Is your home a source of stress or a sanctuary? Discover the principles of The Intuitive Home by Arocordis Design. From acoustic zoning to flicker-free lighting, this Vermont architect’s guide explores how to create a 'Sensory Friendly Home' that supports Autism, ADHD, and Aging-in-Place for a lifetime of well-being.
Harvest Time - Fall brings the gifts of the season forward. So to do we with an update on recent work here in Vermont, some in design, others under construction or now finished. We are grateful to help our clients and their families into their next stage of life with their additions, renovations or new custom designed homes.
Across Vermont, from the Champlain Valley, Central Vermont, to the Northeast Kingdom, families are rediscovering the benefits of living together, spanning generations under one roof. Whether it’s welcoming aging parents with grace, creating a supportive haven for adult children or other family members to stay, or simply choosing a more connected and sustainable way of life, multi-generational homes are an enduring part of Vermont’s values of family and community.
These aren’t just houses; they are homesteads in the making, designed to share resources, strengthen bonds, and deepen our connection to this special place we call home. But creating a home that truly serves….
When deciding between home renovation with additions or custom new construction, families in Central Vermont and beyond often face an important crossroads with no clear answers. At Arocordis Design in scenic Montpelier, we guide families through creating homes that truly reflect their needs and dreams, whether through thoughtful addition and remodeling design or new custom home design.
Homeowners frequently ask us whether they should renovate their existing space or opt for new construction. Four key considerations influence this decision:
·Low-interest rate mortgages make selling and buying new property less appealing.
Growing families need more comfortable living spaces……
In the hills of Central Vermont, a historic 1850s farmhouse once stood as a symbol of family heritage. When fire claimed this beloved home early in 2024, it threatened to erase generations of precious memories. Our Vermont architectural firm, Arocordis Design, is now helping this family create a new chapter in their story through thoughtful custom home design that connects their rich past to an exciting future….
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…
We are often inspired by nature, but true architectural innovation comes from partnering with nature’s forces. This concept sketch by firm principal Stephen M. Frey, AIA, explores how an earth-sheltered, nature-near home design can solve two specific Vermont challenges: keeping warm in winter and blending into our protected hillsides.
Introduction:
Creating a new garage hobby barn live space to support your existing home in a rural or suburban setting can be an exciting and rewarding project. To ensure a successful outcome, it’s important to follow key steps and best design and planning practices.
Those taking steps to determine space usage requirements, assessing existing building and site infrastructure, and permitting needs. It’s also critical to consider aging in place, accessibility, and universal design principles for forward adaptability to changing lifestyles and life chapters. With a frequently unstable climate, it is critical to meet or exceed energy efficiency standards and improve resiliency to climate shocks. This easy-to-understand guide will walk you through these and other important planning and design steps.
Are you looking to design and build a new home, or a major renovation or addition in Vermont? Are you curious about current trends in modern green home design to consider when working with an architect but do not have the time? While working with recent clients and surveying the marketplace, we have collected together some insights you might find helpful to make that easier. There is a lot going on right now with exciting innovations. Let's look together.
With home design trends, Vermont is well ahead of the curve. As a state, we have always been at the forefront of environmental consciousness and that extends to our homes as well. We see a move away from traditional home design and forms, with an embrace of more modern styles that reflect changing Vermont values. These new designs may be rooted in the traditional forms of Vermont barns, and farmhouses, but look also to modern forms, materials, and approaches fusing together old and new.
Across the generations seeking residential architectural design in Vermont and nationally, there is growing interest in modern spirited design from the mid-20th century. Perhaps it is nostalgia for earlier, simpler times or less adorned home design? It is hard to tell. However, this approach and style align well with interest in green eco-conscious home design with a less is more approach.
One of the most important aspects of any home design is how it interacts with its surroundings. With its hills, valleys, mountains, and water bodies, Vermont has some of the most beautiful natural scenery in the world. This is especially so in our more rural areas, but also in our cities and villages. In Vermont, take advantage of this to not only fit in but also enhance their surroundings. Some trends to consider are capitalizing on exterior views in interior space and deck design, creating outdoor rooms for leisure and sports activities by planting trees and vegetation and using local fieldstone with native plantings for outside terraces and walls.
