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Zen Meeting Room in Japan

A Little Room In The Garden & All The Things You Could Do With One!

By on November 29, 2011 in inspiration with 2 Comments

We’ve been talking quite a bit recently about the idea of garden room as an eco-friendly and much more versatile alternative to adding a conservatory to your home. I believe in this so much, that I’ve even begun the process of adapting my existing home conservatory into a garden room for my family too.

If you want to catch up on some of these reasons, then don’t forget to check out our post: House and Garden – The Relationship.

But right now, I wanted to share with you some great ideas that clients come to us with as reasons for building one. Some of them might just be a fabulous bit of inspiration for you to begin your dream of creating a room in the garden too.

Zen Meeting Room

Above: A Zen Meeting Room, Japan. The perfect balance between inside and out for work? Photo courtesy of Stephanx80

Home Office

This is probably one of the biggest reasons that anyone wants an extension or conversion of any kind. Guess what? More people are working from home now than even before. And there are plenty of reasons to – just think about all the money you could save on petrol alone, and all the time you’d save not being stuck in the rush hour traffic.

But there are down sides to working from home too, and they aren’t always as obvious as you might think until you actually make the jump. Number one problem? Distractions. Kids, the phone ringing, the alure of the TV and the kitchen – these are all tough unless you’re pretty strict with yourself. Number two problem? Space. Working from the kitchen, front room or bedroom normally means working in a cramped environment, without the deskspace you need and with all sorts of clutter around.

Without a doubt, if you’re even considering working from home, then the best piece of advice I can give you is to setup a dedicated space for yourself in which you can work in private, focus on the task in hand, avoid distraction, and get enough space to work comfortably. Normally our homes aren’t designed for this – so an extension or a loft conversion is ideal.

If you’re looking for serenity, then a garden room is a good way to seperate yourself from the everyday surroundings of home. If nothing else, then it’ll create a barrier between your work and home life. At best, with the integration of big windows and folding doors, you can flood your space with natural light and admire the natural surroundings of your garden – which is certainly a better place to work than a stuffy, artifically lit office.

Me-Time

But that’s just a home office, have you considered creating a garden room as a space for something more leisurely? What about giving yourself some space to express yourself, with a dedicated home art studio? Or a wonderful guest room that can be used for visiting friends and family all year round? An inspirational and inviting space that could help you get yourself motivated when considering a home gym? A bird sanctuary if you want to show your wild side? Or just a room for some me time – to read, listen to radio, watch your favourite film, or just play on your X-Box.

Dustpan and Brush! Should builders clean up after themselves?

The Builders Clean – A Dichotomy In Terms

By on November 28, 2011 in projects with No Comments

Here in Milton Keynes, we work with many fantastic builders who I would confidently recommend to any of our clients. But sometimes I hear that a project has been left in a bit of an untidy fashion!

At the completion of a building project, or at the end of a building day, you may hear your builder say he has cleaned behind him.

A cursory glance of firstly the area concerned followed by a chance meeting of your builders eyes may well illicit the words, “a builders clean that is” from your builder as he rapidly makes his way to his pickup truck.

So what does a builders clean actually mean?

Unsurprisingly there is no British or European standard for this term and it will be hard to pin its exact meaning down. There are some cynics who actually believe the two words should never exist in the same sentence. This is a little unhelpful since a negative prefix can be useful to clear up any misunderstandings. Although this may be the only thing that does get cleared up.

OK, lets get serious. If you want your builder to clean properly you will have to make it very clear what you expect before you enter into your contract. If you expect your builder to clean your house, his building site, to any degree normally associated with habitation, you are going to pay dearly for it. Look at it this way, your builder is on say £140 a day which is approximately £20 per hour. Would you pay a cleaner £20 per hour? Probably not.

Given that your builder has tendered for the work, and presuming he wants the work, his quote will be competitive. He will not therefore allow for this expensive thorough cleaning at the end of the project or even at the end of each day unless you make it clear what you expect, you are willing to pay for it and you have made this absolutely clear to all the other competing builders.

A word of caution here though, the word clean is subjective and so will be difficult to enforce in a legal way. In fact it would be so difficult to legally define or enforce that the only people who would clean up would be the lawyers.

I am sorry to say that you may be best advised to accept the situation, bid your builder good evening, get the dustpan and brush out and say to yourself it will all be worth it in the end.

