Interior design is a multi-aspect career in which technical and creative solutions are related within a structure in order to attain a constructed interior setting. The interior designing procedure follows a coordinated and systematic methodology, including analysis, research, and assimilation of knowledge into the artistic process, whereby the resources and needs of the customer are met in order to create an interior area that satisfies the project objectives.

There is a broad assortment of employment opportunities and working conditions within interior design. Tiny and large businesses frequently hire interior designers to work for them on a regular working time. Designers for smaller companies typically work per job basis or on a contract. Self employed interior designers, which are 26 percent of all interior designers, typically work the largest amount of time. Interior designers frequently work under stress in order to meet deadlines, meet customer’s needs, and stay on the budget. In some situations, licensed experts check the work and authorize it prior to passing the design to the construction permitting or clients for approval. The necessity for a licensed verification and signature differs by relevant legislation, range of work, and locality. Their career has the tendency to involve a huge deal of travelling to visit various studios, locations, or offices and homes of the client. A lot of interior designers are employed by bigger architecture companies. With the assistance of new technology, the procedure of calling clients and getting design options across has become simpler and needs less travel. A number would argue that essential makeovers have reformed interior design from a client viewpoint, making the designing process more exciting and interactive, in a fairly technological yet labour intensive setting.

A theme or style of an interior design is a continuous idea utilized throughout a space in order to create a sense of completeness. Themes are not to be mistaken as design concepts or the higher level party, which involved a deeper comprehension of the architectural framework, the programmatic and the socio-cultural needs of the customer. These styles frequently follow era styles. Examples of these are Art Deco, Indian Mughal, Gothic, English Georgian, Minimalist, Mid Century Modern, International, Feng Shui, Islamic, Victorian, Louis XVI, Louis XV, and a lot more.

The development of interior decoration styles has now bred to include styles not necessarily dependable with a certain era theme permitting the combination of pieces from various eras. Every element has to contribute to function, form, or both and keep up a constant standard of quality and blend to create the wanted design. An interior designer develops an interior and home architecture design for a client that has a theme and style that he mentally relates to and personally likes. For the past ten years, architects, designers, and decorators have been discovering the innovative fixtures that were created post war of the 50s and 60s from the new supplies that were created for military functions. A number of the trendsetters include Herman Miller, Knoll Miller, Ray Eames, and Charles Eames.

Did you know April is considered New Homes Month? If you’ve been thinking about planning and building a new home, now is definitely a great time find information on constructing your dream home! Current homeowners looking to build a new home and prospective homeowners alike can find lots of beneficial information on the National Association of Home Builders website. There you can find resources on the home building process, as well as the basics on financing a home and so much more information that can help make the process of becoming an educated consumer a lot less stressful.

Trilogy Partners can help you create the home of your dreams! Since 1998, we have partnered with our clients to create custom homes throughout the Colorado mountains. We use an integrated design-build process to serve our clients from concept to completion. Visit our website or contact us to learn how we can help you build the mountain home you’ve always dreamed of!

Contact Trilogy Partners to begin planning your new home!

Image Courtesy of Trilogy Partners.

With the multitude of residential building technologies available, it only makes sense that the optimized home might take advantage of more than one. Though the majority of residences in this country are built using conventional framing technologies (dimensional 2×4 and 2×6 lumber for walls as an example) other structural technologies are available and have become increasingly popular. This article begins a series on how multiple building technologies combine seamlessly to form superior and environmentally sustainable structures.

The residence we affectionately call Caleb’s Journey combines conventional framing, structural insulating panels, and post and beam to create a fully modern and highly sustainable home with timeless design.

Structural Insulating Panels (SIPS) form the super insulated walls of the structure. They come precut from the SIP factory.

SIPs form the walls

First, we stand the SIP Panels.

Setting the SIP in place

And then we add the post and beam structural members.

Post and Beam roof trusses are milled and assembled.

The roof trusses are supported by log posts and by the SIP walls. The combination provides extraordinary structural integrity.

Creating a room that looks like this when finished. Reclaimed redwood covers the ceilings.