Another recent trend involves homes' size and changing patterns of use. Here in Vermont, we see a move away from large McMansions and a return to smaller, more efficient homes that make the most of their environment. For example, many of the new homes we design range in size from 2 to 4 bedrooms and 1,000 to 2,500 square feet above ground space. See Fieldhouse, Wing-house, and Mountain-Meadow NetZero Ready for examples.
Along with smaller size, with our work with clients, we continue to see a demand for flexible living areas unified by airy open ceilings combining kitchen, dining, and easy-living spaces. Increasingly, clients need to work or do school-type activities at home with the growth of remote work because of the Pandemic. Bonus spaces over garages or in full or partial basements help supply needed space for these new patterns.
Another changing home use pattern involves co-living and accessory dwelling units. Also can include multiple generations or siblings together. With Vermont's recent radical increases in housing costs and costs of living, some clients seek to welcome additional family or friends to live with them and share their homes. It is called co-living. This means multiple generations living together under the same roof and sharing resources. This may include older parents coming to live part-time to help with young children, recent working college graduates wanting to save money, or close to retirement age and wanting to downsize from larger homes.
Enhancing co-living options may involve adding to an existing home with a self-contained living unit, or sometimes, a detached accessory dwelling unit. An added side benefit where permitted, homeowners can rent these spaces out to guests for extra income using Airbnb or VRBO or similar.
With our cold winters and eco-oriented culture in Vermont, there is a big focus on building for energy conservation and energy efficiency. Our residential building code mandates it in fact. The code minimum today is 50% better than it was 20 years ago. This impacts insulation levels of walls, slabs, roofs, windows heating, and cooling systems. With the market and advances in the energy code, we continue to see a move away from traditional heating systems such as oil and propane and towards greener alternatives. They can include geothermal, ground source or air-to-air heat pumps, and solar, with innovations such as whole-home batteries.
The batteries also offer a practical alternative to diesel generators to help power homes during power failures driven by Vermont's weather. With the cost of these systems coming down and builders' familiarity with these systems, it is now more affordable than ever to heat your home sustainably. These systems also help homes be more adaptive to climate change and increase the resiliency of your property.
Those system choices are further improved when combined with better windows and doors, more exterior insulation, and attention to air sealing. Also, whole-home ventilation, and careful attention to selecting low-embodied carbon materials further help to improve comfort, health and wellbeing, and climate-positive integrated design.
Thinking and acting locally is another trend that is also good for the planet and local communities. In the interior of your home, there are many Vermont-made products that can help make your home not only beautiful but also eco-friendly. We continue to see a trend toward using more local and sustainable materials such as wood, stone, paints and coatings, and countertops. In fact, like our world-class scenery, we have world-class local craftspeople and makers that help local builders supply competitively priced custom cabinets, decorative metal railings and fixtures, stonework, lighting fixtures, and more. These materials not only add beauty to your home but also help reduce your carbon footprint and keep dollars in our local communities.
There is also a trend toward using more natural colors and finishes that reflect the Vermont landscape and its four seasons. We are seeing a move away from synthetic materials and towards natural fibers such as wool, cotton, and linen. These materials not only look and feel better but are also better for the environment.
Given the scarcity of local labor, busy firms, and high costs of residential construction, we see the trend continue to embrace mixed approaches to building. This includes the use of prefabricated and modular elements along with traditionally onsite stick-built custom construction. Builders we work with can build more projects at a higher quality level with this approach. Prefab and modular construction offer the option to build portions of a home in the controlled conditions of a factory or shop. This can allow builders to build projects more quickly and or free up onsite staff to focus on higher quality finish work inside the home or around it. We see this trend continuing in the years ahead.
Finally, we are seeing a trend towards using more energy-efficient appliances and fixtures in the kitchen and bathrooms. These products not only save you money on your utility bills but also help to reduce your carbon footprint and reduce water usage. On the trend with smaller home design, there is a growth in compact, space-saving, or stackable low-water and electricity-using models.
So, if you are looking to build or renovate your home in Vermont, there are many exciting trends to consider. These trends not only reflect our Vermont values but also help to make our homes more sustainable and energy-efficient. If you are interested in learning more about these trends, or if you would like help designing your dream home, major renovation, or addition, please contact us. We would be happy to help you navigate the exciting world of modern green home design.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article! We hope this was informative. If you have questions, please contact us. We would be happy to help in any way we can.