Featured photo courtesy of OnTask

Steel Supports

Some Building Work – My Personal Experience

By on November 28, 2011 in projects with No Comments

If you’re a regular client and have stopped by, then you’ll have noticed that I’ve been out of the office at Building Tectonics for a few days. I am having some work done to my house in Milton Keynes at the moment.

It involves putting a new roof on my conservatory to convert it into what I like to call a garden room (regular readers may know how much I hate conservatories – just a waste of money).

Insulated Roof at my home in Milton Keynes

Above: The new insulated roof going on in the Conservatory.

This new space will be much much warmer in the winter, will not leak rainwater, will not creak and groan or wake me up during a hail storm (actually I might miss that bit).

I am also having the wall completely removed between the kitchen and the new garden room as opposed to the half hearted approach of the previous occupants who removed the window and door separating these two spaces, which resulted in a very cold kitchen too.

Putting a new roof on required some supporting steelwork and new pad foundations, and a lot of this work was done externally or at least was prepared before the horrible triple skinned polycarbonate roof came off. However there was no escaping the mess and inconvenience of the wall removed. A steel beam had to be inserted before the brick and block work could be removed, and before this some temporary support had to be put in place.

My home in Milton Keynes

Above: My conservatory (soon to be Garden Room) at my home in Milton Keynes.

This was made more complicated by me not wanting the kitchen units removed. I now wonder if I should have bitten the bullet and replaced the kitchen units at the same time but I wanted to avoid this expense for now.

The kitchen, like the conservatory, was good quality and I must give credit to the previous owners of the house as they were not mean, just misguided in the case of the conservatory.

The sense of the new space is now emerging and I am impatient to see it finished. The kitchen is a very important space, and when it is combined with a family space, so called, which in this case is also a garden room (because it has lots of glass and double doors connecting it to the garden) will be fantastic.

I love to produce such spaces for clients, so it’s especially good to get a chance to work on a project for myself.

Bletchley Park

We care about our local community, and we’re proud of it

By on November 25, 2011 in fenny stratford with No Comments

Some businesses have one objective at their core, and that’s profit. Anything that gets in the way of that, well – it’s just pushed one side. With a gloomy economic outlook, you might forgive them. But business, like every individual in our society, has a responsibility to the local community in which it sits.

Some other businesses talk the good talk, but often don’t do as much about it as they could. There’s a big difference between having a Corporate Social Responsibility plan, and actually getting out there and meeting local residents.

Fenny Lock in Fenny Stratford Milton Keynes

Above: Fenny Lock, Fenny Stratford here in Milton Keynes. There are so many beautiful landmarks in the local area. Photo courtesy of Tim Ebbs

Building Tectonics are in a unique position as architectural designers in Milton Keynes, because we have an influence both within the remit of our day-to-day work, and also anything we do outside of that.

We live and breath architectural design. It’s our passion as well as our income.

Maybe this sounds outrageous, but we take our work very seriously because it carries with it a heavy burden of responsibility to the families and individuals who live in the homes we design, those who live in that property in the future and those that live nearby or walk past it.

Good architectural design isn’t just relevant to today’s design standards or living needs, it should be just as relevant in twenty, fifty or even a hundred years from now.

We realise that this isn’t necessarily something that you think of right away when you’re wanting to create a ground floor extension or add a garden room for example, but it is something that will genuinely affect the surrounding area.

The Tecton Centre is the home of our business, but it’s also more than that to us – it’s our way of making a mark on the local community here in Fenny Stratford – for the better. The refurbishment of the building was painstakingly done to preserve important features that had been here since the early 1800s, maintaining the feel of the street and restoring an iconic local landmark.

Bletchley Park

Above: Bletchley Park manor house, just a few minutes walk from The Tecton Centre, is of huge historic significance to Britain, and a much loved landmark in the Milton Keynes area. Photo courtesy of Ell Brown.

But we also go a bit further than that – we open most of our space in The Tecton Centre up as a gallery that showcases an incredible range of artwork from local Fenny Stratford residents. We open our doors for local arts and crafts workshops too, and for the more business-minded, we host monthly meetings for the Bletchley and Fenny Stratford Business Association. As a business, we even get involved in supporting local events like the Fenny Poppers festival too.

Being part of Fenny Stratford, and part of Milton Keynes means something to us. The growth of the local area has an impact on our business and on our daily lives, and we believe that every business has a responsibility to do what it can to support that growth in as positive a way as we can.

Planning architect Milton Keynes

Failing to plan or planning to fail?

