Good Design

Il Serchio,

As an architect I just can’t resist writing about this. This last Monday night we stayed at Il Serchio a camper site in Lucca Italy. At first glance the concept of the place seems great and it looks new and clean. It’s dedicated to campers, has electrical and water hookups at each site, free wifi internet, showers, laundry and dumping station. The price is very reasonable at 18 euro per night and it’s pretty close to the old town center. We rode our bikes into town the first afternoon then the next morning took a nice bike ride along the river bank just up a little hill from the camp.

But it’s one of the best examples of poor design I’ve seen in a while. It’s probably one of those cases where the owner’s didn’t think the services of a good designer was worth the cost of hiring one. The parking spaces for the campers are too short being more the size for a car so the camper sticks out into the road/drive area, it’s a big wide gravel drive with tiny short green spaces for the campers. They put the baths at the farthest corner rather than centrally located, the internet connection is intermittent, goes off and on, and can really only be accessed if one parks closet to the entry. The showers seem like they were designed by someone who never took a shower in a camp of any kind. They are directly across from the toilets, there is no dressing area or place to put ones clothes, turn on the shower and water sprays out into the hall area as the heads are fixed and there is no door just a curtain half of which were torn. The water stays on for something like 30 seconds then has to be started again. It was dark when my son and I went to take a shower and the lights also on timers went off 3 times causing me to have to go into the sink area naked, wet and cold to turn them back on, of course this area was also exposed to the outside through large uncovered windows. Finally, they have a nice dump area for grey and black water. But it’s right in front of the entry to the men’s bath area. In fact the black dump tank (that’s the stuff from the toilet) is right on the walk to the bath so one has to walk across the area where people dump their toilets on the way to take a shower.

As I said above the concept is great, a simple campsite dedicated to the needs of campers/motor homes, with just the things they need and nothing more at a good price in a good location. It’s just too bad it couldn’t have been designed properly.

Antique Wood Floors From Italy

Green architecture, recycling of used materials, that's what we need these days. We are now representing in the US and any other English speaking country an Italian company that produces beautiful wood flooring from recycled wood. They use wood mostly from old buildings in Italy some of it hundreds of years old. There is a good variety of species and finishes, from modern to distressed. All production is based on orders, but production time is just 60 days. They are located very close to our home base in Italy and we are able to follow the production to insure it's on schedule.

Send us an email john at hm-architects dot com or call our US number 858 345 1068 for more information.

Architects ready to help

I don't post here often as the main intent was to let people know we are available to help with projects big and small and to answer questions about design, architecture, construction, etc. That is what I have done in previous posts. So this is just a reminder.

Straw Bale Homes

We are doing our first straw bale home, but it's not the first for our associate Juergen, he has designed many. What is it, well, yes the walls are actually made of bales of hay. The real structure is a wood frame with prefabricated shear walls in steel and wood. The bales are a sort of infill wall. The advantage is great insulation, a natural renewable building product and a product that can be installed by unskilled labor. The walls are finished with cement plaster inside and out.

Have a look at this 3D model.

Online Architect

We offer architectural services online. It may sound strange to work with an architect that you can't meet face to face, but it is possible. The internet and the many graphic tools available now allow for great communication. And we have free phone service to most of the world along with email, and the possibility of video conferencing.

Us in the news

Well not big time news but a story online about our bell tower project. See it HERE

Big projects - Big houses - Commercial Centers

Yes of course we can do them, have done them. If the projects big enough we will come to you or come to Italy where we are most of the time and spend a week of intensive design work say in the morning while touring the Dolomites in the afternoon.

Do you have a really big project? We also work with other much larger firms in the US and Italy and can coordinate the work between countries and languages. We have the American attitude towards getting the job done in a functional and cost effective way while including the Italian flare for good design.

House Plans Online

At this time you won't find house plan samples here. What we offer are custom plans to fit your needs all done by communicating over the internet, and personal meetings if your project is in So. California or Italy. Send a sketch, a picture, or a plan from a book, or just a list of the things you want and we will prepare an estimate of the cost of our work. Generally if we do the plans this way the total cost to you will not be more than you would spend buying ready made plans online then paying someone to bring them up to local codes. With over 30 years experience in designing homes there isn't much we haven't done so it's very easy for us to understand what you want and make your ideas a workable reality.

Currently we are working on projects in California, Canada, Mexico and Italy, so location is not a problem. We use a voice over the internet (voip) phone system so we can be reached by our California phone number wherever we are and there is not extra cost to you.

Italian Style

Don't know what else to call it. Anyway you saw the design for the bell tower, that's in Italy. Now we are doing some 3D and drafting work for a designer in the So. California area and this picture of the elavtor car will give you the idea. In some ways Italians are looking forward and Americans looking backward. One can speculate on the reasons, Americans without a long history long to have one and Italians maybe have had too much of a good thing. It's interesting.

By the way we didn't design this, just did the 3D which is very difficult to do. We use a CAD program called VectorWorks for all of our work from preliminary design to 3D modeling to construction drawings. Just having to learn one program makes life much easier. Actually the other program we use for design is called pen and paper, the old fashioned way of sketching ones ideas on a piece of paper is still the most efficient way to develop a basic idea.

Good News

We entered a design competition for a bell tower at one one the large churches in Belluno and our design was chosen. The actual project will just be the tower and it's base. We had designed an addition of a large plaza covering an existing parking area, but ownership issues of the land for parking would prevent the plaza being built as we designed. For the project we kept the design simple as the church is rather complicated and we wanted to unite the elements existing in the church rather than add to them. Using our CAD software we are able to capture pictures of the existing materials and use them in the 3D model.