Dialect Design offers modern house plans and design/build services for contemporary homes, additions, upfits and commercial projects. Ask us a question about modern houses, modernity, or anything else. Follow us, as we publish our thoughts about ultra modern European style architecture and design, as well as our commitment to all things artful. http://www.dialectdesign.com/openhouse_with_art_and_architecture.html en-us modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com Dialect, LLC There is every reason why you should be able to enjoy a wide range of choices on contemporary home plans, ready to be purchased online. This offer has been available for traditional homes for a long time. The same can be had for the modernity you crave. A great number of concerns that some of you bring to the selection of your future contemporary home can be met with pre-designed blue-prints. Open floor plans, multi-functional spaces and uses, innovative materials, green choices in products and building methods, a sexy modern look, and new thinking on the arrangement and necessity of certain rooms can all be addressed. It is our belief that we can meet many of your wishes with the home plans we offer. And we believe we can meet the expectation of high quality with an affordable price. With the launch of our new service, we will increase the number of choices. As we forge ahead, we will take suggestions and whishes and incorporate them into the development of our product line. This is an exciting new venture for us as we are looking forward to designing more modern homes. Please visit our selection of modern home plans. http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_modern_homes_made_possible.html 13 Mar 2009 13:30:39 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com It is our view that modern design and architecture is a continuation of a great history of building and design ideas and methods. Modernity today is explorative into the way we live and the way we build, further developing time tested means. Often it finds itself demonized in comparison to what is considered “traditional”. It could not be further from the truth. The architecture that is being sold as “traditional” is too often a rather new and recent form of bad habits cultivated by a building industry only interested in itself. In contrast the contemporary houses, such as they are being featured by dwell magazine for example, are actually developing our traditions. They incorporate new needs, habits, and materials often quite elegantly. We ask just the same of our technology. Our new cell phone can only be considered “good” if it is the newest most recently developed version of its former self. Our houses and built environment need to be considered in that way, too. What we are also asking, though, from it is warmth, richness of memories, and a time-enduring sense of home. Well designed contemporary buildings are best equipped to meet those demands and to do it in a manner fitting with our contemporary environment, materials, and environmental concerns. We strive to do just that. Please visit our selection of contemporary houses. And please do it, if you just want to get your whistle wet. http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_why_modern.html 13 Mar 2009 15:26:00 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com You live art when that experience transcends skill. When it grabs a work of pristine execution and takes it into a realm of lived riches, endured pain, yearned memories, and quenched desire. When you catch a glimpse just to be drawn into sucking up the rest, leaving no crumbs behind. When your living is being touched, almost explained, without ever understanding it. That art comes into being with a blind hand that does not dwell on its skill but searches for that understanding. A hand that screams out or quivers under duress, that shakes because of that beauty felt. And that experience can be had with everything you do. Art is the art of being alive. It is that simple. http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_what_art.html 14 Mar 2009 18:47:01 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com We are currently working on a new concept house to add to our collection of modern house plans. In part due to the economic downturn, but also out of environmental concerns, home owners are slimming down on the size of their homes. The excess in house construction had also been an excess in constantly increasing square footage. We hear now from our customers and the press that there is an interest in smaller, more efficient and compact home plans. Our modern design approach allows, of course, for us to be playful and innovative about the size of a house. It is not a question of giving up certain amenities or luxuries. It is a question of how to meet these expectations. We have found that most home plans that are geared to meet a more, so called, traditional market are bound by a set of formulas that are rather restrictive. The European style modernity and innovative exploration found in current American and Australian architecture gives us the freedom to design towards our customers’ specific needs and ideas. In the selection of our modern house plans we try to cut down on square footage, building cost and the future fees of energy bills, while being expensive in the quality of the spaces, the engagement in your daily life, and contemporary patterns of living. The current set of modern house plans we are developing is meeting all these concerns even more stringently. One of the big questions we are tackling is how to meet a variety of contemporary living arrangements with a smaller house. That means can we offer modern house that meets a two person couple, a single parent with two kids, a small family with a live-in grandparent, as single professional subleasing a full unit, stay at home professional parents with a set of kids, and all the other current ways of living together? Yet, the proposed house plans would have to be cost effective to construct and end with a low energy house. And in addition it has to be cool and sexy to meet the current desires