By on November 24, 2011 in projects with No Comments

When clients ask us what we do that makes our building projects so successful, I always tell them the truth – that all we do is produce high quality architectural design work with a solid feasibility study at the start. There are no magic tricks, and frankly, we wish we were the norm rather than the exception.

Architectural planning Milton Keynes

The thing is, often people run into problems with their house extensions, loft conversions, garden rooms, home makeovers – you name it and we have a hundred horror stories for you. And it’s not down to a few rogue traders or any particular Milton Keynes architects that cause it. It’s just down to one thing – a lack of proper planning.

Here at Building Tectonics, we want to hear your dream or your problem. We love hearing about the home you always wanted to live in, or that your kids just need more space to run around in the winter. But having an open mind is the best route to building something that’s just right.

Dont fall into a trap by failing to plan

Above: Don’t fall into a common trap! Just plan ahead… Photo courtesy of illustir

The most common trap that many home owners as well as architects fall into is jumping into the deep end before looking at the problem. If you go straight to a builder and ask for a conservatory, then they’ll build you one – they won’t ask if you mind it being basically a write-off for the whole winter.

Our guiding principal is the art of planning. We just take a step back before diving into a project, and we ask what you really want and need. Then, we do all the leg work to make sure it’s possible, and give you credible, cost-effective solutions when we think something might not be quite right.

Believe us when we say it’s a lot better to discover a problem during planning than it is half way during a build.

At the end of your project, we hope you’ll ask us what happened to make it such an easy success too!

Featured photo (house of cards) courtesy of peterjroberts

Building Tectonics architect milton keynes

Welcoming New Faces To The Tecton Centre

By on November 19, 2011 in tecton centre with No Comments

Do you run a small business in the Milton Keynes or Fenny Stratford area? Perhaps you work freelance and need a distraction free working environment, or just a bit more space to expand.

At the Building Tectonics office we invite several businesses to share the impressive, clean and modern surroundings that we designed. We know that it’s the perfect home for our business, and we always have space available for more business people to move in.

Our latest tenants are called ’1985′ – they’re a small creative team, who moved in just a month ago and we’d like to extend a warm welcome to them! Here’s what they had to say about the space…

“Moving into The Tecton Centre has been a great step forward for us. Working from home is fine, but it’s distracting and restrictive in space. Plus, where do you meet clients? There’s only so many meetings you can take at a cafe.

The Tecton Centre is actually a very impressive building. For us it represents a perfect mix between something historic, and something very modern. These two aspects are actually quite rare in Milton Keynes, and I’d hate to be stuck in one of the offices in the centre of the town that have very little to distinguish themselves.

More importantly though, the team at Building Tectonics, and all of the other businesses here at The Tecton Centre, are extremely welcoming and have been hugely supportive in sharing ideas and contacts over just the past month of being here.

We hope that this is the start of a long tenancy in The Tecton Centre, Fenny Stratford, Milton Keynes.”

- Richard Monk, Creative, 1985.

Building Tectonics in Milton Keynes

Your Invite To The Tecton Centre, Milton Keynes

By on November 18, 2011 in tecton centre with No Comments

Have you visited us at our beautiful home, The Tecton Centre?

If you’re an existing client, then you may well have come over for a coffee to talk through options on your project. If you haven’t worked with us yet, then we’d love to welcome you over for a chat.

There’s nothing that we enjoy more than talking to people with big ideas. And by big ideas, I don’t mean big building projects. I mean people who have a vision for transforming their house into a comfortable home, converting a space into something more functional, or who just have an idea – perhaps very modest or unformed, about how they want to live.

Maybe you’re thinking about a ground floor extension to accomodate your growing family, an impressive garden room to bridge that gap between your home and the garden, a loft conversion where you can set up a home office, or maybe even something much bigger.

Whatever your dream, Building Tectonics can help you get there.

We pride ourselves most on the care and detail we go into with clients during the early feasibility study stage of a project.

In simple terms, this means that we listen carefully to you about your vision and discuss any potential problems that we can identify for you as leading professionals in the architectural design industry.

We believe in being honest and straight forward with clients, right from the start. This has helped us turn so many family’s dream projects into a reality since we started working in 1985.

Are you a Milton Keynes resident? If so, then it’ll take you just ten minutes at the most to pop over and see us at our Fenny Stratford based home. If you’re coming from further afield, then why not give us a call and we’ll put the kettle on for your arrival.

We’re proud of our home, The Tecton Centre, all the more because it’s a great example of the quality of our work. It’s a beautiful historic building that we’ve restored and turned into a clean, modern place of business.