Interior walls are conventionally framed

Conventional framing is used for the interior walls and some roof transition areas. SIP panels are also used on the roof.

The end result is a home that combines the energy efficiency of SIPs, the structural integrity and beauty of Post and Beam, and the flexibility of conventional framing. For more photos of Caleb’s Journey, a true hybrid home, visit the photo gallery.

Robert Gluck | Advocates are challenging the global building sector to cut the carbon footprint of concrete and other products by 30% by 2014, and 50% by 2030. Edward Mazria, the American architect behind the influential 2030 Challenge to zero out fossil fuel use from all buildings, is turning to a new target: carbon-heavy construction materials. The “2030 Challenge for Products,” unveiled in February, challenges the global building community to cut the carbon footprint of concrete and other building materials by 50 percent by 2030, with an interim target of 30 percent beyond the average by 2014.

Executives eager to get their newly “green” products to market faster are embracing the effort.

“Moving these products into the marketplace has been difficult,” said Jeff Davis, an executive at  Houston, Texas-based U.S. Concrete, a maker of ready-mix concrete that has developed a product with a 30 percent lower carbon dioxide footprint. “Hopefully, the 2030 Challenge for Products will accelerate this process, challenging designers and specifiers to accept the advancements in concrete technology.”

Mazria, executive director of the nonprofit Architecture 2030, says the initiative builds on his 2030 Challenge, launched five years ago. That push was adopted by some of the sector’s biggest forces, including the American Institute of Architects and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, and was endorsed by President Obama, the nation’s mayors and many governors.

So far, supporters of the new challenge include some obvious allies: The Green Standard, Southface Green Building Services, BuildingGreen and the Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF), a collaboration of construction and design firms.

Kathrina Simonen, an architect and structural engineer involved with CLF, told SolveClimate News that the effort will “leverage a significant established network to motivate action.”

The premise behind both 2030 challenges is that the world has just 20 years to cut energy consumption from the building sector to levels needed to avoid dangerous climate change.

Each year in the United States, buildings consume nearly 50 percent of total energy and contribute 47 percent of national greenhouse gas emissions. Most power use is in operations — lighting, heating and cooling. About 5 to 8 percent of yearly energy consumption comes from building materials and construction.

However, when the full lifecycle of the sector is considered — from manufacturing and transporting the products to constructing and operating the building for two decades — the percentages shift, says Mazria.

“About 60 percent of the total energy a new building would use over 20 years is for building operations,” he told SolveClimate News, “and about 40 percent is the materials in the building.”

Initiative to Impact All Product Manufacturing?

Experts say that cutting carbon emissions from building materials requires green improvements in three sectors: Factories must adopt more-efficient manufacturing processes and cleaner energy generation; transport must be cleaner-burning; and buildings must be built for low-carbon building products.The hope is that these changes could trickle across the entire manufacturing industry, said Francesca Desmarais, director of the 2030 Challenge for Products.

“That’s why we decided to look at taking on and addressing the building products, because it will also influence the entire product manufacturing sector,” she told SolveClimate News.

“Going forward [with the products challenge] will have a positive rippling effect,” Mazria said. “Once you start looking at this entire process, you begin to see things that you never even imagined.”

They also sought to speed and streamline efforts underway.

“Many people were doing good work in the product sector, but they were moving at a snail’s pace because of the complexity and variety,” Desmarais said. “We’re doing this to coalesce the movement and to get moving quicker.”

‘We’ll Know in 12 to 24 Months’ How Well It’s Working

Architecture 2030 set down benchmarks and developed protocols and standards to meet its carbon-reduction targets of 30 percent below each product’s average through 2014, increasing to 35 percent in 2015, 40 percent in 2020, 45 percent in 2025, and 50 percent by 2030.

But how exactly will the complex carbon footprints of building products be calculated? Mazria said it took a year to decide.

Initially, there were two options — “cradle-to-gate” impacts, from mining of the raw materials through transportation and manufacturing, and “cradle-to-grave,” which counts post-manufacturing greenhouse gas emissions, through installation of the product, covering all the energy used before it heads to the trash bin.