and whishes of living. We’ll keep you updated as we move forward. When it’s all worked out we will add it to our selection of modern house plans. Meanwhile browse our current offers at http://www.dialectdesign.com ! http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_working_on_the_next_modern_house%20_plans.html 15 Mar 2009 11:28:17 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com Today home owners ask of their modern houses to be sustainable in their construction and choice of materials. It is also of interest to keep the cost of energy bills down. In our selection of modern house plans we strive to develop green ideas and methods that are easy to implement and build. In the words of our consultant, to build green means to build qualitatively well. If you ask of your contemporary house to be sustainable you ask of it to be built soundly. Many of the building techniques we suggest are inexpensive. Nonetheless, the extra attention results in a potentially and slightly higher construction cost. The increase in mortgage payment it results in, however, is more than offset by your tremendously reduced monthly energy bills. What it means is that you cannot afford NOT to build green! http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_green.html 16 Mar 2009 20:03:34 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com We draw great inspiration in the design of our modern house plans from our involvement in contemporary art. Too often architecture and the building industry find themselves reduced to a process of piling up materials and mitigating restrictions and building codes. We believe, however, that we are involved in the creation of spaces and built environments that bring riches to your daily life. We spend the majority of our lives within our manmade surroundings. And we draw great strength from our private and public settings. We need to pay great attention to the quality of those spaces. A quality that deals with warmth, cozy protection, with a sense of timeless comfort, and with the yearning for memories lived. It is a quality that comes from meeting habits and the engagements of life. It works with your senses; tactile, visual and sound. To meet these strong needs we work on and stay innovative in the selection of materials, their textures and sensual strength. We incorporate the play of light into our modern house plans, to let light and shadows create patterns, where warmth is needed, and keep direct sunlight out, where glare needs to be reduced. We take a close look at circulation patterns and proximity of certain areas of use. We fine-tune spatial qualities, the proportions of spaces. We incorporate structural elements of the building into these considerations to have exposed beams or posts help shape these environments appropriately. To bring these qualities to our modern house plans, we consider our work that of an art. We have to start with a specific set of skills and then use it to create a lived piece of art that transcends practicalities and reaches a very real felt importance in the lives of our customers. To do so we learn from the great contemporary art that surrounds us and we are involved with. Surprisingly, the professional degrees of architecture in the US are called Bachelor of Art in Architecture. All licensed architect have acquired that degree. And yet, the art seems to be dropped too often and too quickly in the work and endeavors we found ourselves in. We certainly hope we serve you well with our approach and are creating true pieces of art in the selection of modern house plans we offer. Have a look! http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_the_art_of_modern_house_plans.html 18 Mar 2009 12:30:52 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com A great deterrent for many future home owners and builders to purchase modern home plans is the prevailing fear of additional costs. Builders and General Contractors are used to a standard type of designs that allows them to understand home plans quickly, know their costs and charge accordingly. Unknowns or custom details can raise a red flag and cause contractors to estimate a higher price, if at all, just to cover unknown costs. In the design of our modern home plans we strive to create contemporary settings with standard building methods. Our own work as general contractors has developed for us a helpful understanding of how new ideas can be translated into builder friendly details. The most beautiful set of modern home plans are rendered useless if it they cannot be used for construction. It is true that we enjoy stretching the envelope as far as the choice of modern materials and structural methods are concerned. However, we make use of them in areas absolutely vital to the original design intent. In addition, we shape and reshape initial innovative ideas to useful and easily constructed details through the process of design development. It allows us to create modern home plans that are buildable and affordable. Many of the green and sustainable aspects can also be cost-effective. They do not have to cause unnecessary headaches for you builder. It is often a question of simply using standard building materials and methods in specific ways, rather than using unknown building supplies. We are able to offer this detail oriented approach of quality control by having our lead designers involved with our modern home plans from initial concept, through design development and the creation of the actual construction plans. In local projects they are also involved in the construction process itself. It is our belief that we can create cutting-edge modern home plans for you that are affordable to build. Modernity does not have to be expensive. Please browse our selection of modern home plans and see for yourself. http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_construction_using_modern_home_plans.html 20 Mar 2009 12:32:16 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com So, you are ready to live in a contemporary home and you wonder what exactly are the steps involved to get there. And let’s say you browsed through our selection of