People tend to call on me when they have a problem with their homes – a long-standing issue they can no longer ignore or something new created by a change in circumstance. Either way, it’s just human nature to have a problem with problems. Often we don’t even want to acknowledge they exist for fear of discovering bigger, uglier problems lurking beneath!

Me – I love problems. Once you clearly identify a problem, you’re already half way to solving it. The key usually lies in understanding the problem itself, and applying a little bit of creative thinking to unlock it.

I got to thinking about this after watching ‘Dancing on Ice – The Story of Bolero’ on TV last night – a documentary about Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean’s record-breaking routine at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. As a teenager, I watched them skate to victory and remember both the beauty of the ‘Bolero’routine and the acclaim that followed when they were awarded full marks by each of the 12 judges – a feat that hasn’t been matched before or since.

But what I found intriguing, watching the documentary, was how this extraordinary performance essentially started out as a problem. The original ‘Bolero’piece by Ravel is 17 mins long – the competition rules only allow only 4 minutes skating time. Torvill & Dean hired a composer and worked with him to condense the key elements of the piece to meet the competition requirements. After working on the piece for 3 days, they managed to reduce it to 4 mins… and 28 seconds. No matter how hard they tried they couldn’t make it any shorter without losing the things they loved about the music.

Many might have given up at this point, picked another piece and worked with that instead but Torvill & Dean knew this was the right music for them and were determined to use it. When they examined the competition rules, they discovered the ’4 minute’clock on the routine only started when their skates made contact with the ice – and so they designed a routine where they didn’t make contact with the ice for the first 28 seconds! What they created as a result was iconic, ground-breaking and, of course, Olympic Gold.

Had they been able to condense Bolero into 4 minutes exactly, would they have come up with as memorable an opening? The need to solve the problem of the extra 28 seconds made them look at their work from a completely different angle. It was creative thinking at its most elegant – a response that not only solves the initial problem but enhances and improves the whole, taking it to new heights.

I know I’ve struck gold when a client tells me I’ve presented them with an idea for their home they’d never have thought of themselves and, instead of seeing a problem, they start to get excited about new possibilities. Next time you’re feeling dissatisfied about your home, remember this – as troublesome and annoying as a problem like lack of space or natural light may be, it also brings the opportunity to create something new and better. All it takes is a little creative thinking. Now isn’t that music to your ears?

If you found this article of interest, you may also like:

It’s Not About Looks – Good Design Works

Elephant in the Room 1: The Bad Extension

Elephant in the Room 2: Spaced Out

Do you have any any pet peeves about housing or home design? Please leave a comment with your thoughts on this subject or any other home improvement or design issues you’d like to see featured.

As part of the Dublin Open House event in October, I took a look around FKL Architects‘ ‘A-Rated House’in Rathmines, Dublin – a concrete built 2-storey home, designed to respond the physical and planning restrictions of a small North-facing mews plot in the South Dublin inner city suburbs.

The 3-bed house was designed for Michelle Fagan and Gary Lysaght, both partners at FKL Architects, and their family, and besides setting a new aesthetic brief for environmentally responsible design, it also offers some interesting spatial ideas to meet the challenges of modern family living.

5 Ideas to take from FKL’s A-Rated House (after pics)

Front View from Laneway

Entry and Stair

View from kitchen toward garden

Double-height 'Slot' thru House

Stair & Rooflights

Upstairs Living Room

Balustrade around double-height 'Slot'

View from Living Room toward Landing 'Bridge'

Master Bedroom

Rooflight in Bathroom

Rear View from Garden

5 Ideas to take from FKL’s A-Rated House:

Green Credentials:

Eco- friendly concrete, external insulation, a green living roof to replace the building footprint, solar panels, heat recovery, vegetable plot and a lively suburban location, eliminating the need for a car as fundamental ingredient in daily life – all go to show creating a beautiful, modern home doesn’t have to mean sacrificing environmental credibility.

