Gratefullness
As I head towards the end of 2023 and look to welcome 2024, I have a lot to be grateful for. In the residential architecture sphere, I work in. I treasure all the great families and residential building professionals around Vermont I had the good fortune to work with this past year. Arocordis Design is all about cultivating the heart and soul of design and artful living with a modern spirit for and with Vermonters. It is a privilege to do this important work!
Many of you came to us to help you design additions and major renovations. Others have asked us to help you with designing a new custom home or accessory building like a hobby barn or multi-purpose building. Whether starting this year or earlier, six of our residential projects have slowly come to life in 2023. Some will finish by the end of the year. Talented Vermont builders will finish the rest by next year. It is genuinely exciting for us to see the designs we did together take shape and their craft of construction. With this post, let us look at four of our design projects now being built in Central Vermont.
Montpelier highlights
In Montpelier, Arocordis has two in-town projects under construction, one on North Street, and the other on the other side of town, on Terrace Street. Since I live in Montpelier, it is heartwarming to help local families stay in their homes and expand them so they will continue living here for years to come.
North Street is a 24’x16’ single-level living-focused rear addition with a new deck with some interior improvements. Its goal is to help its family age in place by creating a more flexible main living level with more space, then later that space transforms into the main bedroom suite for single-level living. The upstairs bedrooms then flip to become guest bedrooms. A large new deck with a hot tub will supply beautiful sunset views and a space for gathering. Sticks and Stones Construction is building this project.
Work in progress photo - North Street Addition.
Terrace Street is a larger rear addition designed to help a growing family expand their 24’x24’ 1940s footprint with larger bedroom suites, one main bedroom, and another guest bedroom for visiting friends and family. This design looked to harmonize the addition with the gambrel roof forms of the existing but with a modern-spirited verve and a large deck with expansive outdoor living space. I cannot wait to see how both turn out in 2024 with landscaping and finishing out the interiors. More to come for sure. @blbuilding802 on Instagram is the local builder. With this expansion, the client-family has the choice to remain in the city for decades to come.
Street view - Terrace Street, Addition and Renovation
Rear view - Terrace St
Rear view - Terrace Street
Before image - Terrace Street
In the hills around the city
In 2021 and 2022, two other families came to us, one with an existing home needing an addition in Calais and the other in the hills of East Montpelier for a new small custom home. Each was a unique project for Arocordis and me with unique design briefs.
The one in Calais presented an interesting opportunity for us. The client asked us to help them create an expansive, multi-generational modern farmhouse for three adult siblings to live together with their families. You can read more about its details in our Arocordis blog post story. However, here is a picture, though.
Calais - Rear view, overall
East Montpelier is another interesting story. A builder, Sticks and Stones Construction - VT came to us to help them design a retirement home for a couple moving back to Vermont from out west. Downsizing from a much larger home in Arizona, it began as a larger two-level home design at first. As the high construction costs weighed down the budget, it became clear to all that a simpler single-level home design better fit their needs.
This single-level living 2,000 SF Pretty-Good-house level home has two bedrooms with a flex room that could double as a guest room or a study. It also has a three-bay garage for vehicles and land work equipment. A beautiful, expansive, flexible great room of living, dining, and kitchen forms the heart of the home. All the other spaces spring from it. We will write a more detailed project story about it soon. But here are two design images. See Sticks and Stones on Instagram for construction shots. It is a pleasure to see the walls rising and the home form appear.
Seeing these projects get built and experiencing their design process from my viewpoint, I see some themes emerge to consider in planning and design for projects next year and beyond.
EMERGING VERMONT 2024 HOME DESIGN THEMES
Existing Vermont home prices and costs for land to build continue to rise. Mortgage rates, while falling a little, are at twenty-plus-year highs. Our housing stock is scarce. All of this adds up to an affordability and availability crisis. In the next 3-5 years, Vermonters will, rather than selling their home and moving up to a larger one, will more likely stay in place. Besides the lack of housing stock and affordability, many of us in the last decade bought homes with exceptionally low-interest rates with major home equity gains because of rising home prices over the last few years.
For us at Arocordis, this means more clients will come to us for architectural design and planning services to add on to and renovate their homes and remain in place. They will use that home equity and self-financing to get those projects done. Still, others will want to add extra bedrooms, enlarged kitchens, and living areas all to enhance longer-term livability. Existing starter homes may become forever homes for growing families on one end, and aging in place as the costs of condominiums also soar on the other.
Others who will come to us for new custom modern-spirited homes or outbuildings may seek to build smaller rather than larger structures. I see homes with less square footage in the years to come and more emphasis on flexibility and dual-purpose spaces that reduce overall footprints. Smaller more compact kitchens with the work triangle will once again play more of a central role. We see a continued interest in flexible living-dining-kitchen spaces with strong ties to exterior porches and outdoor living. Let the outdoors in and bring Vermont’s nature near! Enhancing such biophilic connections increases families’ long-term health and wellness outcomes as well.
Vermont will see continued interest in adding accessory dwelling units like mother-in-law apartments for long-term renters and multiple generations, especially with changing zoning regulations. There is less appetite for short-term rentals here in the state now. Arocordis and I want to help expand housing options with small modern ADUs, whether garage conversions and additions or stand-alone small homes.
Our changing climate continues to reinforce the need for resilient energy energy-efficient home renovations and new construction at Pretty-Good-House levels and beyond. Look for even more demand for all-electric homes and ones built for resiliency to power outages with generators and whole-house batteries powered by solar panels. Newer low-embodied carbon bio-based insulation alternatives will grow in usage as the manufacturers get traction. Innovators include TimberHP and local ones from Vermont, like Grypon, a straw-based wall panel product.
Efficiency and weatherization-related financial incentives and rebates from Efficiency Vermont are at the highest in history. They can range from $4,500 to 9,000 per project when they meet or exceed their targets for weatherization. The rebate amount depends on family income factors. This and high-performance equipment rebates are game-changers to help Vermonters save money, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and soften climate impacts.
With these themes in mind, the future is bright for home design and renovation in the years ahead. What Arocordis and I design with you in the years ahead will look different, be more energy efficient, and smaller than before. One thing will stay the same. We will supply modern spirited, creative architectural design and planning services. We will look for innovative, scrappy, and creative solutions together with you, the builders, and the suppliers we collaborate with.
Happy Holidays. We wish you and yours the best of the season! Want to contact us or see more about our work? Click on the link below. Check back for more blog updates on those four projects and more to come at our Arocordis Blog! Meanwhile, time to warm our hands around the wood stove. It is cold out there!
Thanks, Steve