AHOUSE STUDIO is a Seattle based architect studio born from the passion of designing homes. We believe that everyone deserves to live in a thoughtfully designed home that is easy to build and within their budget. We are one of ten firms selected by the City of Seattle to represent a variety of preapproved DADU permits. Our services include unique ready to permit architectural drawing sets of DADUs that can be costumed to fit your needs and site specific lot.

All our designs are drawn with different client’s need and dreams in mind. They feature custom details, carefully selected local materials and bespoke built-in furniture.

They are designed to be easy to build by local builders, utilizing readily available resources and common building practices in the Seattle area.

Our house designs fit in the majority og Seattle’s lot sizes and comply with all local energy and building code requirements.

services

We sell complete architectural drawing sets, proposed material lists, finish schedules and key details for the standard designs we have developed. Our standardized designs help you save the time and money associated with going through a custom design process, without requiring you to compromise on design quality.

We offer two different packages for each house:

Option A: Construction Package

The full architectural drawing set, which includes the drawings and documentation required for both construction and permitting, as well as proposed material lists, and finish schedules.

List of Documents:

Cover Sheet

Plans

Exterior Elevations

Building Sections

Interior Elevations

Interior Diagrams and Construction Details

Assemblies

Schedules

Material Specifications and Finish Schedules

´For a project of this size, it is typical for a builder to take on the site plan, coordination with engineers (including structural, electrical, and mechanical), and energy calculations. This option does not include our involvement in these tasks.

zoning

The starting point for the design of all of the houses was a study of Seattle’s most common lot sizes and configurations. Based on this research, each house will comfortably fit on a lot that is a minimum of 5000 SF and has at least 41 feet of width. However, some designs will also work for smaller lots. If you’re interested in a house, please get in touch and provide your site information. We can help you determine if any of the designs will work.

LIVING

Each of our designs aims to respond to a specific type of user or users, but also allows for a certain amount of flexibility. Some designs include “flex” spaces which could potentially be sub-let, or used as work areas. Where these occur, we kept outside access to these flex spaces independent from the rest of the home to allow for the most flexibility in their use.

Grouping of bathrooms and kitchens in cores is economically efficient, and also allowed us to keep the living areas as open and flexible as possible. Where we felt it made sense to do so, we also designed built-in furniture for better spacial efficiency, and to add a unique touch to the homes. We believe that the smaller scale of a DADU offers the exciting possibility of designing with purpose and playfullness, a home to be cherish and make your own.

construcion

Our designs aim to be environmentally conscious and to fit most budgets. They are designed to be easy to build by a local builder and keeping in mind the resources and natural materials available in Seattle.

Every house is a wood framed structure on a concrete foundation. The envelope is a rain screen design, standard in Seattle, with fiber cement or wood cladding. Roofs are standing seam metal, when sloped, or membrane-protected green roofs, when flat.

Designs are compliant with current (2015) Seattle energy and building code requirements.

materiality

We have developed a proposed finish package, including some upgrade and some budget alternatives. We can help you visualize your house according to the materials you choose. We can also work with you to customize the designs further as needed.

Each AHOUSE materials book offers information about our proposed finishes for each element of the house.

We choose each material by balancing the considerations of cost, environment and aesthetics.

At AHOUSE we believe that beauty is found in the detail. Therefore we use standard building materials to keep cost low but we make sure they are used in the best way possibleWe recommend the use of more durable materials where we feel they’re most appropriate and their cost is worth it. We try to use simple, minimally processed materials, allowing for some exceptions that are necessary to keep the cost efficient. Some amount of ongoing maintenance, such as to maintain the natural soap finish on the proposed wood flooring, we feel is a small price to pay for the beauty and air quality benefits of the floor finish. We propose materials we would choose for our own homes; we hope you love them as much as we do, but we understand if your budget and aesthetic inclinations lead you to choose alternate options.

services

We offer two different packages for each house:

Option A: Construction Package

The full architectural drawing set, which includes the drawings and documentation required for both construction and permitting, as well as proposed material lists, and finish schedules.

List of Documents:

Cover Sheet

Plans

Exterior Elevations

Building Sections

Interior Elevations

Interior Diagrams and Construction Details

Assemblies

Schedules

Material Specifications and Finish Schedules

Option B: Construction Package with Permitting Assistance

This option takes option A above and adds our continued involvement through permitting to add structural documents, energy code calculations, and a site plan.

Added documents:

Site Plan

Energy Calculations

Structural Documents (information input from Licensed Structural Engineer)

For either option, we also offer hourly consultations and upgraded service for those looking for help determining interior finishes, selecting fixtures, developing a lighting plan or other custom interior alterations. In addition we can coordinate the construction process for an hourly fee.

For further questions, please get in touch.