It’s Not White:

For anyone who’s ever tried to co-exist in a minimal white interior with grubby-pawed toddlers or to impress aesthetic appreciation upon crayon-toting kids, the passing of this particular trend must surely meet with a chorus of Hallelujiahs! The A-Rated House’s concrete interior creates a neutral background that’s easy on the eye, with timber cabinets and wall panels providing an added visual warmth.

Upstairs, Downstairs

The most interesting idea at work in the A-Rated House is the central double-height slot that divides the building in two – bridged only where the stair lands at first floor level – creating a visual and spatial link between upstairs and downstairs. Wherever you are in the house, you are aware of this relationship to everything else – a truly open plan type of living. The advantage is that everything in the house feels connected – the disadvantage could be a lack of privacy.

Light Matters

One of the biggest challenges of building in this location is the orientation – the house faces South onto a narrow laneway, with the living rooms and garden facing North. Light from the front of the house, and from strategically placed rooflights, travels down through the central double-height space bringing sunlight into the rear of the house – the family can enjoy the tracking of the sun’s path through the course of the day across this space. Dividing the living space between ground and first floor levels  also maximises natural light and views at the upper level.

Flexible Space

At the rear of the house at ground floor level, addressing the garden and only partially open to the kitchen dining space, is a family living room or snug. This space has a doorway linking it to a discrete ‘service’corridor giving access to a Utility and storage area, the integral garage and also downstairs WC / Shower room. The snug can therefore double as guest accommodation complete with en-suite bathroom, when required.

Final Thoughts

My only concern about the open plan nature of the house would be a lack of privacy that could become an issue as the family grows older. When puberty and the woe-ridden adolescent years hit, a place of retreat becomes essential to the sanity of teenagers and parents alike.

The saving grace here comes in the unlikely form of the City Fathers and their insistence that off-street parking be provided as an integral part of the design, despite the owners not owning or wishing to own a car! The ‘garage’(although this seems too mean a word for the clean, bright space created for this purpose), already separated from the main body of the house by the service zone, provides the possibility of sanctuary – the final component  to make this a truly sustainable and flexible home.

If you found this article of interest, you may also like:

Dublin Open House: House 1 | House 2 by TAKA Architects (and 5 Ideas to Steal…)

The Hidden Potential in your Home

It’s Not About Looks – Good Design Works

Do you have any any pet peeves about housing or home design? Please leave a comment with your thoughts on this subject or any other home improvement or design issues you’d like to see featured.

'The files are *in* the computer?!'

Well, it’s only taken 9 weeks, 2 USB cables, umpteen file download drive searches, 3 near misses, 1 borderline manic episode, a brief period of rest and medication, followed by a couple of tantrums but the Dublin Open House pics have finally been wrested from the top security vault that is the ViviCam 4345 digital camera, by cunning, guile, ingenuity and well – by accident, if I’m completely honest.

Turns out the key to copying the pics in the camera memory to the memory card is to copy the completely irrelevant pics on the memory card to the memory card…

Eh?

Exactly. A model of rational thought and ease of consumer use worthy of Microsoft itself.

So, enjoy the following posts – I’m off to lie down in a darkened room for a while.

Dublin Open House: A-Rated House by FKL Architects

Dublin Open House: House 1 | House 2 by TAKA

It’s been a very busy month for living:room as word about the blog has spread across the country and beyond!

Firstly, we were featured in the ‘Around the Block’section of the Irish Times’Property Supplement, where  our ‘good design is good value’message was emphasised along with our use of social media and the free advice offered on the blog, to help homeowners make better use of their space.

Living:room then took to the road with the Denny Home Is campaign – offering free home design and planning advice in their Pop Up Homes in Galway, Letterkenny & Dublin, all in aid of the Simon Community to help the homeless. Denny are asking what home means to you and contributing €1 for every comment, picture or video received – here I am at the Galway house, doing my bit:

Today’s the last day to contribute as Denny will be handing a cheque over to the Simon Community tomorrow – so there’s still time to add your tuppence worth on what home means to you on the Home Is Facebook page.

