Evergreen was designed for a mature couple who work from home and plan to make it their final residence. It was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Unsonian” homes and includes art deco details throughout, including a four-foot stepped eave overhang, horizontal rift oak paneling, custom mouldings, and a see-thru fireplace.
Architect Diane Plesset, a certified Aging-in-Place Specialist, designed the home to provide easy accessibility, comfortable stairs and other smart-aging design features with which the spaces can be easily adapted over time to accomodate the life path of older residents.
Aging Meets Green
The other key design objective was sustainability. The design marries green-building issues with its aging-in-place features. Key items in this house included insulated concrete forms, energy-efficient radiant heating throughout, a flat-roof designed to accommodate wind turbines and solar panels with maximum exposure, low-voltage LED lighting, cork floors and large dual-glazed windows.
Award-winning Eco-friendly Aging-in-Place home designed with Graphisoft's ArchiCAD BIM application.
Architect Diane Plesset has been designing custom residences with ArchiCAD for nearly a dozen years, facing tight budgets and limited time-frames. Working with Graphisoft’s leading BIM application ArchiCAD allowed her to greatly accelerate the design process by enabling frequent collaboration with the owners and cost-cutting revisions with the owner and builder during construction.
“ArchiCAD allowed me to build and share a virtual model of the home with all the stakeholders, either in person or through online ‘virtual’ meetings,” she said. “We could rapidly make unlimited revisions without it interrupting the schedule. In the end, we were able to complete the project within 1% of the project’s budget. The result is a home that reflects the older couple’s unique lifestyle and taste, while maintaining the architectural integrity within a reasonable budget.”
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