The Life of an Architect playhouse competition for 2014 is coming to a close – all the entries for this year are required to me in my email inbox by midnight tonight (May 12th). As I have done on all previous years is show everyone what my playhouse will look like … seems only fair to me.
This is the 7th playhouse I have designed and built – and the evolution of this process on my thinking and design process is pretty apparent to anyone interested enough in studying my previous designs. I’ll go ahead and pull the curtain back and tell the rest of you who might be new to this, although I don’t think I’ve kept it a secret. The two requirements I put on ALL of my playhouses are:
1. They should have some purpose to them beyond the first few weeks when they show up in the winners backyard. This is a big deal for me simply because I am the father of a 9-year-old and I know my daughter’s interests evolve. What she loves today will be replaced with what she loves tomorrow … and that’s okay with me. Unfortunately, it makes designing these playhouses that much more difficult. Designing playhouses around a theme is advice I give to everyone who asks but I rarely follow that advice myself. Then again, I’m not trying to win a playhouse design competition.
2. They need to be designed with consideration on how they are to be built so that these playhouses are affordable. I think that I owe it to the contractors that I convince to donate their time and their money to support this cause to design a playhouse that doesn’t become a financial burden to them. I think I must be a doing a good job because the same contractor has built my playhouse every year for the last 5 years. Additional evidence to support this is that several of my playhouses have been built by weekend DIY warriors from around the globe (here) and since I make my construction drawings available for free, why not build one yourself?
So here is a look at my playhouse for 2014 – I’m calling it ‘The Lantern House’
Original concept sketch – going back to the iconic shape of a playhouse. I always start with how I will frame the playhouse, and the materials that I would like to use. In this case, I’ve pushed the framing to the outside and I’m planning on using medium density overlay (MDO) sheathing on the inside. Don’t know what MDO is? Read this post
The family that wins this playhouse will live in my area of the world – which means it gets hot during the summer. Both ends of my Lantern Playhouse are completely open because it is important to me that air circulate through these playhouses in an effort to keep the inside cool and allow the kids to use them during the day. It will also make for some interesting viewing at night when I light up the interior (hence the name “Lantern House”). This will allow the playhouse to take on the role of folly in the landscape of someone’s backyard.
As I started developing my idea, I sketched out how the materials would come together. I always design my playhouses on a wood deck so that it makes it easier to move. Another benefit of adding a deck is that it allows the homeowner to trim the grass that grows up around the playhouse without causing any damage. It’s a pretty practical consideration but since I’ve been doing my own yard work since I was 7 years old, it’s something I think about.
There will only be 5 materials on this playhouse, and four of them will come from the lumberyard. Most people don’t realize that it’s a lot harder to design something simply than it is to make it complicated. I think about how the actual sizes of the materials will fit together, how the spacing will work, where my material joints will come together, etc. If you are going to try to execute a simple design, these are the sorts of things that really make the difference between “okay” and “amazing”. I am aiming for amazing. Look at my Birdhouse design from last year (here) simple, but I knew where every joint on every board was going to land.
This section would be almost impossible for most people to figure out, so I’ll tell you that it is a section at the front corner of the playhouse through the entry. This is an area of material transition and I wanted to make sure that all my part came together in a way that made sense, allowed for some construction tolerance, and diagrammatically expressed different areas of the playhouse – interior vs. exterior, front vs. back, solid versus open, and structural versus non-structural. That’s a lot going on and for most people, nobody but me knows it … but that’s okay with me.
One of the other things that I do, is that I lay out the deck framing that the playhouse will be sitting upon. I know that I probably don’t need to do this but I do it anyways. This lets me know just how many framing members I’ll be using, if they’ll be where I need them to be, and will the structure for this playhouse work in an aesthetic way, not just a structural way.
Once I worked through all my concept and design sketches, I normally take the time to model the playhouse in SketchUp. This step really helped me out in the early days, now I mostly use it to help create the graphics for posts like this one. I don’t think I would eliminate this step completely because it does force me to double-check my math and allows me to make sure that the proportions of my playhouse are correct visually …which I consider to be a worthwhile step in the design process.
Once I have my model completed – and it looks like I think it should – I normally move straight to construction drawings. In the case of this years model, I thought I should do some light studies (it is called ‘The Lantern House’ after all).
I don’t know how to use any real rendering software – so I asked Ryan in my office to lend me a hand. I exported the images and Ryan ran a quick render of the model using 3D Studio Max (I think) just so that I could make sure that the spacing I was using on my slats at the front and rear would achieve the balance of open vs. closed that I was looking for … which it did. These renders also told me that I’m not quite done with my design.