The living:room blog was also featured in a presentation to the Royal Institute of British Architects in London, as an excellent example of how architects can use social media to communicate about their work with clients and the public at large.

The presentation was given by Su Butcher – Practice Manager at Barefoot & Gilles Architects and one of the most prolific architectural voices using social media in the UK. Su was so taken with the living:room story and how I came to set up living:room & start blogging, tweeting et al, she even featured it in her blog, ‘Just Practising’, to inspire other architects to make the leap. How did it all come about? Simply by chatting one day on Twitter…

And last week, Silicone Republic included living:room in a feature on blogs offering useful tips for a leaner lifestyle in these recession weary times, with our articles ‘The DIY Energy Efficient Home’ & ‘It’s Not About Looks – Good Design Works’, being highlighted.

Thanks to everyone for reading and supporting the living:room blog – it’s very much appreciated and there’s lots more good stuff to come! As ever, if there is anything you’d like to see featured here, just drop me a line…

If you found this article of interest, you may also like:

Looking for Home Design Inspiration?

The Hidden Potential in your Home

What Does Home Mean to You?

Open House also includes guided walking, cycling and boat tours of various parts of the city and there are even events organised specifically for the kiddies.

The buildings are open to view at various times over the weekend and some require pre-booking, so best check the programme to make sure you don’t miss out!

Here are some of the private houses on my hit list:

Lower Grangegorman House, Dublin 7 by ODOS Architect.

Office & Private Home, Dublin 8 by Donaghy Dimond Architects

A-Rated Energy Efficient House, Dublin 6 by FKL Architects

House 1 – House 2, Donnybrook, Dublin 4 by TAKA Architects

The Long House, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 by Grafton Architects

See you there!

Did you find this article useful? Do you have any any pet peeves about housing? Please leave a comment with your thoughts on this subject or any other home improvement or design issues you’d like to know more about.

The Model T - 'Any colour... so long as it's black'

Back in 1909, when Henry Ford was asked what colour his new motor car – the Model T – was available in, he replied, ‘Any customer can have the car painted any colour he wants, so long as it’s black.’

A hundred years later and things have moved on. It’s the age of the iPhone – a multi-media communication system that can be an entertainment centre, with access to our favourite music & movies, or a mobile office, allowing us to conduct business whenever, wherever – all at the click of a button. Now, what colour of button would you like?

Unlike ole Henry, Apple puts the customer firmly in the driving seat – we pick the phone, choose the applications – hey presto, we get what we want.

When it comes to buying our homes, however, we’re not so lucky. New research by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) shows that much of new housing built in the UK is not fit for the demands of 21^st Century living. When we spend the largest part of our lives in our homes, isn’t it about time we approached the way we design and build them less like a Model T Ford and more like an iPhone?

According to the survey, based on 2,249 new houses built in the UK from 2003 – 2006, 44% of owners found their kitchen too small for cooking, 37% don’t have enough living space and a whopping 57% don’t have enough storage space in their homes. Providing adequate storage in new housing has long been a bugbear of mine, so don’t get me started. British houses are now the smallest in Europe and the CABE report identifies a need for higher space standards enforced by local planning departments.

But are bigger houses really the answer?

Building bigger presents other problems in a time of scarce materials, rising fuel costs and an increasing need for sustainable use of land. In a recent post, The Elephant in the Room 2: Spaced Out, I talked about a 40sqm apartment in Paris that is home to a family of 4 and their dog – it’s a beautiful home that has been designed to work for them and where every square inch of available space is put to good use.

Is the problem then with new housing lack of space or simply poor design?

CABE point to physical size as the culprit here yet the survey itself is not based on the vital statistics of houses but on how homeowners feel about the space they have – it measures the quality of the experience of living in their homes, not their size.

And when has size ever been a measure of quality, anyway?

