Classic modern beginnings
Do you have land in Vermont and need an architect to design your new home and create plans to build from? Arocordis Design, a licensed architect based in Montpelier, Vermont, has created another dynamic modern small house prototype. It joins others such as Inside-Out Home, Modern Farmhaus, and Mountain-Meadow Net-Zero Ready. We call it Wing House. We designed it along classic 20th-century modern lines, uplifting roof forms, and soaring interior spaces. We update it’s modern open-plan living by tapping into flexible and smart prefab green building benefits. We also tailored this pre-fab-capable home design to the cold climates of Vermont and beyond.
Concept site plan showing the home, gardens, walking paths and more.
Modular planning
Such flexibility has many advantages including enhanced quality control and customization in the shop with carefully controlled interior conditions and easy access to needed machinery and tools.
If you have a short building season or if schedule is a concern, the components can be built in the shop off-season. This speeds up later on-site assembly and finishing. You can also build this model with traditional stick-framing methods, or a hybrid of both optimized to your site and project needs. We leave the choice to you. Read more here on our blog. Let us next discuss how this type of planning leads into the details of the floor plan.
Diagram showing three modules and connecting entry area.
Floor plan overview
Wing House has 2,000 Square feet (SF) of single-level living space. It is designed to be built in three pre-fab (3) modules 15’ by 40-45’ in size. The entry and hallway space connect the modules. The first radiates out from the front entry and houses the flexible kitchen-dining-living space. This module extends out to an optional stone terrace or wood deck and the site outside. Interior and exterior site and space connections are vital to the homeowner experience of this design and connect with the nature-near modern spirit of Wing House.
The second includes two east-side-facing generous bedrooms sharing a full bath. The third has the master bedroom suite, side entry and mudroom, and laundry. It also has a mechanical room. This design could also suit multiple generations living together, an increasingly popular green home design trend. The optional two-car garage comes complete with a small workshop area and storage. It would connect to the main house by a covered walkway.
Floor plan showing key spaces
Why single-level living?
A single level saves space and money by lessening or removing the need for costly stairs, level changes, and basements. This simplifies construction, can shrink house size, and may reduce the time needed to build. We enhance accessibility in Wing House by adding wider entry doors to every room, an accessible ready kitchen, and baths, and no significant level changes except for the optional rear terrace to ramp to the site if needed. This achieves the goal of creating an easy-to-maintain home for multiple generations to enjoy and age in place.
Long section showing key spaces
We know all land is not flat, and your site needs may also vary When working together, we can alter the plan to a hillside slope with minor level changes. We can adjust the layout to make use of a narrow urban property by adding an upper floor or basement, and changing how the garage connects to the house. The flexible platform of Wing House is very adaptable.
Options
We show here the model designed and built out with all options included with some unique added touches. Those options include:
The garage
·Two-covered porch areas
Covered walkway to the garage from the house
Generous rear terrace
Stone walls with integrated planters and exterior lighting
(3) Solar photovoltaic ground-mounted trackers
Solar hot water units
Planting areas around the house
Upgraded exterior energy efficiency package (contact us for more info)
design Slideshow
Interior design
The interior continues the minimal yet dynamic exterior material palette. It begins with lightly stained birch hardwood doors, wall trim, built-ins, and cabinets. A warmly colored polished cast-in-place concrete slab balances the birch. Colored concrete countertops with a glass tile backsplash further coordinate with other finishes in the kitchen and bedrooms. Accent wall paint colors tie it all together.
We selected classic birch-finished modern furniture for the living room and dining areas with bright pops of upholstered color. Low-profile energy-efficient LED surface ceiling-mounted fixtures light up the spaces. A signature chandelier hangs over the dining room table. We selected brushed stainless-steel finishes for the mid-range appliances and the range hood. The wood stove has dark colors with a brightly painted stovepipe.
We created a starting point for you to build on and express your custom style with our help. To aid you, we will curate and develop style imageboards on our Pinterest or Houzz pro sites to share character and mood ideas back and forth with you. We will build together the custom character of your own Wing House. We happily will help you with detailed furniture, finish, and color choice design services. Together we will create an attractive, timeless, and unified experience.
Climate positive solutions matter
With the rising impacts of climate change, thinking differently about how we design, and our clients build homes with energy efficiency and a whole systems approach matter. The sense of urgency today is unmistakable. Climate-positive solutions include considering location and transportation costs to and from your home. Transportation-related impacts are the single largest factor influencing climate change in the United States. Let us rethink our choices of where and how we live. This helps dampen the effects of climate change.
