BACKYARD cottage

During my second summer as in intern with Archer & Buchanan, I was tasked with surveying a spring house in the backyard of a home of the Philadelphia suburbs. This was not my first experience with a scanner, creating a point cloud model, and modeling the existing conditions, but it was the first time I had ever done this all on my own. Once I finished the survey and had all of the existing conditions drawn, I was surprised to find out that I would become the designer for this small project. As an intern, that was pretty exciting and scary all at once. 

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The mission with this project was to build a small addition to the already small spring house for the homeowner's parents to move into as a compact, yet high end retirement home. Working with tight impervious coverage restrictions, my goal was to make the addition look as if it were always a part of the original springhouse. To do this, I was careful not to add any masses taller than existing, and tried to introduce the building's original stick-style arts and crafts detailing into the gable ends of the new addition.

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By the end of that summer, the design was complete and was ready for documentation. I had always wondered how the project progressed after I left until a couple of years later, one of my coworkers from the office sent me a picture of its construction. Fortunately, I was given the opportunity to go and see it for myself more than once during construction. During these visits, I got to re-connect with the clients, and hear kind words from them as well as the builder as to the success and their liking of the design. 

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This being the first project that I had ever fully designed to be built will always hold a special place in my heart, and I am so grateful to have been able to watch it come to life. See above some of the design, to contruction, to reality, and some before and afters.