The way we read space can be changed and manipulated, even if we don’t realise it. A room with a dark colour on the walls will appear smaller than one with a light colour; lots of natural light makes a small room look spacious and low ceilings make a large room seem cramped. The current trend for bulky ‘corner’ sofas is a case in point – it may give off the sophisticated Manhattan loft vibe, a la ‘Friends’, in the furniture showroom but in the average home it becomes more like an assault course on the Krypton Factor.

Light and dark affect our visual perception of a space

The way we feel about the space we live in is another moveable feast, influenced by factors that often have very little to do with its size:

• Did we live in a larger or smaller house prior to this one?
• Are we experiencing lifestyle changes that also change our expectations from our home – getting married, the birth of a child, becoming self-employed or unemployed?
• Do we like the neighbourhood and the neighbours?
• Have the neighbours we don’t like just extended their house to make it twice as big as ours?

Any one of these can change how we feel about our home on a given day.

Another problem with minimum space standards is that there is more variety in our lifestyles than ever before and this is not addressed by the traditional labels we put on our homes – bedroom, living room, dining room. When our housing options include studio apartments, lofts, work-live units, houseboats, warehouses, community housing and countless other unorthodox types of home, do we need to think about ‘rooms’ at all?

I remember reading once about a man who bought a broom cupboard in the Dakota Building, overlooking Central Park in New York (the building, that is, not the cupboard) – it had enough space for a bed & his clothes and that was all he really needed for his City stopovers. It’s a great example of lateral thinking and for the fraction of the cost of an apartment he lays his head and collects his mail at one of the most exclusive addresses in Manhattan!

Location Location Location!

It may seem extreme, even a little Harry Potter-esque, but he’s not alone. TV programmes like Channel 4′s ‘Relocation, Relocation’, with Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer, focus exclusively on homeowners down-sizing in city locations to create a higher quality (there’s that word again) of life for themselves in the countryside. Shouldn’t we, as buyers have the choice to opt for compact living arrangements, particularly in areas with highly competitive housing markets, if that’s what works for us?

The challenge now, as it has always has been with housing, is how to:

• create home environments that we enjoy living in, regardless of size -
• that work the way we need them to work -
• are sensitive to environmental issues, both at a local and a global scale -
• are flexible enough to meet the wide range of demands and expectations we have of them (these varying from person to person and changing all the time) -
• and do all of this across different age groups, family sizes, income levels and social brackets…

Sounds impossible, doesn’t it? Well, the typical housing developer would most likely agree and few of them even try. It’s more cost-effective for a developer to build as few ‘types’ of house as possible and much easier to convince us to buy what they build, than to figure out how to build the kind of houses we might want to live in – and still make a profit. Developer-built modern housing is the Model T Ford – not what we want but what choice do we have?

One –off housing, designed for a specific owner, is more successful in hitting the quality criteria and often more innovative in its approach. Japanese architect, Kazuyo Sejima, designed ‘House in a Plum Grove’ in Tokyo, ignoring traditional room conventions, and arranging the layout around the number and type of activities that would take place there, instead. Each activity space is linked so the whole house acts like one large room with lots of smaller spaces off – the family can interact or withdraw, as they choose.

House in a Plum Grove, Tokyo (Photo by Axel Vansteenkiste)

Our Future ‘iHomes’ probably lie somewhere in between – where developers will construct the exterior of a building, we’ll choose how much space we want based on square footage instead of rooms – rather like slicing up a cake – and then customize the inside to suit our own needs, more than likely using flat-pack ‘room pods’we’ll buy off-the-shelf at IKEA.

Imposing minimum space standards based on the number of ‘rooms’in each type of ‘house’ doesn’t create higher quality homes or come close to addressing the complexity of the issues involved in designing modern housing – that requires a different type of thinking altogether. If we do what we’ve always done, we’ll get what we’ve always got – only bigger.

We may not have the answers yet, but – with the housing market on pause and housing developers no longer dominating the conversation – it’s the perfect time to be asking the question:

Where do we want to live?