According to Mazria: “We had all sorts of discussions with industry experts on what this should be and decided on cradle-to-grave as the benchmark.”

“The industry is supportive now that they know what they’re counting,” Desmarais said. “Ours is a holistic approach, and as the entire sector coalesces around the benchmarks, we’ll know in 12 to 24 months how well everyone is moving in the same direction.”

Industry Not Keeping Up with Advancements

Some experts say that just making environmental impacts of building materials known is a fundamental first step in stoking demand for climate-friendly products.

Without that demand, “manufacturers will not even invest in the research required, nor publish the results” on the CO2 associated with their products, said Simonen of the Carbon Leadership Forum.

Simonen says her research is focused on the carbon accounting of concrete. She develops models that help ready-mix plants to compute and report the footprints of their different mixes. “Concrete is a unique material,” she said. “Its composition is to a great degree specified by structural engineers, and thus the design team can directly impact the manufacturing processes.”

Producing cement, the main ingredient of concrete, accounts for as much as 5 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide.

Davis of U.S. Concrete said some of his firm’s recent projects have been manufactured using new technology that can cut the product’s carbon footprint in half by adding fly ash, slag and natural pozzolans into the mix, among other changes.

So far, though, industry hasn’t been able “to modify or change specifications at the same rate of technology advancements,” Davis said, though he’s hopeful Mazria’s challenge will change this.

Project to Generate ‘Transparent Carbon Info’

Also on board is the Healthy Building Network (HBN), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that tracks health impacts of the country’s buildings.

The network’s Pharos Project provides environmental information on a range of materials such as paint, carpet, flooring, acoustic ceilings and insulation.

Tom Lent, policy director for the organization, told SolveClimate News that the 2030 Challenge will expand HBN’s work as evaluator of building products.

“HBN has long been concerned about the significance of climate change emissions in the building product manufacturing sector,” Lent said. “But a lack of useful data and consistent guidelines for carbon calculations has hampered efforts to assess [products’] carbon footprints.

“This initiative has the potential to generate the type of credible and transparent carbon information needed to fill an important gap in our understanding.”

However, he warned: “[It] will be critical to make sure that carbon improvements do not come through the use of toxic materials at the cost of human health.”

By Guest Writer at SolveClimate Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:30pm EDT

With the advent of increasingly innovative green technologies, architects are now more than ever able to fully maximize their sophisticated artistic visions, while simultaneously minimizing the negative environmental effects of their structures. As climates and resources shift, environmentally-conscious architecture is beginning to produce more and more complex, sustainable, and awe-inspiring buildings, signifying that green architecture is the wave of the future from both a creativity standpoint, as well as out of ecological necessity. In fact, in the most extreme and inventive cases, architects are now not only working to preserve the natural environment, but actually to positively affect, alter and improve it.

In its most basic form, green architecture signifies building designs and practices which predominantly utilize recyclable and renewable materials to create structures that operate on a minimal amount of energy. Efficient building models are able to run off of solar, wind, and sometimes water-powered energy generation and take up as little land as possible in order to preserve or encourage green space.

If you’re interested in more architecture inspiration, these posts will amaze you:

30 Incredibly Realistic Interior and Exterior CG Environments
50 Conceptual CG Buildings and Environments
30 Striking Architectural Photographs

A massive and trendsetting example of green architecture is the Hearst Tower in New York City, which in 2006 was the first building to become certified with an LEED Gold rating.

The towering skyscraper, which is built on top of the 1928 Hearst International Magazine Building, can boast that it was constructed out of 90% recycled materials and currently uses 26% less energy than is required by today’s standard building codes.

An even more space-age like recent example – one which dominates another skyline – is the Bahrain World Trade Center.

The complex’s two towers are connected by giant wind turbines, which are capable of providing up to 15% of the buildings’ total energy consumption.