contemporary home plans and don’t know what exactly to do with it. Well, here is a quick overview. It really is easy; you start with a bundle of cash, or at least a discussion with a construction loan and mortgage broker or lender. I f you are not sure where to go, start with your bank. They will be able to provide you with their own offers or suggestions where to go. Shop around. Different lenders have different offers. And a good Broker can offer you a good range and the best deal. Ask for a construction loan that can be rolled into a standard mortgage after construction is finished. After your interviews you will know what price range for your future contemporary home is available to you. The next step is for you to find a home for your modern house; that is a property. Note the specs in our selection of contemporary home plans. We specify the width and length of the house. Many locations come with zoning ordinances that ask for a certain distance your home has to have to your property lines. These restrictions are called setbacks, side yards and rear yards. So be aware of how big your house can be. The real fun part is now to shop for your own contemporary home plans. Browse our selection and familiarize yourself with each modern home plan. Look at the full floor plans and try to imagine yourself living in each house. Read all the information we offer on all our contemporary home plans and please feel welcomed to email us or call us for any additional question. We are happy to help you with any of your concerns. Once you have chosen your set of contemporary home plans, proceed to the check out procedure. You can pay with your credit card online or your PayPal account. As of today our prices are all inclusive, you will receive six sets of construction drawings by mail. These sets will be necessary for finalizing your financing and getting started on construction. Next up you can get ready to build your own new contemporary home. Find a builder that you feel comfortable with. Ask several different contractors for an estimate. You have to be comfortable with their prices and their quality of work. Take your time and asked them all the questions you have. Make sure that they understand our contemporary home plans well and ask them to give us a call for any specific question. The more comfortable they are the better their price. And then you just have to be excited while you watch your contemporary home coming into being. Be patient during the construction. If you are still wary about the whole process, contact us. We are happy to help. We also offer a number of additional services. We can make changes to the contemporary home plans of your choice for specific wishes or needs. We can consult during your construction or even offer our own construction services, if you are close by. We hope this brief run down is of help to you. Contact us for any questions and continue to browse our contemporary modern home plans. http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_how_to_go_about_creating%20_your%20_next_house_with_our_contemporary_home_plans.html 21 Mar 2009 15:16:17 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com The present worldwide economic strain has changed the expectations home buyers have of their houses. They need to be affordable and efficient. And they need to be able to adjust, once their situation improves again. Our new P.1 home is designed as a European style house that can do that for you. It starts at a 24 feet by 24 feet one floor base unit. It will offer all the amenities you expect from your modern dwelling. The base unit will be designed to be affordable to build. Keeping local building cost and current local prices for trades and materials in mind we are aiming at a $105 per square foot price, giving you a European style house for $60,480 construction cost. This price will have to adjust, of course, to your local pricing standards and the final design. The cool thing about this concept is for one that it is designed to function in many different ways right of the bat. It could be your starter home, an independent guest house, a home office, a rental unit in your back yard, a vacation cottage in the mountain or at the beach, an addition to an existing house, and much more. Secondly this “pod”, as we call it, is also conceived to be able to grow right from the beginning or in the future as your needs or economic outlook changes. In other words this pod can function as a base unit that can be added on with one or more additional pods. By offering this you can have an affordable European style house that can serve any life style and change in lifestyle. If you are a single parent with in-laws living with you, a single professional with a home office, a larger family with a independent live-at-home teenager, a couple of two, or anyone else, this simple and affordable European style modern house could be ideal for you. We are interested o get your feed back at this point of the game to see our planning challenged and adjust to your input. Please write as an email at info@dialectdesign.com, if you are interested and want to keep in touch, or comment to this blog. http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_a%20_european_style_house_for_an_affordable_price.html 31 Mar 2009 15:05:54 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com The Internet's social networking sites have been a crazy addition to our online services. You can find links to all our sites on our contact page. Go ahead and take a look. The number of our Twitter followers has all the sudden gone off the hook. We will continue to follow it and see what come of it. In the meantime we enjoy to be sharing with all of you our news and fun we have with our modern house plans at http://www.dialectdesign.com http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_social_networking.html 24 Apr 2009 01:21:30 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com We had a little bit of fun with our website and created a custom error message. You know the one that indicates a "broken link" and says something like "404 Error". We had moved around our Internet