If only everybody was like Vitsoe

Since moving to Switzerland we’ve been relying on Vitsoe to provide solid, functional bookshelves to support my book-purchasing habit.  They have always shipped quickly, provided good advice and their 606 Shelving is so well engineered it is a dream to mount and does it’s job no matter what I put on it.

We had identified a new home for the main system in the basement of the house, but the new ceiling was lower than the previous locations hence the verticals were too tall.  So, I contact Vitsoe to ask for some advice.

It’s 2.5 years since we got the last pieces but not only did I get a very thorough reply but I also got log-in access to the website where they had designed a new layout utilising the pieces that we already had and showing what else needed doing.

Needless to say, when we know a few final production details we’ll be adding to the system.  It’s always a joy dealing with Vitsoe.   Fantastic product and truly exemplary service.

Floorplans

I’ve mentioned before about some of the design constraints that we had when designing the house. The house had been designed essentially as a shell (like a loft or many modern hotels) and therefore our design work was almost exclusively limited to the interior. The house is in a sensitive zone in the centre of an old village which seriously restricted what could and couldn’t be done – exterior planning permission to 18 months are was very strict.

We had originally been thinking of building completely from scratch and had been searching for a plot. We were keen on a wooden building done in a modern way. I suppose we had thoughts on some of the modern wooden houses around the Bodensee, especially in Austria, the local barns and buildings such as Chipperfield’s Rowing museum which picks up on similar wooden local agricultural architecture.

The current local building style is either the white cube or the white cube with a sloping roof, neither of which has much precedent in the traditional Swiss building. Given that they are churned out by builders they mostly are pretty traditional buildings clothed with a modernist aesthetic, placed unlovingly in the landscape. Our conversations regarding our initial plan had meant that we had already defined what we wanted:

• Simplicity in line – large, continuous forms with an absence of decoration or interruption
• Clearly defined zones for functions (eating, sitting, sleeping etc)
• Open where feasible but also closed to enable privacy for the family as it developed. Noise reduction meant doors were in
• Storage built in, partly as we’d lived in houses without decent storage, and partly because by building in the storage we could avoid putting furniture in the rooms, which would break the lines
• Clarity of views. We both thought of buildings where part of the joy was transitioning through rooms which were directional and then moving into open spaces where the eye was free to roam.

The constraints we had on the interior included:

• The staircase to basement was fixed, and for efficient layout it made sense to put the one to the first floor above it
• There needed to be two pillars to support the beams in the ground floor
• The windows and front door were fixed in location (we did take one window out so as to improve the interruption on one wall)

The pillars were unwelcome so we then sought to cover them.

 

 

The ground floor plan came quite quickly. The principle we looked at was two long views, first from the front door, uninterrupted to the garden (where we’d plan a tree to draw the eye) and the other along the building. We then used a wall to coach the eye in these directions, parallel with the staircase. This became the obvious place for storage and for control of the environment (where we’d hide the electrical sockets etc). It runs along the building, approximately for 4m, then there is a gap of approx 1m for the view from front door to garden and to provide access to the kitchen, then it extends through the kitchen to the far wall.The cross elements, namely the kitchen emphasise the horizantal. The use of a dwarf wall facing the dining area reduces the visibility of the clutter of the items on the worksurfaces (when cooking, when not they will be clear) and the top cupboards on the far wall will start at the ceiling and come down, again creating a single horizantal line parallel to the dwarf wall.

A decent sized toilet room is created.

 

The first floor was much harder to plan. The position of the bathroom wasn’t fixed, but it made most sense where it is. It is on the North side of the building and the window here is smaller. We were able, like in the ground floor toilet, to use milk glass.We wanted to create 3 bedrooms and permanent access to the attic. We wanted to maximise the amount of storage whilst minimising the number of lines. In the end we decided to use a similar layout to the ground floor and use thick ‘furniture’ walls of storage creating simple rectangular bedrooms. All bedrooms are big enough to have a double bed, and as there is ample space, a bed is the only thing necessary in each room.The connecting corridor is one of my favourite spaces in the building due to it’s simplicity. We decided to use a full height, rather than dwarf wall over the staircase creating two tall thin spaces, we also decided to enclose the staircase to the attic inside a cupboard. There is more shared-usage storage here.  

Plasterboard mounted

Plasterboard has been fitted this week, changing the overall perception of spaces in the house.  It’s also changed the way light is reflected around the house, arguably diffusing the light somewhat through a greater quantity of reflected light.

Like all panels, plasterboard has been fitted with a thin layer of foam between sheets, presumably to reduce the transmission of vibrations.  Whereas the internal plasterboard had been stapled, new plasterboard has been screwed into place.

  

At the moment the house is starting to unfold in front of our eyes.  It’s now possible to get a really good idea of the spaces and proportions, how the light will fall and where the shadows will gather. 

All these walls, along with the ceilings, will be painted the same white (more on that later).  The final floor has a similar level of luminosity, therefore the rooms will look at least this bright in natural light.   

Basement

Why the rest of the world builds without a full size basement is beyond me (and this comes from someone who grew up in part of ‘the rest of the world’).

This is what 6m by, at its widest, 4.8m of naturally lit basement looks like in its raw state.

 

On the right are samples of the flooring materials to be used in the house.  The 60cm porcelain tiles used throughout and the solid, oiled oak used to construct the staircase.   

 

The garage is partly constructed

The exterior of the building is almost finished.  After the scaffolding was removed work on the garage started.  I guess it could be finished in the next week.  