Or if you would like to return to our portfolio of projects and see new and recently constructed work, please click on the below.
Late last year a couple approached us to adapt our Inside-Out House, a net-zero-ready prototype home design we created a few years ago to their land in southern Vermont. We enlarged and customized it to suit their family needs and design goals. Along the way, we pushed the home design in some innovative directions that we share below. We call this home design FieldHouse.
Located on 60 mostly wooded acres in the Upper Valley area in Vermont, our clients selected a forested edge that spilled out onto….
Recently, a client sought us out to adapt our ZigZag House2 home design for her property in Northern Vermont. For her, the 1,000 square foot 2-bedroom single-level home was a great starting point but she wanted to adapt it in a variety of ways to better suit her needs. A home-based writer, she wrote in a small specially design cabin bucolically located on the edge of a large pond with scenic views of the hills and mountains to the west. The primary two-story single-family home nearby anchored the hillside property, a former dairy farm.
Our client sought to lease the main house to another family while designing and building a new compact home for herself nearby around the same pond as the writer’s cabin. She set some inspiring goals which included:
To create a sustainable climate-positive home while also allowing her to travel for months at a time, leaving the home in easy to maintain hibernation mode while away for extended periods.
Design and refine the existing ZigZag2 House design to be even simpler, unifying some of the separate living volumes…..
Continuing the planning theme from the previous post please enjoy the following short video where we explain the ins and outs of residential master planning.
In the process or just starting, If you are located in Vermont or own property here and you want to get residential work done during next year’s building season, there is no time like the present to start
A family, who owns a classic Vermont farmhouse set up with a front-house, mid-house, back-house, and barn, hired us to provide architectural design and creative services. They asked us to design a solution to renovate the entry and kitchen area portion of their classic Vermont home.
Interested in sustainable living at home? Wondering how to integrate beauty, function, and concern for energy efficiency, low or next to no energy use while creating a more predictable affordable future? Wanting to downsize from your now oversized family home to something simpler, perhaps smaller in size and maybe not so complicated? Or starting to transition at work and thinking about starting a home-based business or working from home more and more often but wanting a separation from your living spaces?
We too have considered these questions over the last few years and have developed and now designed a small net-zero capable modern farmhaus addressing these many questions. The home design is also inspired by the iconic Big-house, Little-house, back house, and barn. We began its design last winter but developed further into a designed home concept we present here. And it's a relative to the Net-Zero Mountain Retreat we wrote about earlier here.
Birdseye view of proposed building and site
View of main entry and overall form of the 1-1/2 story home design
View from south looking towards the home and live-work garage.
In our residential work we believe in bringing the outdoors in and extending the indoors out with an ample west facing terrace, garden beds with extensive room for planting around the home and its grounds. We site the home into a fairly flat setting with room for Photovoltaic solar trackers to offset home and the garage live/ work space energy use hopefully to a net-zero energy usage level. A vegetable and wildflower garden rests to the west of the garage and below the solar tracker orchard. Rainwater collection barrels lay near garden beds around the house to help reduce use of well-water or city or town water usage. For now the home is oriented long way north to south. Final siting would need to be adjusted to your site, solar orientation, its topography and views.
First Floor Plan
Second Floor Plan
The lower level has 1,240 square feet of living, dining, kitchen, and the master bedroom suite. Walk upstairs to find an open studio overlooking the lower level with two bathrooms and a full bath. The upper living level is 749 square feet. The separate live-work garage has over 450 square feet of space on each level.
The floor plans show interconnections and intentional open views across the spaces from Kitchen to the living and dining spaces and from the living/dining areas up to the studio loft above and kitchen below. Skylights overhead bring daylight into living/dining area and studio space with the stair. Central storage and work area with washer/dryer and electrical and mechanical plant lay near the stair and across from the Kitchen.