Did you find this article useful? Do you have any any pet peeves about housing? Please leave a comment with your thoughts on this subject or any other home improvement or design issues you’d like to know more about.

In the first of the Elephant in the Room series, I talked about common problems to watch out for with home extensions. This week, I’m looking at the problem of lack of space – it’s the No. 1 reason given by homeowners for moving or extending but often the real problem lies in the type of space we have and how we use it.

When it comes right down to it – how much is enough?

There’s a famous quote by architect Mies Van Der Rohe – ‘Less Is More’– I take this to mean there is a richness and a quality in simplicity. It’s a mantra that can be applied to your home, how you dress, even how you live your life. A former boss of mine was fond of quoting it in reverse – ‘Too Much Is Never Enough’– and in a way this version is more revealing and says more about how we live our lives today.

It always makes me think about how, whenever I got a pay rise in the good old days, it didn’t put more money in my pocket because I’d automatically adapt my lifestyle to suit the new level of wealth, however small that increase might be! The same principle applies to our homes – the more space we have, the more we adapt to fill the space, creating a ‘need’for even more space!

Simplicity is about making choices – it’s as much about what we don’t have, as what we do. In the good times, we don’t have to choose and so we indulge, we accumulate, we expand. In doing so, we lose the ability to evaluate between one choice and another.

When we experience constraints in life – and who isn’t feeling the pinch, at the moment – our choices are reduced and we prioritise those things that are fundamental to our well-being or our values. In many ways it is a positive experience – by stripping the excess away we put greater focus and value on what remains.

Less becomes more.

Fewer available choices re-tunes our ability to decide what is of most value to us but more importantly, it teaches us to tackle our problems from a more creative point of view.

I’m seeing a lot more ingenuity in how people design and / or use their homes at the moment and, in particular, how they tackle the problem of making more out of less space.

Take this apartment in the Marais district of Paris, where 2 adults, 2 children and a dog live in a home measuring only 40sqm..

Courtesy of Apartment Therapy

When Apartment Therapy published this article, it sparked a raging debate amongst readers about whether it is possible, legal, moral for a family to live in such a small space and even if it was cruel to the children, the dog or both!

For me there are three key criteria that contribute to the success of this home:

1. The owners recognise that some activities require space to function properly and others can do without – so the living area is a large multi use room and other rooms become small and functional.
2. The integrated storage means that everything has a place and by building it right up to the ceiling the space is used efficiently – see below how creative they’ve been in using every available inch.
3. The apartment is located in one of the most sought after areas of Paris with excellent amenities and, presumably, the owner’s work environments, all within walking distance.

Courtesy Apartment Therapy

The owners have clearly made informed choices (and sacrifices) in opting for this type of home but they haven’t sacrificed style, quality or creativity.

The Paris apartment has lots of ideas for making the most of a small space and this is another favourite project – The Remainder House in British Columbia by Openspace Architecture – where big value has been leveraged out of a small home.

Courtesy Openspace Architecture

Have you ever walked into a room or a house and there was something about it that was instantly appealing? Some spaces just feel right and often it has nothing to do with the size of the room but the quality of natural light. A small room with good natural lighting is much more pleasant to be in than a large room with poor light.

Although the footprint of The Remainder House is modest (under 110sqm) it achieves the sensation of space by doing something rather clever – it borrows it from the outside. Instead of creating a large living room, for example, it has a cosy living space with full height windows that blur the boundary between inside and out – the outdoor space then becomes part of the indoors without the expense of building additional floor area!

Courtesy Openspace Architecture

In this case, the dramatic forest landscape adds significantly to the experience of using the living room but there is no reason why this idea wouldn’t work in an urban or suburban house project, creating a dynamic connection between house and garden.

