How do you approach design?

I design buildings for fun. It’s a strange idea in a world dominated by professional elitism, but amateur architects used to be the only architects. I’ve worked for many architecture firms, so I’m very comfortable with their work; but the business model of architecture excludes so many people and possibilities.

I want to improve as many lives as I can. And I want to give people things that they never dreamed possible. Ever since I wielded a T-square in high school, I’ve spent countless hours designing buildings for my own joy and amusement. Now I want to share this work with others.

What inspires you?

I’ve traveled to more than 52 countries across the world, and I’m inspired by the diversity and breadth of human ingenuity. It humbles me. The architecture profession tends towards a godlike micromanager mentality, where designers tell builders exactly what to do, and it’s a crime to deviate from the original plans. I find that both elitist and condescending. Builders know so much that architects don’t. It’s also an impractical mentality — because if your design can’t change and adapt to new conditions, it’s going to eventually fail.

How does place influence the design?

A site-specific design is inherently fragile. If you optimize a building for one place, it will function poorly in changing conditions. I’m curious about creating designs that can work in many places. That’s not easy. And it would be ridiculous to assume that any design can be perfectly copied without any changes. Every site and situation come with their own challenges and opportunities. For example, in cold climates, a foundation needs to be deep enough to avoid frost heave, and the windows should be smaller on the north side of the house. Such site-specific adaptations are well-understood.

How do you approach energy use?

When you look at an old traditional house, you might see long roof overhangs, operable shutters, shady porches, windows on two sides of every room, or a centralized wood stove. You might not think about it, but those design ideas are intentional. Some elements of traditional designs might at first look like eye candy — like the baseboard trim at the bottom of an interior wall. Yet behind all the prettiness, there’s a purpose. Form fulfills function.

I prefer to use time-tested design elements rather than trendy technologies and engineering calculations. If you need calculations to know if a building is going to be bearable to live inside, then something is wrong your design process. Traditional buildings are often shaped by the constraints of their time, so they are less dependent on new technologies. So they work well even when the power goes out. Energy calculations and new technologies can (and should) be considered during a project, but buildings shouldn’t completely depend on them.

How do you approach water use?

We are fortunate to live in a country where water is so easy to get. We might not notice until we come home from a long summertime camping trip, and remember how magical our sinks would have appeared to people in the not-so-distant past. But that isn’t magic — it’s engineering. And it didn’t happen by accident. If you think about all the inventions and innovations that brought water to us in abundance, you will think about the ingenuity of engineers, not architects and designers.

The reality is that architecture plays a small part in issues of water usage. I’ve worked with architects for almost a decade in California, and I can say that despite the worsening long-term drought, architects can’t do much more than add rain barrels, low-flow shower heads, natural plantings zones, and gray water systems. Those are obviously beneficial, but we’re just fooling ourselves if we don’t focus on agricultural subsidies and other market incentives. When it comes to water usage, architectural solutions don’t scale.

How do you decide what materials to use in a design?

Sadly, I usually don’t. When I’ve worked for architects, clients usually demand certain materials, even when we show them better options. Also, the designer or contractor in charge (almost never me) often makes material choices unilaterally. Even if I add a note to the drawing set that says, ‘Preference shall be given to locally produced and salvaged materials”, such notes are almost always ignored.

Do you have a design strategy and/or style that carries through all your designs?

Styles are like languages. If you know many languages, you can express much more than you can with only one. And if you know many strategies, you can solve more problems. It helps to have many tools in your toolkit.

I decided to learn traditional design because I wanted to reconnect with my roots. At other times, I design modern structures. Predictable strategies make designers ineffective at solving new problems, and vulnerable to automation. If your job can be done by an algorithm or a high school student, then it’s game over.

What makes good architecture?

Time. No matter who you are, you could make better architecture if you had more time. The architects of gothic cathedrals had decades (sometimes centuries) to perfect the work. A builder with time could redo something that didn’t come out well. A homeowner with time can embellish their house with decorative moldings or nicer fixtures, or caulk all the leaky areas. And with time, today’s architects could test more ideas, refine their craft, and focus more on communicating intentions.

Time is important not just during the process of design, but also for the analysis. A building is not a success just because it’s been constructed. Many modern buildings degrade surprisingly fast — so we shouldn’t measure our successes with short-term thinking. We should measure the quality of our places by imagining how they will survive or transform over hundreds of years.

What inspired your American Farmhouse project?

The American Farmhouse was inspired by a walk in the woods. I used to wander alone through the forests near my childhood home in Virginia. Sometimes for miles. One day, I found an old dilapidated farmhouse overgrown in a sapling forest. It was a common farmhouse design that could be found all across America. Having recently graduated from Virginia Tech’s architecture school, I wondered about everything I could learn from that perfectly simple house.

Imitation is the best method of learning. At first, that sounds scandalous because we Americans have been indoctrinated into a culture of self-expression and individuality. Yet imitation is the most natural way of learning. That’s even a lesson that infants teach us as they learn words and play with dolls. Every great musician — without exception — starts out by imitating the songs of others. You only truly understand something if you can recreate it.

How did you approach the design?

I was compelled to truly understand that quintessentially American house, so I decided to recreate it. Not an exact replica — after all, that abandoned farmhouse didn’t even have an indoor bathroom — but a design that retains its character. I also wanted to create an exemplary set of architectural drawings, so it would be easier to explain to somebody what is required in house plans. I hear it all the time: unscrupulous plan sellers routinely rip their customers off because their customers don’t know what a set of plans should look like. Knowledge is power. But unless you have a basis of comparison, you’ll never know if your expensive house plans were worth it.

So I created a design which I made open-source, available for anybody to freely download. For many years, the CAD files and digital models have been free to download. Random people have already built this house using my plans — and that makes me insanely happy. So I created a unique book that explains the design in a more human-friendly way: with 3D renderings and explanations. And I just launched the American Farmhouse book on Kickstarter. I hope it educates and inspires a wide variety of people.