I know that these playhouses seem incredibly simple to most people but the truth of the matter is that they are a lot more complicated that you might think – at least I hope they are. There are size restrictions to these playhouses and trying to develop something new and unique year after year is its own challenge … one that I hope I am up for completing.
Today is the day that entries from all over the world are being sent to my inbox for the 3rd Annual Life of an Architect Playhouse Design Competition, and while I am not one of the judges, my role is to make sure that the people who are judging the entries understand all the little nuances that go into designing these little buildings. Next Monday I will announce the top 20 finalists to this years competition and the Monday after that I will announce the winners. I hope everyone will come back and support the participants and the winners.
Here’s to a successful playhouse competition –
Leave a Reply
This is awesome. This captures all the spirit and wonder we were trying to create in our Bunkie project, but does so without the price tag we ended up with. Beautiful work as always Bob!
Awesome design. I’ve been looking a lot into the use of light and dark for my mediatheque design for 3rd year. I really wanted to enter this but sadly ran out of time to do it with all the uni work
I like the design, but I’m thinking that 3×6’s would be better below the floor decking, and possibly for the sill plating as well. I assume this will be sitting in the soil, wouldn’t want the eventual twist of 2x material to tweak your framing….
the scale is wrong for 3×6’s – they’re too big. Luckily I have several years and a lot of playhouses under my belt and I haven’t had a problem with PT 2x’s yet.In fact, a few of my houses have used double 1x’s for the framing with great success. I think the secret to these playhouses looking right is the scale – which includes the sizes of the members used to frame the structure. While it might seem light, more times than not, the members are smaller but the spans and spacing are much tighter – all part of the illusion.
looks like a keeper! best wishes!
Bob,
Another great design. I registered for the competition and put in some solid design hours, but the difficulty of reconciling the scale with my vision prompted me to take a break. Unfortunately I let time slip by and won’t be submitting a design. However, my design was to be named ‘Night Light’ and had a very similar concept to yours (great minds think alike??). Do you have any details drawn of how the light works, or will there just be a light washing down the ceiling/walls? In my (unfinished) design, the walls would have been sheathed with a milky white plastic, and would glow inside and out.
Thanks for sharing,
-Calvin
HI Calvin,
No worries about letting time get away from you – it happens. One of the very first playhouses I designed was sheathed in white polycarbonate and the results were “okay”. It did, however, shape some of my decisions this time around in that the interior sides and roof are smooth and solid while the ends are completely open to the exception of the slats (just to help define the interior). I have a few thoughts on the lighting but wanted to work through them once during the time that the playhouse is actually built. Once it’s done, I’ll post some follow up images.
Thanks for the reply! I’ll look forward to the built photos. I have a new appreciation for your playhouse designs now that I have tried it myself.
I really like this design. Grew up in beadboard heaven on the southern shore of Lake Ontario in upstate New York and I’m now a huge fan of everything beadboard. The slats remind me of that look. Plus it looks like a very comfortable spot for kids to play in now, and since it’s not “kiddie-looking” maybe even something that empty-nest parents will be able to use later as a shaded, breezy outdoor sitting spot or with a little modification, maybe a garden-shed.
That’s the idea – multipurpose playhouse. I should be slightly cautious with how I promote the playhouses I do because the results of the competition tend to be real boxy with no theme in place (which works against you in a design competition). What I do does not necessarily create the most popular playhouses … and that’s sort of the point for this event. Design and build playhouses that people will want so that they buy raffle tickets (this is for charity after all).
I think this is a great playhouse for the hot Texas summers. Airflow is critical if we really expect kids to play in these during the summer, when they have the most free time to kill… I look forward to seeing this one in person.
Thanks Steve – I can still remember playing in more traditionally built forts as a child and even then, thinking I was about to pass out. On the plus side, I got rid of all that pesky water weight I was carrying as an 8 year old.
this is a great program you have going Bob. hopefully the selecting the winners will be difficult! (meaning lots of great entries)
I need to step up my efforts raising money to build these playhouses because I am sitting on almost 500 registrations and +/- 150 entries so far and people still have today to submit their entries. Since most people are like me, I imagine that a flood will come in at the last minute.
Looks great. Can’t wait to see the finished product. I’ve been rolling around the idea of submitting….maybe one of these years. 😉
and you should – sounds like a fun challenge to design a mini heavy timber playhouse (scale would be tricky!)
It certainly could but we’ve done scaled models before…maybe this is the same thing.
taking good effort, .
let’s hope so. Simple is terrible without proper thought and execution.
Cheers