As part of the land purchase process, we had an introductory meeting with the architect who will be working on the project. The purpose was to get a feel for what a house might look like that fulfills our program, on this piece of land. I call this a “pre-meeting” since at that point we had not officially purchased the land, or signed a contract to work with anyone on this project.
The architect YS Development has hired for all of the Bellevue 41st project is Markus from Whitney Architecture. We spent about two hours with him going over a proposed design for our house.
The lay of the land and orientation towards the street pretty much fixes the garage to the east with entrance from that direction; but the front door to the house on the south east corner (well, the front door could be moved around, but it doesn’t look like there are many other good locations for it). The advantage to this is that for guests, the front door from the street will kind of by-pass the garage, so our house should be more inviting, instead of having a big garage door greet you, with the entrance tucked off to the side.
With the land sloping down from the east side to the west, we’re probably going to go with the main floor on the same level as the front door and garage, a second floor with bedrooms above that, and then a partial floor below the main floor on the west side (probably just one larger room). This bottom floor won’t be a basement, since it will be at ground level on the west side, and probably tucked into the hill only a little bit.
The exact layout, size, and orientation of the rooms will certainly change throughout the process; but we had a really good discussion, and I think a lot of good ideas were brought up. Markus was very willing to let us throw around ideas, and talk about what we liked and didn’t like about this design. Overall, the meeting was really good, and talking with Markus was awesome — we’re very excited to be working with him.