So here are some things to consider if you feel you need more space in your home:

• De-cluttering – a simple way to create space is simply to get rid of the things you don’t need. Think charity shop, Freecycle or earn a few extra pennies by selling items on E-bay or taking them to designer exchange outlets;
• Storage Space – by creating dedicated storage space for your possessions you can prevent them from cluttering up rooms. Don’t forget to use all the space available – recesses, space under stairs, high level storage options etc.
• Natural Light – is there enough light in the room and can you create more? The ideal is to have light coming from 2 directions, eg. 2 different walls or a wall and the roof. If it is a main living area, look at creating the illusion of more space by using full-height glazing to connect the room with the garden.

For more ideas on making the most of your home, take a look at our article on Home Potential in the new issue of ‘Decorate & Improve Your Home’Magazine.

Did you find this article useful? Do you have any pet peeves about housing design? Please leave a comment with your thoughts on this subject or any other home improvement issues you’d like to know more about.

If you’re feeling the squeeze and would like to discover how to make the most of your home, then there’s still time to enter our competition in the Spring issue of ‘Decorate Extend and Renovate’ magazine.

We’re offering a free Property Potential Report to one homeowner and the chance to be featured in a future edition of the magazine. The winner will have their home assessed and receive an individually tailored report that examines how their spatial needs can be met based on the type of property and local planning criteria. The report  includes sketch design drawings showing the possible transformation, a breakdown of any planning issues and an assessment of the costs required to carry out the work – take a look at a typical report here: www.livingroom.ie/report

If you’re thinking of extending and would like to find out if your home can be adapted  to create that extra bedroom or the kitchen of your dreams, then tell us what discovering that potential would mean to you – send it along with a photo of your home & a brief description, to:

Decorate Extend & Renovate Magazine,

119 Cahard Road,

Saintfield,

Co. Down.

BT24 7LA.

The competition is open to homeowners throughout Ireland – North & South. Entries should be marked WIN 3 and arrive by 29th May 2009.

Earlier today, I watched a great talk by Seth Godin (entrepreneur, author and self-styled ‘agent of change’), called ‘This is Broken’, where he highlighted various ways that people or businesses design around a problem rather than fix the problem itself.

It made me think about housing design and the kind of problems that I come across time and time again – things that are ‘broken’and with a little bit more thought and care could be designed out, so that they are no longer a problem.

I came up with so many examples that I’m preparing a series of posts highlighting the issues to watch out for when buying or extending a home.

The Bad Extension

Many of the enquiries I have received lately have been from homeowners who bought a home in the past few years that had already been extended but now, having lived in it for a while, they find doesn’t actually work.

Often, they have lots of space but the rooms are too dark or are in the wrong place or there is no natural flow between rooms and some become corridors.

Does this sound familiar?

The No. 1 culprit in the Bad Extension category is the extension that has been built across the full width of the back of the house, blocking all natural light to what were the main rooms and making these spaces almost unusable.

This bad boy will have the worst impact on a terraced house, where there are no side walls to add new windows and bring natural light back in. If you have a semi-detached or detached home, there may be the possibility of introducing new windows on the side elevation, to light those middle rooms, but if you also have a neighbouring house only a couple of metres away, these windows will have only a limited effect.

It is a double-whammy, cost-wise – not only do you end up with space you can’t use but you’ve paid extra for that space and will have to shell out again to get it fixed.

The other main offender is the ‘Designed (and possibly Built) it Myself’extension, whose distinguishing features include a warren of small rooms that have either no or limited use, rooms that become through-routes to the next room and rooms that aren’t connected but should be.

These are sometimes enhanced by ribbons of boxed in pipework where kitchens or bathrooms have been moved around, without considering existing water and drainage outlets and single skin external walls without insulation that retain little or no heat and will increase heating costs.

It is not always necessary to use an architect, if you are carrying out work – but would you have the know-how to recognise if your project is a simple or a complicated one? An architect will usually save money – and earn their fee – by identifying the most cost-effective way to extend your home, reducing the build costs and ensuring that the final result enhances your home and protects its value.