Why don’t you stop by and we’ll show you around?

Garden Room Design Milton Keynes

House and Garden – The Relationship

By on November 16, 2011 in projects with 1 Comment

Garden rooms and conservatories are popular features here in Milton Keynes, as with most of the UK – bridging an internal and external space. I am often asked by clients to design a garden room opening out onto their garden space – though sometimes the client intends to redesign the garden as a separate exercise.

Building Tectonics isn’t a Garden Design company and I for one hardly know a Lillac from a laburnum tree, let alone their botanical names! However, the way the layout of the garden relates to your house is important and I do often happily end up advising clients on this aspect of design too.

Clearly if you want to make the most of your garden room in the summer and mid-season then having large patio or bi-fold doors is important so that you can create that ambiguous space that is neither fully inside nor outside… like a room in the garden!

Bifold doors are all the rage at the moment, and the cost for a reasonable quality set has halved and halved again in the last 10 years making them very affordable. One word of warning here though – please make sure that whatever bi-fold doors you choose are high quality and come with a good guarantee – they’re a moving part that may get plenty of usage, especially if they become your main door onto the garden. Don’t just think of them as a bit of static building but perhaps more like a mechanism that may even need some maintenance in due course. Also, it’s important to consider security and ask if the product has been assessed by Secured By Design, the UK Police initiative supporting the principles of “designing out crime”.

A really successful approach to this inside-outside relationship is to create an “outside room” space directly adjacent to your patio or bi fold doors. At its simplest this might just be a rectangular patio, but a pergola or low wall may help define the space and reinforce a feeling of semi enclosure.

We tend to feel more relaxed and at peace when we are in a defensible space than when we are in a completely open space, and yet we can feel claustrophobic when too enclosed. An “outside room” can be a perfect balance between these two states. I suspect that we have an innate sence of preservation that makes us feel more secure when we are within a defensible space and yet not trapped.

Of course the conservatory is often thought of as the natural answer to this desire for ambiguous space, but in my opinion seldom satisfactorily achieves either.

I have just returned from talking to new clients who have lived with their conservatory for 10 years and now realise that it stands in the way, quite literally, of a proper extension. Ten years is not bad since conservatories often look very tired after a short while, and given that most families only use them for a few months in the year, they are not the answer if you need more permanent space.

The record we’ve seen in terms of a short life cycle was an 18 month conservatory that was demolished to make way for a room that could be used all year round!

We have been involved in designing structures to support a new roofs over conservatories, making them much cosier and we have also acted as expert witnesses in a legal case where a conservatory company had erected a south facing conservatory… with no openings!

There is of course a place for a conservatory – but it is by no means a substitute for a proper piece of building if you need to use it all the year round. A well designed house or extension with the benefit of a well connected outside space, also thoughtfully designed, seems to give most home owners what they want and need.

Featured photo courtesy of LISGirl

Planning permission in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire

Your Permitted Development Rights – What’s changed and what to do next?

By on November 12, 2011 in your rights with No Comments

There is understandably a lot of confusion over permitted development rights at the moment. It’s something that we come across talking to new and existing clients here in Milton Keynes or further afield, every single week.

Old Rules

The Department of Communities and Local Government published new rules that came into force on 1st October 2008 in respect of Permitted Development Rights for dwellings. This is in regard to building works that can be undertaken to the house and in the garden of a dwelling without the need to apply for planning permission. It has been followed by further changes and clarification to the rules.

The old Permitted Development Rights prior to the 2008 changes were in truth quite complicated, but at least those operating in the field had built up a working knowledge of the rules.

Furthermore, where ambiguities existed in the old rules, they had been plugged by much case law and many guidance notes.

New Rules

What we now have is a simplified set of rules – supposedly.

Well, in my view they are simple in that they must have been constructed by a simpleton! They are clear cut for a few very simple cases.

It is true that we now have a clever animated piece of software which can be seen on the Government’s Planning Portal, which can be accessed and understood by the general public. Some clients elect to exactly copy what is shown on the website to be sure that planning permission is not required and this often results in a poor extension which is badly related to the space within the house and visually externally.

This is very sad because often the planning authorities would allow an alternative.

So where to next?

The situation is now going to get much worse as planning authorities start charging to tell us if planning permission is required.

It’s got to the point where we sometimes advise clients to apply for planning even though we think (but can’t be sure) that planning permission isn’t in fact required. The cost and time delay in getting this information, which may require us to apply for planning anyway, is not worth the bother.

