two-story house here, with pink brick walls and a porch with white posts and dormer windows. I can see right through the empty air to bushes and trees on the other side. And on the ground where the house was, new grass. Not a single brick or splinter or piece of debris.

A home is a journey as with traveling. Imagine yourself on a train, which is a room moving through the landscape or the city, on the way to your destination. If you are feeling delight or anticipation in your travel, this is not unlike the way you might feel moving about a well designed home—a journey, even though your house is not moving. At Building Arts, we strive to achieve this feeling of delight as you, the homeowner, move through your own home.

Allison Landers Joins Building Arts Team

Building Arts Sustainable Architecture+Construction, LLC is thrilled to have Allison Landers join the Building Arts team! This partnership brings together a combination of talents unparalleled in the Twin Cities' residential architecture and construction community.

When I began Building Arts’ practice in 1998, my goal was to provide a seamless design and construction process for our remodeling clients by combining space-planning, architectural design, and construction. At that time, architects were generally not contractors, and design-build firms were a new concept. We were moving away from the idea of using products as an end in themselves, and instead centered our process around our clients’ lives and families.

Allison Landers
alanders@building-arts.net

With the addition of award-winning residential designer Allison Landers to the Building Arts team, we can expand and deepen our approach of client-centered design.

Allison has been in the Residential Design+Build industry for 11+ years. Among her many awards, she was named Best of St. Louis Park's 2013 Interior Designer in the St. Louis Park Magazine and Best of Houzz 2015 in design and customer satisfaction.

Allison has played many roles: Lead design, sales, draftsman, estimator, specifier and artist. Within all of these roles her core beliefs have been a huge asset: patience, the ability to listen, artistry, individuality and flexibility. She is passionate about creating an individuals' dream home; from a tiny powder room to a new build, there is not a project that she does not love and dive into head on. She also shares our interest and expertise in making more sustainable living environments.


It is therefore with great excitement that we introduce Allison Landers as the newest member of our Building Arts team in order to carry on our cherished ways of working with clients.

You can find Allison on LinkedIn, Houzz, and now also on our Building Arts About page. Please join us in welcoming Allison to our team!

Building Arts' New Team: Ben, Bella (mascot), Harvey, Allison

Home is an Indelible Place

I have felt this for a long time, but haven't been able to put it into these words. Recently, I came across an article in the New York Times Sunday Review (January 11, 2015), The Battle to Belong written by Roger Cohen. He considers home in a larger sense than a house. That is, the place and culture of one's history. Cohen writes:

“(Home) is the landscape of unfiltered experience, of things felt rather than thought through, of the world in its beauty absorbed before it is understood, of patterns and sounds that lodge themselves in the psyche and call out across the years. When home is left behind or shattered, an immense struggle often ensues to fill the void.”

One's house, made into a home, comes to be a setting or a container for this view of our world.

The spirit in which Building Arts designs and builds is to treat each of our clients’ homes as such a setting, and so this seemed a good jumping off point for our 2015 blog series since it so aptly captures our intentions.

“Indelible” is defined as “that which cannot be removed, washed away, or erased.”  This does not mean that when one leaves one's home for another or changes their home, that something is lost, but rather something is carried with you. It is that “something” that intrigues and motivates us at Building Arts.

When one embarks to change their home through remodeling, it is not simply a matter of taking down a wall or making a kitchen larger or dressing it with the latest fashion in cabinets and counters, so we encourage our clients to work with us from a place “of unfiltered experience, of things felt… of beauty absorbed… of patterns and sounds that lodge themselves in the psyche….” This is not always completely achievable, but we try, since following this path will lead to better connection between you and your home; it makes for a better product.

How, then, does this translate into working with our clients and their homes? I believe in examining what exists. Every house, no matter how ordinary or elaborate has been built to meet needs and desires, so we look in depth to determine what should be held on to (what cannot be washed away) and what might change to serve our client.

I also firmly believe that we are designing and building for our clients, not for ourselves as designers, that it is YOUR home and that the essence of change should come from you. I interpret, helping you translate into spaces, materials, colors, textures, light, rhythm, views—those components which make for resonance with your living space. Of course, we bring ideas for you to reflect on, based on what you tell us and on our observations of your living in your home, physically and emotionally. That's the fun part, sorting through and reflecting on possibilities via a process of iteration, but here’s the key: if you think too hard, it won't work!

At Building Arts, we are VERY good home planners and designers.  Ours is not a process that makes your remodel more expensive, only better conceived.  We do have an affinity for projects which add to the value, durability and life of your home, such as siding, windows and roofs, moisture mitigation and energy performance, and we do these projects in a similar spirit—that thought must go into the character of the home and how the products and methods used will appropriately to strengthen your resonance with your home.

