A few days ago, I submitted my final drawings for “Inland”.  

“Inland” refers to the bay-area setting, and the conceptual and pragmatic choice to inlay the house into the land itself.  

A reminder of the design intentions:

“Inland.”

This guest house addition to a bay-front home in Tiburon, California near San Francisco is the epitome of rustic sophistication.  Intersecting quadrants and a multi-layered, inset hill-side approach make this space feel larger than it is, providing the family with an accommodating, multi-purpose, stand-alone addition to serve out-of-town visitors, pool party guests, and daily family recreation.

Natural, hardy materials will pull the view of the bay’s surrounding mountains into the space.  Impressions of local flora and fauna will contribute to the natural, rustic, but lush feel of this bay-front addition by way of a leopard-shark inspired pool-floor mosaic, foliage-adorned upholstery, a fern-inspired bathroom mural/wallpaper, and other accents.  Large, responsive windows and spacious decks will provide optimal views from both inside and out.  Additional skylights and a westward facing orientation will optimize light for a comfortable, and beautiful interior environment.

And, a living roof which hosts native plant and animal life serves functional and aesthetic purposes.  Flooding, accumulated solar radiation and some loss of habitat are all avoided through the preservation of the hillside on the guest house roof.  Aesthetically, the living roof will cause the mostly-sunken guest house to blend further into the surrounding site so as to preserve an undistracted view from the main house.

There are always things to fix and improve upon the next time.  But, standing where I stand, I feel pretty proud of the result:  this project is my first full exterior-interior design with a full set of presentation drawings.  

If you were to print out this floor plan and the one below, layering them on top of one another precisely, you would see how the top floor and second floor intersect and their floors/ceilings.  The dashed line in front of the kitchen area, seen in the floor plan below, is an indicator of where the deck above would be situated in relation to it.

You can a section indicator (top right) in the “First-Floor Plan”, which corresponds to the drawing below.  A “section” is a cross-section of a floor plan but in an elevation view-point, which means, essentially, head-on with walls and floors visible.  

In this case, the cross-section travels across the longest length of the top story, depicting the children’s corner, the living room, then hallway/atrium with main entrance, built-in book case, and then bathroom.  

A technical section would show even more detail than this, like floor joists and whatever composes the ceiling and walls.    

Here are several small interior elevations including the kitchen/wet-bar, children’s area and guest bedroom, all requirements of the project program ( the word “program” in interior architecture/design is used to describe the set of “problems” that require creative solutions).

See more after the jump…

These last three drawings were fun and challenging.  Perspective drawings require a great deal of forethought and consideration.  The artist must consider view point, perspective, composition, accurate portrayal of the space, and, of course, all of the finishings (linens, upholstery, flooring, wall and window treatments, accessories and accents, etc.) that will go into a space, chosen by the designer, that are less visible in other drawings.  

This perspective is a little deceiving because it is of the hallway, a 6’ wide space.  I wanted to show the full length of the space, without it becoming too foreshortened (quickly vanishing into the distance, essentially) and to do that I had to create a view point that was at a bit of a distance from the far wall there.  In reality, another wall would be blocking the view of most of that hall.  

I’m going to have to investigate how to draw situations like this a bit more.  I don’t know if technically a drafter would have simply chosen a different view point, sacrificing some of the view of the hallway, but maintaining the actual structures present.  This makes sense, of course, but since these are presentation drawings, I know that there is also value in a drawing that can show a potential client a sufficient amount of their intended new space.  I’ll have to get back to you on all this.  :)

One of the other things I was working on while rendering these drawings was maintaining intention around the line weights I used.  In all of my sketching classes so far this is a highly emphasized element of quality renderings.  To pull those lessons out into my subsequent classes, instead of forgetting them along with the last day of class, is, of course, incredibly important.  I really appreciate the way a drawing can look with a variety of line weights - not just two, but three or four at least; there is a feeling of believability and realism that emerges.  

This drawing is the guest bedroom, private guest deck, and outdoor shower/changing area connected to the hot tub/pool.

And, of course, here is the site plan where all of this would land in relation to the main house, bay views, and appropriate/safe construction areas.  

This project took so many hours.  I was drafting away as the 4th of July was taking place around me.  I heard all kinds of fireworks but didn’t see a single one.  Not even a sparkler.  The encouragement I received from fellow students after submission, however, made the extreme diligence required of me totally, gratifyingly worth it.  

Thank God I have two more projects in this class to continue practicing the execution of such a large (compared to full-size professional projects out there in the world, no so large) project.