View from kitchen towards living and dining area
Once adapted to your specific needs regarding location, site and topography, views as well as internal space planning and program we would refine the design, getting more specific about what makes this a net-zero capable home and site design. For starters in our mind those systems might include the following:
The building envelope considers fairly high performing insulation levels such as (R40) 12" double stud dense packed cellulose wall framing with 2" rigid out-sulation, (R60) 18" dense packed vented cathedral ceilings with TJI's, (R20) 4" min of underslab insulation and (R10) 2" foundation wall insulation.
Possibly a small size air source heat pumps for heating, Panasonic whisp to assist with air-sealing below on the wall and below the vented standing seam roofing.
Low-e clear triple insulated glazing and doors with appropriate solar window coverings to mitigate heat gain on the interior. There may be more specific tuning of the windows and doors depending on the face orientation of the home.
There would be an optional very small high efficiency wood or pellet stove, more for the "spiritual" fire with through wall venting to assist with fresh air intake. Or windows could be opened when the fire is lit for additional ventilation.
Simple durable interior finishes, hopefully locally sourced wood trim, low or now Volatile Organic Compound paint or stain finishes. Deciding on finishes appropriate for you lifestyle, lifestage, family usage are a longer conversation worth paying close attention to ease of long term care, warranties and eventual replacement and recycling or upcycling where possible.
All of the detailing would be designed and built to low-energy home performance levels helping to potentially achieve net zero-energy usage on a yearly basis. Another step would be running energy modeling, right-sizing the internal heating and ventilation system, optimizing the window sizes and glazing specifications.
Depending on the homeowner and family initiative and available time, an extensive vegetable garden nourished by composting might further enrich sustainable living. If gardening takes too much time, join a local Community Supported Agriculture farm to get your vegetables year round.
Of course achieving those goals depends on the client, their budget and schedule, whether or not to purse local or national high performance building certification and at what level of performance. This might mean for example here in Vermont, enrolling in the Vermont Energy Star Home program or the High Performance Homes program run by Efficiency Vermont. Depending on where you're located in the U.S. you may want to consult the National Energy Star website to learn more.
Enrolling and completing such programs benefits the homeowner in a number of ways. Firstly during the construction phase and operation of the home, and then on the back end, providing green certification of the quality of the home for future reselling. This backend grows increasingly relevant as more and more State wide Multiple Listing Services add Green Building related components to available listing criteria for homebuyers. Called the Green MLS toolkit nationally this initiative has taken hold in Colorado, the Atlanta area, Chicago, Portland, Oregon and increasingly elsewhere.
Qualifying projects for Efficiency Vermont's Residential programs receive energy consultation and performance testing services helping ensure your high performing project complies with their program leading to receiving helpful financial incentives and certification of performance levels reached. Similarly NYSERDA in New York State, Mass Save in Massachusetts, NHSAVES in New Hampshire, EfficiencyMaine all provide Energy Star and in some cases High Performing home programs like Vermont.
Ask your architect and builder if they have experience with these programs or similar ones near you. If not, you may want to look elsewhere if you seek a energy efficient high performing home, whether new construction, renovation or an addition. Green building is mainstream now having matured over the last 20 years and in a sense is the new normal.
Other more stringent third party verification programs exist such as Passive House, Living Building Challenge, USGBC LEED for Homes to name a few. These involve adherence to even more stringent high performing efficiency and whole building and site design standards. They examine more closely sustainable siting, materials, low water and zero energy use, or even positive energy generation, holistic thinking, life cycle cost analysis and more.
In the meanwhile, we hope you've enjoyed this story about the design process. the overall design and some of the details of this Modern Farmhaus. Let us know if you have any questions and comments about the design. Happy to answer them.
If you enjoyed the links to green building programs, materials and other information and find them helpful do let us know below in the comments section. We are always looking for helpful information. Don't hesitate to share in the comment section below.
Follow us to stay in touch with what we share and write, or contact us if you would like us to speak at your conference or participate in a panel or better yet want to work together on a fine green home for you and your family.
To see more examples of recent home design project work, go check out our project portfolio by clicking on the button below. There you will find a mix of recently completed built residential work, new builds, renovations, or home design projects now in progress. Whether in Montpelier, Hartland, Burke Hollow, Calais or East Ryegate, Grand Isle and beyond, here in this section of our site, you can also find examples of our growing collection of customizable net-zero ready prototype and spec houses. Our portfolio awaits your visit. Welcome home!
