Design is Revision
Revision is all about jumping back and forth, changing the plan to make desired changes happen to the elevation, changing the elevations to make desired changes happen to the plan. Repeat this process as often as required, back and forth. If you are particularly adventurous, draw ("slice") a section through the most critical rooms of the house, showing heights of ceilings, rooms looking into rooms below, sloped ceilings, etc.
Think about modifications as a process of building bridges between what you know, between what is important, it is a process of fixing in place critical elements. Another technique involves self critiquing your design. It is easy to fall in love too early with your own creation. Look to the strength of a design to find its weakness. For example a design which is unconventional, unique, or creative may be too far outside of the mainstream and adversely affect resale value? When bringing a design to its final solution you must be brave, not afraid to tear it apart and rebuild it. You may come back to the same solution proving its correctness but you may also find a surprising or stronger solution. Last, show your work to others, but know when and when not to value other opinions, don't take criticism personally.
Here are a couple of common problem solving approaches. Reduce the square footage of your design by taking slice out of part of house where most inefficient and push the remaining halves together. Identify rooms that are larger than needed, look for inefficient layouts that create long hallways. Another technique to reducing square footage is to arbitrarily make the house smaller by two feet in both directions, finesse or struggle with design for as long as it takes staying within the confines of the exterior walls.
To repair unattractive window layouts or large expanses blank wall try revising closet locations, revise second floor bedroom window locations by moving room locations, as these are often less critical than first floor living arrangements. To eliminate unattractive roof lines, again look to modify second floor plan, bedroom and bathroom locations often not critical.
Next you must integrate the technical requirements required for construction. Start by identifying critical dimensions, tub sizes, kitchen cabinet sizes and layout, stairs treads and risers, fireplaces and chimneys. Determine if you have allowed for a logical structure. Where are your bearing walls, what is the span of floor joists and rafters (consult residential building code for span charts). A good approach is to use tracing paper to overlay floors, verify bearing walls line up, find duct chases for heating and air conditioning, make sure your stairs are in the exact same location on each floor.
Words of Encouragement
Architectural design is a joyful struggle, a journey not unlike a scavenger hunt, a task akin to assembly instructions for a child‘s bicycle, frustrating and rewarding.
The Epic Struggle of Design
It was two or three a.m. on a cold December night, freshman year of architecture school, when I was ready to call my parents and drop out! Our project was to design and build an emergency shelter. It had to be easily assembled "on the ground" by refugees (fellow classmates on an overnight camping trip) or others stranded in the midst of a natural disaster, survive a drop from an airplane (the roof of the architecture building), and keep a person warm and dry. The project due date was only a couple days away. I had been working day and night for a couple of weeks with nothing to show for my efforts. I had designed and designed, started to build and failed a dozen times. I had reached the conclusion all was hopeless but it was too late in the night to call my parents so I returned to my desk for one last go of it. All of it yielded, one idea came after the next, the pieces all fit together this time, and I met the deadline with only minutes to spare. Over the years I have learned not to panic, that almost every design effort is the same epic struggle, it is always darkest before the dawn, the solution coming when it feels like it never will.
T.R.A.C.E. Backwards
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