And it’s not just about the skyscrapers. While plenty of private clients now choose to construct homes, offices, and schools out of recyclable materials, outfitting them with solar panels and energy-saving appliances, some properties go one step further, opting to adopt “green roofs.” This design choice is exactly what it sounds like: soil and grass-covered roofs that provide insulation for the home, give back the green space claimed by the building itself and, in the most sophisticated of cases, help to maintain the ecology for surrounding wildlife.

A stunningly simple residential example of this can be seen in the OS house built in Spain by NOLASTER Architects.

The art department at Nanyang Technological University offers an even more whimsical model.

This, however, is only the beginning. As green technology advances, so too do architects’ visions for its usage. Some, like Vincent Callebaut Architects’ “Lilypad Project”, which proposes ocean-based eco-city islands that run on collected rainwater, will most likely remain pure fantasy.

Others, like Sheila Kennedy’s “Soft House”, that makes use of solar-harvesting textiles, may simply be too costly to ever be put into mass production.

The ideas come in all shapes and sizes, from skyscrapers filled with agricultural farmland to single-family homes that run off of energy produced by the household’s own inhabitants and objects.

CK Designworks in Nanjing, China, has recently unveiled their design plans for a remarkably large eco-city development slated to begin construction shortly. And while some projects are focused on preserving natural resources and finding alternative energy sources, others like the Living Mountain, dream up the creation of entirely new micro-environments.

In this particular proposal, inhabitants will survive the growing desert landscape by building cities inside of massive, mountainous skyscrapers. While creating protection from the uninhabitable outside, the structure will also work to pull water from the region, cycling it inside to produce an entirely new climate and ecology.

One thing clear in all these plans, visions, proposals and dreams is that green architecture provides not only new challenges, but new opportunities for designers. It is an inspiring and growing field full of imagination and innovation, one which puts firmly in the architect’s hands the exciting responsibility of envisioning and constructing a new look for the future.

Source:  Creativefan.com by Maria Nemenman

Last month we told you about the National Association of Home Builders’ (NAHB) survey study that was presented at the NAHB International Builders’ Show, which revealed what builders expect new homes to be like within the coming years. That survey study predicted that homes will become greener and smaller by 2015. Recently, the NAHB told Builder magazine exactly how small they expect homes to be in a matter of two years.

According to Builder magazine, the average home is currently about 2,380 square feet in size, but the NAHB expects that number will drop to 2,150 square feet by 2013. Stephen Melman, the director of economic services for the NAHB, noted that affordability is driving all the decisions when it comes to new homes. He said that home buyers, especially those looking at custom homes, are saying “This is how much I can spend. How can we make it fit?”

One way smaller homes will achieve an open feeling as the average home size decreases is through a spacious, open floor plan. Many consumers have noted that a great room, as opposed to several smaller rooms, is the No. 1 item on their wish list for a new home. Additionally, walls are being eliminated, ceilings raised, and brighter, more interesting materials are being used to make spaces fee larger.

We found this information to be very interesting and intriguing. If you would like to read more, check out the article “The Shrinking New Home” on the Builder magazine website.

Photo credit: Nahb.org.

As a culture, we are obsessed with what’s “in.” What’s new, popular, the latest trend, the style of the season. In the design world, we often talk about what’s hot. This year’s color, for instance. And we use expressions like, “oh, that’s so last year.” Have you ever walked into a home and instantly felt like you’ve been transported back to 1989? Not a particularly good year for design. And as you survey the shag carpetting and the dark wood and tile countertops you wonder, how could this have ever been in style? Or considered “good design.” But it was. Or was it? I think not.

Steamboat House - Timeless Timber Frame Mountain Style

I’m not alone in the opinion that good design is timeless. What is the point of designing something that has high standards that come with an expiration date? If you’re not designing for the future, your designing obsolescence. It’s one thing if you’re designing a dress. But when you’re talking about architectural design, and the associated investment of money and resources, do we really want to be purposely designing something that is doomed to look dated in a short while? Again, I think not.