 

The garage will be clad with the same larch as the main house and the final cladding of the house will be completed.  When the shutters are mounted and the garage door hung the outside is finished.

The shutters were needed for planning permission.  The council will decide on the design of the garage door!

Neighbours

As mentioned earlier, the zone where the house is being built is protected – in the centre of the village, on a slope, surrounded by old farm buildings.  This imposed a far more traditional design on the outside of the building.  The neighbours can clearly be seen on this shot.

 

Fortunately these design restrictions weren’t necessary on the inside.  The minimalism of the interior has references on the outside – the cladding can be seen as modern in it’s precision – but the traditional features dilute the effect.  In the end the design keeps its inner calm to itself.

Costs and work prioritisation

It seems that if you ask any homebuilder what they remember about the build then costs, or at least previously unexpected costs come to mind. I guess it’s also one of the deterrents for people considering building – it’s really hard to go into the project knowing how much it’s going to cost.

I think most cost changes can be separated into 2 main camps – unexpected costs due to material price changes / project complications and costs added because of design changes. Of the latter these can be subdivided into changes pre-project sign-off and those when the build has started. The latter always are surprisingly expensive and ideally should be avoided. Saying that, both my wife and I, used to project management as part of our jobs, so know the likely effect of ’scope creep’. Our changes have predominately been done pre-signoff.

Where we’ve added additional costs has been due to three main areas:

• A desire to move from residential quality materials to commercial quality with the aim of reducing long-term ownership costs
• To add extra functionality, usually reducing the need for purchasing furniture to do a job (e.g. storage designed as part of the scheme rather than as furniture placed in the room.) I guess converting the attic into a usable room would fall in this category.
• A few design aspects – e.g. our commissioning a lighting designer or specifying custom-made doors.

The latter changes can generally be grouped as costs to take things away rather than add them. The technical aspects or craftsmanship needed to do things simply is a real eye-opener. Being determined in the level you want the details is one of the hardest challenges we have faced. At the moment we’ve compromised in a few places, but done so knowingly. There is an underlying feeling that details that we’d appreciate, would cost a lot, but would be unnoticed by others were too extravagant for a house which must be realistically costed in terms of the local market. If this was a house that we built as our long-term home maybe some decisions would be different.

The other issue that we’ve faced is that the project is far more highly interdependent than we’d assumed. This has made prioritisation difficult. As an example, we decided that at some stage we’d like to plaster the attic. We had this as something we’d like to do in the medium term, however to get the plasterboard to the attic was best done by craning it in place before the roof went on (access is tight through the ladder-like staircase), therefore there were pressures to do this early on. There have been many, many other similar scenarios The implication is that this makes phasing the build an unattractive and difficult activity.

So what is the outcome of all this? Well, the house itself will be closer to the end-goal when we move in than we previously expected. At the same time, some things, such as custom furniture, is being pushed back as we’ve had to use allocated budget for more permanent items. In the end the total budget will be about the same as we expected, just that phases have been led far more by technical considerations than we thought.

Lots of interior work happening

The door frames from the last post are fitted, and very nice they look too!  They’ve been primed ready for painting and there is obviously work needed to plaster around them but it’s pleasing to see them in place at last.

We went, as usual, on Saturday morning to see the weeks work.  There was a builder on site, fitting the plasterboard to the attic.  With all the interior carpentry work this week for the first time we saw a less-than-spotless interior. 

 

For much of the house the wooden wall frames had been put up to mount the plasterboard (next week’s task).  In the attic a wall frame had been built along the gable end.  There was a pipe – the air from the bathroom – rising up along the wall at the right.  Initially we had thought of putting a half-height wall to hide the pipe, in the end we elected for a secondary wall along the whole height, with a cut-out above the top of the window so we can recess the blind fitting.

 

The cables for the lights are ready.  In the end we chose to use 5 lights, evenly spaced.  We couldn’t get six to fit nicely with the cross-supporting element. 

Doors being built

So we can get the ceiling to flow between one room and another, and to reduce the door frames until they are invisible, we’ve had to have doors custom-built.  Today these have been built.

 

Those with very sharp eyes will notice that the top bar is of a different material from the sides.  This is due to the finish needed – the top part will be mounted underneath the plasterboard. 

The door frames to the right are for the ground floor where we decided to ensure that the top of doors matched the top of the windows and front door, however, to ensure that the frame was flush with the wall and with minimal detail we had them custom-built.

Scaffolding removed

This week the scaffolding has been removed.  We therefore were able to see the outside of the house in it’s entirety for the first time.

This first image is showing the side that faces onto the garden.  Three sets of windows / doors will open onto a wide terrace.  The windows are approximately 2m wide, with similar sized walls between the windows.  Above them are windows for the main bedrooms.

(Yes, the weather is good at the moment in Switzerland)

 

On the opposite side is the main door and bathroom windows (in etched glass).  This is the Northerly facing side and where most of the services are.  On this side you can see the start of the garage, which had to be constructed after the scaffolding was removed.

 

The final image shows the side that faces the village centre (the little stream which winds it way through the centre).  The house has been built on terraced land on a slope, so this side shows the window in one of the basement rooms.

As mentioned earlier, the house makes references to the local vernacular style.  In the centre of an 750 year old village, surrounded by traditional farm buildings, the planning required use of certain visual elements that we’d have preferred to change.  The roof angles and overhangs, crosses on the windows, shutters (you can make these out on the neighbouring house) all were obligatory.  For the shutters they had to be the traditional folding style and had to be painted.  The paint therefore is the predicted colour of the wood as the building ages.