pages on modern home plans and had changed the architecture of our Dialect Design web site so much that we had accidentally deleted a few vital ones. Well, a kind individual in Germany who had browsed our site was so kind and informed us on our own broken links. He also gave us an idea and so we sat out to have some more fun with our website and created this custom 404 error message: http://www.dialectdesign.com/modern_house_plans_404.html. So, even if you cannot find your modern house plans anymore, hopefully we still get you to smile. Oh, and then we, of course, did the same for our new site at http://www.coolmodernhouseplans.com . http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_a_mistake_that_was_meants.html 24 Apr 2009 20:22:07 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com Visit our new site at http://www.coolmodernhouseplans.com . We are using it to offer a one-shot glance at all our modern house plans with easy access to all the pertinent information. In addition we are going to utilize it to offer an info page on each contemporary home. This service will allow you to gain an insight to the ides and thought process behind it. At Cool Modern House Plans you will be able to receive a well rounded picture of your future home. http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_our_new_site.html 30 Apr 2009 01:31:31 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com We spend great effort on designing and redesigning the smallest details in order to develop a great design that will be easy and affordable to build. Working also as the General Contractor for some of our clients allows us to look at our innovative designs with a sense of practicality. What trade at what time of the construction would be available to execute certain steps of each detail? What materials are readably available off the shelf and can be used in a different way to achieve the desired result? How can we simplify the detail to reduce materials and labor costs? Which details need to be amplified to carry a design intent and which are going too far? At the same time we start out removing all boundaries and allowing anything to surface. We enjoy the unknown. At the end, however, stands the owner and building practices that come with a price, habits and expectations that have to allow for our ideas. A good design needs to also always meet these concerns. http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_high_design_affordable_prices.html 01 May 2009 01:43:50 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com We spent some time with renowned writer, actor, force-of-live, performer John W. Love Jr. in our studio. He took us deep into the world of theater, including the dynamics between playwright, producer, director, and actors. Part of our discussion hovered around the origin of a specific piece of creative art; may it be a play or a beautiful well designed modern building. The parallel, of course became fascinating, as any modern house would have a designer, a builder and a developer and/or home owner. In either case, play or architecture, all parties are involved bringing richness to the work at hand. They shape and are integral in the final full experience to be had. With the play, however, we named the play write the originator of the piece. The playwright conceives of a lived experience, to which all other participants bring their talent and skills. They bring it to life on a stage. There is an intent and an original thought, vision, questioning and creation that are all asked to be understood and developed to its full intended being. Well, this morning we saw an article in the Charlotte Observer about the present state of architects in this city, emblematic we are sure, for the entire nation. The unfortunate aftertaste, reading the article, was that of a dis-connect of the architect from the art of their craft. The short pieces of interviews read as sad reactionary attitudes towards the direction given by the Developers or the Investors; the architect rendered voiceless as the mere technician, the executer of only monetary interests. The playwright, we are sure, often writes a play, without maybe a specific venue or production in mind. Even though the reverse happens, too. The architect, of course, is being called in when somebody with the finances says “go” first. But what then? Does that make the faceless number-driven developer the originator? Or is it still the artist, the playwright, the designer? And we mean the art of a building, the true lived experience, the life it breathes. There are creative developer-designer-builder teams or entities out there that might be all in one. And we enjoy working with creative minds and give great credit and much thanks to all of our friends who have brought challenging propositions to us. Once we get going, though, we tend to create a piece of art that wasn’t there before. We induce our own seedling into the process that grows into its own artistic experience, into a building that will give you goose bumps when you will finally enter it in person (good goose bumps, of course ;) ). In that sense we think of ourselves as the ones that create as artist the lived experience of a modern house. It is not that we don’t execute our clients’ wishes or needs and we also do not disregard economic parameters. But we take all the pieces, hundreds of them, and shape them into a true piece of art. We live through a creative process that dreams up, develops, and truly lives the experiences to be had in a specific built environment, a specific contemporary home. When we got to build it ourselves, we got to direct and act a little. And when we developed ourselves, we got to produce a little. But, we think of ourselves as play writes maybe first and foremost. It occurred to us that offering our modern house plans online, makes us then truly the play write. The original design lies in our fingertips. We create these modern house plans as creative expressions as a result of our artistic needs. The clarity in this realization meant for us that you are sure going to see designs coming up that are much more free in nature; designs