Japanese Tea House in Colorado - Timeless Design

So the next time you hear some designer gushing about “the current rage” you might want to consider the source and whether that so called “expert” really understands that good design never goes out of style. As someone who just has to have the latest iPhone etc. I know what it’s like to lose sight of good instinct just to pocket “what’s hot.” But one thing is sure. We all know what it feels like to walk into a room and know instantly that we’re in a space that time has left behind.  And in this kind of place, no one feels comfortable. In fact, when we’re in a room, a place, a house, a hotel that feels dated, we immediately look for the nearest exit. So then, our instincts tell us that good design should never feel dated. So yes, we all have enough sense to know what good, timeless design is. We just need to remember, and then apply that sense when we’re making choices that should indeed, be good choices for many years to come.

by Bill Sutton | Green architecture is definitely not black and white.   Green architecture is inherently organic and integrated.   There are currently many varying approaches and schools of thought behind this.   I am no architect but I do have a huge appreciation for the art.  I thoroughly enjoy the very few times in my day job as a construction manager when I’m able to sketch out details in the field or use my architectural drawing skills to get my idea across to the team.

I have started to notice the following trends in the green architecture arena.

1.) Passive Design – Orienting the building so that it is able to use the natural warmth and light from the sun. Just as important is the proper insulation of the building so comfort is preserved throughout the day.  Another critical item is to make sure that the most efficient windows are used on the exterior of the building. The passive house (haus) system has become widely popular and they are able to use these methodologies to save over 80% energy usage when compared to conventional design. Here is a link to their website:http://www.passivehouse.us/passiveHouse/PassiveHouseInfo.html .

• Trombe walls
• Thermal bridge free construction
• High efficiency glazing
• Conserving resources through design

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMfaSJBy4Bg&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-iFJ3ncIDo&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Lake Norman resident Starr Miller considered getting rid of the whirlpool tub in her master bathroom when she realized her housekeeper was in it more than she was.

“She has to climb in it and clean it every week. It’s a total dust magnet,” said Miller, who works as an interior designer in Davidson. “Every time I walk by it all I think is, ‘That’s 42 square feet of wasted space.'”

Miller is not alone.

Patricia Dunlop, a spokeswoman for the American Society of Interior Designers, said many people are opting to replace their oversize tubs and Jacuzzis for extra vanity, shower and storage space.

“We all have more products and appliances in the bathroom than we used to,” said Dunlop. “We want the space to be calm and relaxing, so having the ability to put those items away and keep the space clear and serene is important.”

And while most interior designers and real estate agents agree it’s still important to have at least one tub in the house for bathing children, animals and other needs, oversize tubs are now seen as a frivolous use of space.

Dunlop cited one study that found the average whirlpool tub is used only seven times during its lifetime as reasoning for the shift in home design priorities.

Residents would rather invest in shower amenities that will create a spa experience, such as multiple shower heads, benches, steam showers and jets, said Miller.

Huntersville resident Deborah Maher said remodeling the master bathroom was her first priority when she moved into her home in Birkdale.

While the bathroom had an elegant whirlpool tub with stone work all around, it also had a vanity with only one drawer and a tiny shower.

Maher decided she was through with large tubs after living at her previous residence in Cornelius, she said.

“All I ever did was dust it and put decorations around the edges,” she said. “I never used the thing.”

So Maher worked with Miller to redesign her bathroom. With the help of sub-contractors, they removed the tub, expanded the shower by 2 square feet and added plenty of cabinet space for the couple’s bathroom supplies.

Maher said she’s most pleased with the shower, which now features a bench, a rain shower head, a handheld shower head and a built-in shelf.

Miller said she has many clients like Maher who are opting for larger showers over whirlpool tubs. Still, Miller said homeowners should be cognizant of how the remodeling will affect resale value.

“It’s more about how you do it than whether you do it,” she said. “If you take it out and do something fabulous with the rest of the bathroom, you can come out even or above. If you take it out and don’t do anything, I would suspect you’re taking value out of your home.”

Kathy Byrnes, a Realtor with Re/Max Executive at the Lake, said most real estate agents still consider a bathroom to be a full bath even if there is no tub. What really decides the classification is whether there’s a shower in the room, she said.

Source: Charlotte Observer