Harvey Sherman, Architect

Photos taken from Lake Nokomis green kitchen and family room addition and South Minneapolis den addition.

Oh did we mention...?

CoTY Awards 2013


We have some bragging to do:

At the 2013 Contractor of the Year Awards Building Arts took home two prizes!

We won the category Residential Addition $200,000 and Under with this beautiful porch:

And received Honorable Mention for Entire House $250,000 and Under with this beautiful Home:

Thank you to NARI for another wonderful awards evening, and thank you to all of our wonderful clients!  We look forward to a year full of new projects and hopefully some awards again next year!

Window Condensation : What causes it?

As we all start to give in to the changing temperatures and switch on the heat in our homes, there are some familiar annoyances that reappear.  Window condensation is a top complaint of many homeowners, blocking their beautiful views of the changing fall colors outside.

What causes it?

It is the excess humidity in our homes. Warm air holds more humidity and when comes into contact with the cold surface of the window, it manifests itself in the form of condensation.  The issue is not our windows, it is controlling humidity through ventilation.

How do you prevent it?

1. Run bath fans and kitchen exhaust fans for longer than just showering time or cooking time.

2. Ventilate appliances like your clothes dryer or gas burning stove to the outside.

3. Be sure the louvers venting your attic or crawlspace are open and not blocked.

4. Open the fireplace damper or air out your house for a bit to allow the air full of moisture to escape.

The excess humidity issue

Heating and Ventilating magazine did a study on the sources of water vapor in the home:

- Cooking for a family of four = 4.5 lbs./day

- One shower = .5 lbs.

- Laundry = 30 lbs./wk

- Human occupancy = 6 to 8 lbs./day

- Dishwashing 1.2 lbs./wk

The typical family of 4 easily creates 150 pounds of water vapor a week which is more than 18 gallons of water!

Allowing this air to normalize itself is the key to preventing many moisture issues within the home, come learn more at our workshop next week with Cindy Ojczyk, who specializes in the science behind beauty:

October 23rd at 7:00 PM

95 Mackubin Street, St. Paul

Our friend Cindy Ojczyk will be talking with us about all things comfort-related and the in-depth science of it so you can make your home cozy, energy-energy efficient and dry year-round.

RSVP HERE or 651.222.8750

Wine and snacks will be served. 

The event is free, for more information visit our website,

http://www.building-arts.net/workshops.html

Drafts: What to do? 3 Ways to Prevent

Fall winds are starting to blow, are you feeling the chill?  This year, get ahead of those all too familiar drafts that breach your home, and ensure yourself a cozy home all winter long.  Here are three simple ways to prevent drafts.

Draft Snakes are always an option!

1. Install a sweep. A vinyl or felt strip found at a hardware store that attaches to the bottom of your exterior doors closing the gap between the door and floor. Cold air loves to creep in this space.  Block it.

2. Weather Stripping.  Buy the self adhesive kind at a hardware store and cover the perimeter where the window or door meets the stop, when closed the foam will seal the space between.  Remember, all those cracks add up to heat escaping from your home as hot air flows to cold. Heat your home, not the outdoors.

3. Replace your storm windows. In many cases you can keep and repair or restore your home’s original windows and improve energy efficiency and comfort greatly by upgrading your storm windows.

Want to know more? Do you have questions about home performance and comfort? To learn more about how windows and heating systems work in your home and how to make your home more comfortable – come to our workshop –

October 23th at 7:00 PM

95 Mackubin Street, St. Paul

Our friend Cindy Ojczyk will be talking with us about all things comfort-related and the in-depth science of it so you can make your home cozy, energy-energy efficient and dry year-round.

RSVP HERE or 651.222.8750

Wine and snacks will be served. 

The event is free, for more information visit our website,

http://www.building-arts.net/workshops.html

Thank You! A Wonderful Weekend Homes By Architects Tour 2013

This past weekend the Homes by Architects Tour was a success!

We were so happy to see everyone who came out.  We had a great time talking with everyone, and were very appreciative of all the positive feedback!

Harvey and Ben ready to go.

A huge thank you goes out to Jon, Katie, Bryn, Paige, and Maisy for opening up their home!  Great clients make great projects- to think we met on this exact tour one year ago, what an incredible process it has been! 

Katie, Maisy, and the before house at one of our first design meetings a year ago.

To see an album of the process check out our Facebook page!

Minnetonka Remodel Album