born out of our expressive need maybe, more so than pragmatic needs. They will be buildable and they will be beautiful, and they might be for just the few of you, who want just that one special, crazy, cool modern house design that will make you live a life you always wanted and could never dream of. In any case, though, it means for us that there is going to be much more fun yet to be had for us and for you. To have this kind of art developed between you and us, please continue to enrich us with your valued comments, ideas and wishes at http://www.dialectdesign.com. http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_original_designs.html 01 May 2009 02:32:14 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com We are currently working on a modern addition for a house here in Charlotte, NC. We finished the design and the construction drawings to the liking of our Clients. They asked us to do the building as well. Our plan is to keep you updated on the progress through a separate blog, a construction blog, if you will. It might be interesting to see how we are going about executing a modern design. For the most part we designed with standard building methods to keep the cost down. However, there are a lot of modern details and special quirks that need extra attention. We are currently working out the kinks with all our subs and manufacturers. As soon as we are going to break ground, we will show you more. As we have discussed before, constructing some of our cool modern house designs allows us to develop our design skills, to give them a practical component, and to think of construction cost while developing a design. Our modern house plans need to be affordable to purchase and also cost efficient to build. http://www.dialectdesign.com/a_modern_addition.html 22 May 2009 20:35:51 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com We visited a house recently that was admittedly modern looking and was understood to be contemporary. We were quite underwhelmed and disappointed, however. We discussed afterwards at length all the details and issues that were so dissatisfactory. But it took a couple days and an absent mind for one of us to blurt out that he would rather live in one of those refurbished mill houses looking as if they came straight out of a Pier1 Import magazine, or something, than in the house we visited. And that’s us talking, living and breathing a modern aesthetic. Well, then it took another few days and a different discussion for us to say that this made sense. Because, we do not subscribe to the modern design aesthetic as one would to a fad. The modern house we had visited was as void of life as any of the common sub-division houses that are around. No, what we love is something quite different. We yearn for the spatial and material qualities that a built environment can have. We are after the experience that a place can invigorate in you. It’s those rich textures of sensual moments that so make the fabric of the human experience, our everyday life. It happens to be that we find in the modern contemporary design language the means to follow these yearnings. They seem to give us the freedom of design we need. But the richness, the goal for which we strive is rooted into something felt much deeper. It is about spatial qualities, about juxtapositions of materials and forms. It is about memories and rituals. About pockets of pause, where life can take place. We think as we will dive fully into our new services of offering modern house plans online, we will discover more of these moments. We are certainly looking forward to the ride. http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_modern_or_not.html 26 May 2009 02:42:31 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com We are about to install a solar water heating system into a modern addition to a house, here in Charlotte, NC. This system is going to heat the water for the entire house, the existing part included. Basically it comes down to two solar panels on the roof and a water tank with an electrical backup heating system. The water will be heated and kept hot to a temperature above your demand. So you can continue taking hot showers. The solar heating system is going to supply the needed hot water at a range between 90-100% of your usage. That means that you will only very rarely be using the electrical backup heater. Now, the exciting part comes in the cost. Currently the home owner will be receiving a tax brake the next spring, cutting down the cost to a couple thousand dollars. Braking that down to your monthly energy bill payments, it will take you only a few years to brake even. After that you will have free hot water for at least twenty years or more until yo might have to revisit the system. Free hot water! In addition you are using renewable energy and there are no carbon emissions associated with your energy consumption anymore. This works even at days with an cloudy overcast. You will have hot water. Another cool aspect of the application in our modern house addition is that our design allows for an integrated look. The roof and construction system allows for the solar panels to blend in. The question arises, why this is not the standard. Why would anybody go for gas or electric water heaters that keep your water hot for you, even when you are at work or on vacation, racking up your monthly payments? Our suggestion is to all our future homeowners that you need to use this system. It saves you money. You will use sustainable energy You will help create a better future. And all that, of course, with a ultra modern house design. Go for it. http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_%20solar_water_heating.html 26 May 2009 21:16:48 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com As we are moving our modern design for addition to an existing house into the construction phase, we decided to follow us on a blog. Check out our work in progress at: http://schoenberg-residence-addition.blogspot.com We thought it might be interesting to you to see how a construction project develops and what the steps were to bring it from the initial ideas to