I must remind readers that even if your desired extension exactly fits the straight jacket of the permitted development rules, this still may not exclude you from relying upon planning persmission. Why? Because your permitted development rules may have been used up by a previous extension, there may be a planning condition negating your permitted development right, or the local authority may have removed your permitted development rights with what is known as an Article 4 Direction.

An Article 4 Direction is usually used to restrict some type of development that is considered by the local planning authority to be detrimental to an area. Clearly they are intended to be quite specific in regard to what is to be restricted and the geographical area to which they are applied.

It’s worth noting that in general planning authorities appear not to like permitted development as it removes their power of control. It is undoubtedly true that some planning authorities act like a “design police force” enforcing an authoritarian regime and submerging the individual home owners rights. Having said that, they do in the main carry out this high handed approach honestly and without favour. It seems that they do not trust us, the public, to exercise restraint or good taste.

To Recap:

You may be able to extend your house without requiring planning permission but you may have to pay to get this confirmed.

Remember that needing planning permission is not the same as being denied planning permission. In fact, most of my projects where planning is required, do get planning permission.

In my view it is worth getting something in writing from the local authority, because when you come to sell you will be asked to provide evidence that the extension to your house was lawfully carried out – and how else would you prove that?

Featured photo courtesy of Brian Turner

House Makeover by Building Tectonics in Milton Keynes

Makeovers and other fundamental changes to houses

By on October 24, 2011 in makeovers, projects with No Comments

Makeover is the term we use to describe a certain type of project where a client does not just want to extend or change the internal layout but wants to do more. It may require a facelift improving kerb appeal for instance or the way the living space relates to the garden. Quite often extending or reorganizing the spaces is on the agenda too but it is an awareness that something more fundamental is required that is the key.

It can stem from a desire to increase the value of a house for commercial gain or, as is more often the case, the clients like a location but just dislike the house as it stands. We even get clients who aspire to move to a location, give us a list of properties and ask us to appraise all of them. In this case we would start with trying to understand the clients needs in terms of accommodation and stylistic preferences. Some clients have started scrapbooks containing photos of houses they like before we first meet and this is very helpful. We are aware that some less prosaic clients miss out because they do not appreciate what we can do for them, and of course it is a courageous act to put such trust in another.

I would always encourage those embarking on such a process to meet their intended architect or designer to see if there is a meeting of minds before engaging. Even then the client should be prepared to change designers if things are not working out and I describe a project below that came to us under similar circumstances. We were very pleased to be of assistance and as it happens things have turned out better than the clients expected.

Our clients already had plans prepared by others to demolish and re-build a very tired bungalow with the intention that they would live there. Once builders quotations had been received for the scheme it become clear that the project could not be economically justified. We were then commissioned to improve the existing building with a view to our client selling it.

We looked at a number of ideas and based on what clients are generally asking for nowadays we developed a scheme that would, we thought, achieve the best returns. To achieve this you have to have regard to building costs the end value and the time taken to fruition. The end value will largely be governed by location, which of course we have no power over, but we can help with the design. We prepared a number of proposals and the client chose in my view the best of these.

To call the adopted scheme a make-over is misleading and since I hate the term anyway, I would prefer to describe the proposal as an exercise in rebuilding, restoration, remodeling, regeneration, renovation, reorganization or even re-creation. Call it what you will, it has completely transformed the house into a chalet bungalow with two large bedrooms with ensuite in the rebuilt roof. The lounge is still the lounge but the fireplace has been rebuilt so that it does what was intended by the original architects but never really achieved – it provides a feature and a focal point within the room. There is another large third bedroom with ensuite on the ground floor for guests. But the real joy of this house is the journey from the entrance door through to the family room and kitchen. Most clients want a family room adjacent or part of the kitchen and if this space overlooks the garden then it is much the better for it. This space does not just overlook a garden but it overlooks a beautifully mature garden that has been tended and cared for by the occupants over the years.

The upshot to all of this is that our clients have now decided not to sell but to live in it themselves. Who can blame them. Our clients have done a fabulous job on the kitchen and, as I write this, they are grouting and polishing the granite floor tiles. It will look fabulous when it is finished and I would like to think they will enjoy this rebuilt, restored, remodeled, regenerated, renovated, reorganized recreated house as much as the new house that was never built. It is very satisfying to work on a project like this we are grateful to our clients for giving us the opportunity.

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