Residential Architecture: Schematic Design

Some clients have already put a lot of time and effort thinking about the new timber home they want to build and come to us with magazine clippings, notebooks, and sketches of their new timber house. Others are in the beginning stages of the design of the home and are just starting to consider their needs and the flow of the floor plan.

In these cases we can prepare schematic design drawings to help our client visualize the scale and location of the rooms as well as the shape of the home’s footprint. Also shown in the schematic design drawings are boundaries, setbacks, vegetation, and the driveway approach to the home.

More detailed information, including the location of garage doors, fireplace placement, timber porches, decks, and outdoor spaces are also specified on the schematic drawing. Any changes or alterations to the layout of the home are easily accomplished in this stage.

After any changes are made to the layout and the schematic design is approved, more detailed floor plans are drawn depicting room sizes (erased from this example), furniture layout, and square footage. Notice in this example the first floor bedroom near the entry was eliminated.

Learn more about our architectural services and design fees for timber frame homes on our website, and feel free to ask questions specific to your project!

Timber House: Factors Impacting the Home Design

There are two basic factors in timber home design: fundamental and elemental. Fundamental considerations are tangible. For example, how many people will be living in your home? How much do you wish to invest, both financially and emotionally? Is it a timber house you’ll use after retirement, which might dictate single-level living? Only you can determine the emotional investment you’ll have in the house. This varies from person to person and typically affects how much day-to-day input you’ll have in the home’s development.

Elemental considerations are less tangible. The three I find most important are light, views and permanence. Light makes visible the spaces we inhabit. Light also has its own characteristics such as intensity, color, texture and depth, so light and its absence must be considered when designing. For example, if you have two identical rooms—one on the east side of a house and one on the west—each space will be perceived differently, even if they have the same colors, furnishings, textures, volume and design. Yes, it all comes down to sunlight. For example, if you’re not a morning person, it might not be a wise move to place your bedroom on the east side of the house.

Views come next. One of the advantages of a timber home is the ability of timbers to frame views of different spaces. A pair of posts might define the entrance from the dining to the living room; and a floor girder might delineate the dining from the living room in the same manner, acting as a soffit between different ceiling heights. Our experiences in a space often are based upon what we see or feel from it even before we enter a room.

The last is permanence. Obviously, a home is more than shelter. It can be a place of retreat and serenity, and when we can see and understand the structure that protects us—the posts, beams and braces—we gain a primal understanding of security. Again, many timber homes built long ago are still around today. We might not understand the comfort and security these structures provide, but we all perceive and feel those qualities the minute we set foot in one of these homes.

Kitchen Design Layout

Our clients who are building an energy efficient one story home in Jaffrey New Hampshire are in the Design Development phase. Chris drew a couple of kitchen design layouts for them to see and also provided the 3D rendering to match the layout. Adding people to the layouts will allow our clients visualize the scale of the room.


The first design is a galley layout with a long straight counter and the dining room table centered on the east wall between the patio doors.





The second kitchen design layout is U-shaped with the bench seat on the back side of the kitchen island, opening up the access areas.

The last design layout features a kitchen island with counter seating on the east side to access the patio and the dining table to the south, against the masonry heater.

Visit our website to see more drawings of this one story home design and our other current projects, including green homes and timber houses!