a livable dwelling. This contemporary addition is adding three bedrooms for the young daughters of our clients, as well as a bathroom. It also boasts with a wonderful play area merged with a “library tower” and a little playful “red box”. But, please, have a look at the blog. It might give you some ideas about your modern contemporary home and answer some questions. http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_%20schoenberg_residence_addition.html 20 Jun 2009 17:21:04 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com Our services in regards to our modern house plan designs also include our customer support. We are available to walk you through the entire process of creating a modern house. You might, for example, like one of our contemporary designs, but find that some changes would be necessary to make it the right fit for your situation. Simply write us an email or give us a call and we will assist you in making the right design choices. We will follow up with modified construction drawings based on the original design. Or let’s say you would like to make sure that the design is truly being built to its original intent and you think that your local builder and you need the continuous support during the construction process, we are ready to step in. We can assist through emails, telephone calls, or teleconferences throughout the whole process. If you are unsure about the whole process of constructing a new house, we are here to walk you through it. We will help you to find all the necessary local support you will need, form builders to code enforcement offices. If you are unsure about the means of financing, the value, and appraising of a cool modern dwelling, we are here to help. If you are truly interested into all the green measures available to you in addition to the ones already integrated in the design, we are here to consult with you and to offer additional support services. So don’t hesitate to write us a line or to pick up the phone. You will go through this process only once or twice in your lifetime. For us, on the other hand, it is our daily occupation. Here in Charlotte, NC, we follow our custom projects through the entire process. We design and build our modern houses, additions and upfits. We are involved with our clients from start to finish, walking them through a lot of decisions. We will answer your questions, guide you to the right direction, and create a custom service package just for you. We strive to answer all the questions that you might have and give you guidance in making the right decisions. Start a conversation with us today. http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_%20support_services.html 25 Jun 2009 17:59:03 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com Flat Roof We just installed a “flat roof” in a modern house of ours. It went in easy, inexpensively and looking like a gem. Leakage is going to be out of the question. To help debunk the problems some folks see in flat roofs we thought we should offer a few ideas and pointers. First of all we should mention that we installed a white roofing material that will, due to its reflectiveness, cut down on our client’s energy bill. The sun’s impact is highly reduced. In addition we do not have an attic space that heats up like an oven and stores the heat. The rigid insulation is right underneath the roofing material. There were five easy steps in creating this perfect “flat roof”, the roof plan, the slight pitch, the water run-off, no roof penetration and a proper installation. In the roof plan we already took the path of the water into consideration, We allowed for crickets at any problematic corners. In addition we specified a pitch of 1/4” in 12” for the roof. This slight pitch we hid behind short parapets, 1’-6” at their lowest point. Therefore it is not truly a flat roof, of course. However the pitch is minimal, does not add to the height of the building and leaves you with a simple look. Then our roof plan also spelled out the water run off. We created a scupper that has the width of the entire lower end of the roof. We installed an LVL above it to build up the parapet to the same continuous height of the building. Below it there is a long rectangular gutter that turns into a rectangular downspout of the same thickness, creating an architectural element. The end result on the rear elevation is this cool long horizontal slit in the facade with an L-shaped metal element. The installation was also done right. Using edge-strapping along all the parapets, overlaps, glue on the entire underside of all roofing roll out material, heat-welded overlaps and corner reinforcement. The roofing goes all the way up and over the parapets and is finished with cap-coping. Then we took great care not to have any roof penetrations. All our plumbing vents are grouped into one stack, run through the inside of the parapet and go out on the parapet’s inside sidewall. Our solar water heating panels are built on an “awning” rig that comes of a set of parapet walls as well. Its piping also went through the side of a parapet wall. Here is a picture to show you a little of what we are talking about. http://www.dialectdesign.com/rss_%20flat_roof.html 18 Aug 2009 14:23:19 GMT modern house plans info@dialectdesign.com Many of you are excited about building your dream modern home, but get easily discouraged by uninspired local builders. They tell you it doesn’t work, it’s too expensive, the flat roof leaks, and you won’t find any of the materials. In reality many of them are used to building the same house over and over again and are afraid not to be able to turn a quick penny. Or they have reasonable concerns that come out of their inexperience in the modern and green concept. As a licensed general contractor we are able to offer our services locally to all our clients here in the beautiful metropolitan area of Charlotte, North Carolina. We are happy to tackle everything short of “air hooks”, and we surely will figure that one out, too. But in an effort to make modern homes a reality, even if they are far away, we offer our services for “Construction Consultation” (CC). We