Whole-house systems approach to design
Whether designing a new house, a major renovation, or a major addition, optimizing energy efficiency and sustainable design requires holistic design thinking. Starting early guarantees we consider all variables that impact energy use, durability, and comfort. Increasingly, attention to energy efficiency and green performance reap positive benefits in later resales. Besides occupant behavior, site-design factors, and climate, the things we consider include:
High-efficiency appliances and electronics choices
Insulation, and air-sealing performance levels
Space heating and cooling strategies
Water heating strategies
Choices in high-performance windows, doors, and skylights
·Choices in materials and finishes for improved indoor air quality
When done this way, your home when completed, will be more comfortable, energy-efficient, and long-lasting than when built to bare minimum code requirements. Doing so does not add huge cost-premiums, especially with the choice of an experienced green building team that we can help you make. With Wing House, our high-performance base building enclosure includes the following systems:
The high-performance building enclosure and major systems
R-40 Walls - (Insulation performance) - 2”x 8” energy and money-saving advanced wood framing wall construction with dense-pack cellulose and 2" of foil-faced rigid exterior insulation with a rain-screen drainage mat and siding.
R-60 Roofing System - The roof is built from 18" roof trusses, loose pack cellulose, with a fully vented zip-sheathing, 30-year rubber (EPDM) roofing system. Our base ceilings are gypsum drywall attached to wood furring with optional upgrades for wood veneer ceilings.
R-20 Floor Slab - The 4” cast-in-place concrete floor slab is insulated with 4" of recyclable Expanded Polystyrene Foam (EPS) foam. The slab is polished concrete with beautiful stone aggregate strewn in for decorative impact with color(s) added.
R-10 Base windows - Triple insulated Low-E argon-filled wood and fiberglass windows or double insulated Low-E argon-filled with lower R-5 performance and cost.
Exterior Siding - We show a mix of cedar shingles and corrugated weathering steel metal siding over a rain screen of wood furring or drainage matt. We can adapt the final choices to your design needs and budget.
Air-sealing details – By using advanced framing wall construction it is easier to detail and then build tighter buildings and air sealing when combined with high-performance insulation and air barriers. All together they reduce air leakage increasing home comfort and cost-savings.
+/-10,000 KW Solar system – We estimate, with this 2,000 SF design plus garage and a little extra capacity, clients may need up to 10,000 kilowatts of solar equaling (ground or roof-mounted) 33 x 310W Tier-1 60 cell monocrystalline panels. (Note, this is an estimate only and requires detailed integrated design by a professional engineer with a solar company or as part of our design team.)
Tesla Powerwall – A wall-mounted residential-scale battery system providing solar energy system storage to power the home throughout the day in off-grid living, and/or provide backup power during outages.
Heating systems - Air source heat pumps – and or in combination with radiant floor heating in living areas for added comfort and warmth.
Whisperlite fans or similar - in the bathrooms for ventilation and to help with whole-house ventilation.
Simple durable interior finishes - locally sourced wood trim, low or now volatile organic compound paint or stain finishes. We would help select finishes appropriate for your lifestyle, life stage, family usage, health, and durability.
Optional sealed wood stove - a small high-efficiency wood or pellet stove in the living room, with wall venting to help with fresh air intake.
Polished concrete flooring – a long-lasting eco-friendly finishing method used in the entry, living, and dining areas to start, or throughout the house along with the use of carpet.
Let’s Continue the Conversation
Want to learn more and adapt this design to your needs and site? We also have some other designs that may interest you. See Fieldhouse and Mountain-Meadow NetZero Ready for modern-inspired examples. Or do you have detailed questions? If you are looking for general planning help and not a specific design yet, do not worry. Ask for our planning questionnaire. We will email it to you to fill out and return to us to begin. Either way, click on the Contact Us below button, share your details, and send the form. We look forward to connecting.
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Back to our residential portfolio
To see other 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 residential work, renovations, or projects in progress. 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.
Arocordis Design, a custom home architect and planner, has served Vermont families since 2010. We provide licensed architectural services throughout Central Vermont, including Waterbury, Stowe, Montpelier, Calais and beyond. We also serve the Burke, St. Johnsbury, White River Junction, Tunbridge, and the Woodstock regions. We specialize in modern-inspired home design that connects to Vermont’s past while providing a creative climate positive vision for the future.