When buying a house that has already been extended, make sure your solicitor requests Compliance Certificates from the seller – these are documents, signed by an architect or engineer, confirming that the extension complies with the appropriate Planning & Building Regulations.

It is perfectly feasible, however, that an extension could be granted planning permission, built to the correct standards and still be a ‘bad extension’, as described above. Planning criteria relate to the impact of new building work on neighbouring properties and the surrounding area – not the quality of the space created in the building itself.

The lesson then, if you are extending, is avoid these mistakes and you will be on your way to creating a pleasant and functional home. If you are considering buying a previously extended house and spot any of the above tell-tale signs – approach with caution.

Did you find this article useful? Do you have any pet peeves about housing design? Please leave a comment with your thoughts on the subject and also any other home improvement issues you’d like to know more about.

What's Involved in Making a Planning Application?

So you want to extend or make changes to your home and you know that the work will require an application for Planning Permission – what happens next?

Whether you are making changes to your home under the Exempt Development guidelines (without the need for a formal application) or applying for Planning Permission, the purpose of the planning system is to protect your local built environment and its residential amenity (the ability to enjoy living there), which is why there are restrictions and guidelines in the first place. The main issues are described in your local Development Plan, which is usually available to view on-line and also at your local planning office.

Remember that your proposals not only affect yourself and your home but will also have an impact on those around you, so think about how you would react to a neighbour making the same changes to his or her house. The more respectful and sympathetic you are to your neighbours homes when making your plans, then the better chance you have of getting planning permission and avoiding a long drawn out planning process to say nothing of a difficult and fraught building process!

I would always recommend working with an Architect to develop the design proposals for your home and prepare the Planning Application, as they will bring expert knowledge and experience to your project. Whether the Architect needs to be involved for the whole project or only part of it will depend on what you want to achieve:

• Do you have very limited space?

• Is there an existing extension to be taken account of?

• Do you want the new space to integrate seemlessly with the existing house?

• Do you want to maximise natural light?

If you’ve answered yes to any of the above questions then using an Architect is likely to bring greater value to your project.

The Architect will help you to develop a Brief – this a detailed description of the changes you’d like to make and what you hope to achieve from the proposed changes to your home, taking account of your needs, timescale and budget. He / she will carry out a detailed survey of the property – plans, elevations and sections – and use this information to prepare drawings of the house as existing which will then form the basis for the new proposals. He / she will also advise you of the various regulations that may apply to your project – the most common ones are Planning, Building Regulations and Health & Safety.

Sketch drawings are prepared for discussion and, when you are happy with the proposals, these are developed into the architectural planning drawings.

So what’s actually required for a Planning Application?

Although complex projects may require more information in order to explain the proposals more clearly and the planner can also request more information, as part of the process, these are the basics:

• Planning Application form;
• Site Notice (to be erected at front of property for first 5 weeks of application period and a copy included with the application);
• Newspaper Notice – original & a copy of advert;
• OS Maps – these have to be originals and can be purchased from Ordnance Survey outlets in the form of Planning Packs, which cost around €55.00
• 6no. copies of the architectural drawings showing the existing house and the proposed changes – site layout, floor and roof plans, elevations and sections, proposed drainage routes ( if appropriate) along with a description of the materials to be used or design specification.

The site notice and newspaper notice can be erected / published up to 2 weeks prior to submitting your application. Your local planning office will have a list of newspapers that are acceptable for your area – local weekly papers are often less expensive but will require your notice to be submitted approx. a week in advance whereas national newspapers can usually print within a day or two of receiving your notice. The site notice must be visible from the public footpath at the front of your house – it’s a good idea to have it mounted just beyond the reach of anyone passing, to prevent vandalism.

If you’d like to find out about the Planning Application process itself – the timescales involved and what they could mean to your project – take a look at How Long Does Planning Permission Take?

Did you find this article useful? Please leave a comment to let us know your thoughts on the subject and also any other home improvement issues you’d like to know more about.

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