Before Moment Architecture
One of Emily's projects under Demetriou Architects
A few years after she graduated from the UW Architecture program in 1996, Emily Hennigs found her way to Demetriou Architects. There she quickly became an important part of the Kirkland firm, managing multi-million dollar homes with creativity and professionalism. Clients learned to trust her, and to enjoy her company.
Vassos Demetriou taught Emily everything she knows about running a firm. How to keep clients happy, how to respond promptly to minor hiccups before they develop into crises. In Vassos, Emily saw an architect who had so pleased his clients, they returned to him decades later, when they were ready to build again.
At Demetriou Architects, Emily also learned how to apply contemporary architectural values to buildings of all styles, from traditional to modern. These values include openness and transparency, and basing design on the needs of the clients, rather than on strict traditions.
But Emily’s roots are in Seattle, not the Eastside. She wanted to work where she lived. Like many in her generation, she felt a pull towards greater sustainability. She longed to source local materials, and to design homes of a more modest scale.
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What We Do
Picture by DominusVobiscum, shared via Flickr.
We’re hosting a booth at the Phinney Neighborhood Association’s Home Design and Remodel Fair, on January 31st. There we expect to answer the question “What kind of work do we do?”
The short answer: We design new homes and home remodels, and spaces for small independent businesses. But a more meaningful answer will take you back to the beginning of my marriage to Emily.
When Emily and I were married back in 1999, we lived in a tiny studio on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. We had a tiny kitchen table where we’d sit over trace paper and sketch out the home of our dreams. These weren’t ostentatious plans, but they meant a lot to us. Because these plans were a map of our marriage.
As newlyweds, these plans helped us reconcile the conflicts between who we were as individuals, and who we wanted to be as a couple. I liked to spend time cooking, and Emily liked to spend time reading. In some houses, this would mean spending time in separate rooms. In our dream house, we put a comfortable chair in the kitchen, so Emily could read there even as I cooked. The dream house plan showed us where conflicts might arise in our marriage, and helped us map out a solution.
Similar conversations led us to turn the vegetable garden into a South-facing courtyard. The rooms in the house all share a view of the garden. In this way, my mucking about in the mud – currently a solitary activity – becomes central to our family life. And throughout the dream house we scattered small niches for children to explore, children that we hoped to have one day.
As we’ve aged together, as our marriage has matured, we’ve returned to this exercise again and again. Each time, our dream house looks a little different than the last – reflecting our changing priorities over the years. While we still place family time at the center of our lives, we also enjoy personal space – especially when our wonderful but exuberant children seem to dominate every nook and cranny of our small house.
Some architects, when asked what they do, are tempted to answer “I’m a marriage counselor.” That’s because designing a home reveals your priorities, where you want to spend time and with whom. These revelations can lead some clients into arguments, as each realizes their view of the marriage or business is not held by the other. But in truth, even in the most perfect marriages, even in the most well-run businesses, we all hold slightly different priorities. Obviously, architecture can’t solve all our problems. But architecture is infrastructure. And a well-designed home or office can provide the setting for strong, healthy relationships. We’ll design spaces that celebrate who you are – as individuals and together.
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Tags: Architecture
Courtesy of Beltrami County, Minnesota
Why We Like Rain Gardens
Rain Gardens can make a wonderful addition to your home. If you’re building a new home in Seattle, the city may require you to put in a rain garden. But there are plenty of reasons to build one, whether legally required or not.
New houses built in Seattle must now meet stricter stormwater codes. For many of our clients, that means the city will require them to include a cistern or a rain garden on their property. These tools help the city minimize it’s environmental footprint.
Older houses won’t be required to install rain gardens. Still, there are many reasons you may choose to do so.
- Rain gardens look great. Ornamental plants thrive in the improved, moist soil of the rain garden. Rain gardens will stay green further into the summer drought.
- Rain gardens can reduce basement flooding. Some existing downspouts discharge water too close to the building. Rain gardens can isolate storm water away from your basement, where it can percolate slowly into the subsoil.
- Rain gardens help the environment. Right now, water from your downspouts pours directly into the city sewer pipes. During a storm, the water flow is too great for the sewage treatment plant to handle, and untreated effluent goes straight to Puget Sound.
- Seattle will PAY you to install a rain garden at your home. This incentive program currently applies to a limited area in Ballard, but could expand to other neighborhoods soon.
Why Seattle Might Pay for Your Rain Garden
Seattle is legally required by state law to control its stormwater runoff. The city had two choices:
- Pay for giant underground stormwater storage vaults, or
- Pay homeowners to store the water themselves in rain gardens.
Homeowners can do the job for much less taxpayer money.
What Seattle Expects of You in Return
There are several hoops homeowners have to jump through, in order to get public funding. The homeowner must:
- Test the site to see how well it drains
- Sign a contract with the city, promising the homeowner will maintain the rain garden for 5 years
- Allow periodic inspections of the rain garden. After all, this is considered public infrastructure.
- For now, the homeowner must live in Ballard. That’s because this neighborhood is at greater risk for catastrophic flooding of the storm and sewer pipe systems. The city plans to roll out the program to other neighborhoods after they work the bugs out of the rebate system.
Of course you can always build a rain garden anywhere in the city, without a permit, without a rebate, if you choose. The above restrictions only apply if you want public funding.
Do It Yourself Or Hire Others
Building a rain garden is a fairly simple project. You can do it yourself, if you’re willing to do a little calculation and a moderate amount of digging. Or, you can hire an architect or landscape architect to help with the calculations and design, and a contractor for the labor. Because I attended the city’s contractor workshop, Moment Architecture is “certified” to design and install rain gardens and cisterns.
Joshua McNichols
Filed under: Backyard, Environment | Leave a Comment
Tags: Environment, rain garden, rain gardens, stormwater management
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