adjust the services for our CC to each of our clients or potential clients to meet their specific concerns. In the most complex scenario we turn you, the future homeowner, into the local builder and provide you with all the support you need to complete a successful construction project. From scheduling, contracts, bookkeeping, to material selection, ordering, and picking out colors, we will be at your back and call from the other side of the continent. We go as far as installing webcams to be able to monitor the process. On the easy end of our CC spectrum of services, we talk to your local builders and ease their worries, discuss details, and help them work out their apprehensions. Our designs keep the building trades and standard construction methods in mind. We try to develop modern houses that are easy and cost effective to build, yet give you a unique and rich contemporary home. To make your modern home a reality we offer our construction consultation to bridge the gap between our intentions and your situation on the ground. Just give us a call and we will answer your immediate questions and offer you a custom construction consultation package. http://www.dialectdesign.com/construction_consultation.html 14 Dec 2009 22:01:39 GMT modern construction info@dialectdesign.com We spent some time with a client of ours examining artwork for their new modern house. We are about finished with the construction of their contemporary home. We spent some time previously with a local gallery (not ours ;) ) and were instrumental in setting up a show-and-tell at our client’s home. The gallery’s representative brought a lot of art pieces that our client was interested in and we took turns holding the pieces up in different locations within the house. It was interesting to see how we appreciated the artwork within the artful context that we had created. Our objective seemed to be that we wanted the art to be an extension of the magical world we saw in the space we have dreamed abut for so long. The art pieces were however also of some relevance to the home owner in them self. It opened up a long discussion for us about the question of the quality of art within the architecture, the qualities of art, and how we engage with life in general. Without having come to any meaningful conclusion it left us nonetheless with a renewed appreciation of our work. We do strive every day to improve our skills to create truly magical surroundings, rabbit holes, if you will, that let you experience a world of your own that you so desperately desire. http://www.dialectdesign.com/art_and_artful_spaces.html 13 Feb 2010 19:08:50 GMT modern construction info@dialectdesign.com We enjoyed a great get-together at the Schönberg Residence, the modern addition we designed and built in Charlotte. The home owners, Caroline and Matthias, invited us and a large crowd for a wonderful late summer evening. We toured folks through the modern home and received a lot of compliments and positive comments. The most lasting words were from Andreas Bechtler, the Swiss art collector, who has worked with the world famous architect Mario Botta on Charlotte's new museum of modern art. He shared with us that our architecture was "most exquisite, even for European standards". This was after he studied all our details at length and discussed his Bechtler Museum by Botta and compared it with our work. He showed his own personal art during the evening as well, but mostly his wife and artist Regine Bechtler with some breathtaking sculptures and paintings. We were also happy to enjoy live jazz by Brent Bagwell and his drummer from Great Architect. http://www.dialectdesign.com/openhouse_with_art_and_architecture.html 27 Oct 2010 18:12:19 GMT modern construction info@dialectdesign.com We had some fun with a concrete wall that we created for a modern home makeover. We changed the look of the house by designing and applying a new siding and a metal roof. With it came a new color and modern lighting scheme . The biggest punch, however, in transforming this 70’s style house into a modern dwelling comes from a new entry area. It is designed around a transformed engagement in the approach to the front door and the front door itself. The ensemble includes a butterfly roof, a carbon steel and wood structure, stainless steel cable rails, a one-of-a-kind kiss ass special engineered 7’x7’ rotating pivot door (details soon to come), and a set of concrete walls. At this stage of the game we were dealing with the two cast-in-place concrete walls and found both, our clients and our concrete crew, to be amiable for some extra attention. The general design was set, that is the size, proportions, and situation, as well as its spatial engagement with the house and the approach sequence. We wanted to seize the opportunity and insure a truly beautiful and artful constructional expression, however. Besides taking measures to create a smooth, nearly polished finish, we played with the color of the concrete and the form itself. As far as the color is concerned we simply used an integrated color pigment that was added to the concrete mixture at the concrete plant. We went with “Davis Colors” and choose a dark charcoal grey out of their color palette. The slurry arrived almost black on the site. As we took off the formwork it had already grayed out. We will see what the curing process will do during the next month. After that we are planning to seal it with a clear concrete sealant to give it the final shiny wet look that we are after. As for the formwork? - This is where we really got to have some fun. Our intention was to create a crevasse, an oversized stylized fissure into the taller of the two walls. This one is a 5’ wide and 12’ tall freestanding slab. It is just 9 inches thick. It’s a tall, unnerving piece that brings the entry into scale and dramatizes the approach to the front door as it squeezes you between itself and the house. To create the “crack” we had to modify the formwork. Here are some of the steps we took: http://www.dialectdesign.com/a_concrete_wall_in_the_making.html 31 Mar 2011 17:36:38 GMT modern construction info@dialectdesign.com