Design: Home for Life
Here’s something I put together with SketchUp about six months ago. It’s a home that can be built and expanded over time as a family grows, prospers, has kids, has parents move in, gets old and ultimately hands it off.
Key design considerations:
- Modular. In lieu of a starter home, You can build just the bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom, and closet first. A modern “cabin” for two telecommuters. That expands to include more bedrooms, office space, amenities (pool, garden, garage etc) as necessary for children. More for additional families or parents that come live with you.
- View centric. Partly given this is a thought exercise/goal, the entire house is designed to maximize view points for a large lake or ocean. Ideally this would be placed on a couple dozen acres of your own.
- Out(in)doors. Blur the line. Life’s too short for walls alienating you from your land.
- Multifamily living. This could be multigenerational. Parents as they retire come live. As the economy blows up, kids who can’t find work, or even those who stick around by choice. Shared functions are great, but take privacy not account.
Use case:
- Invest $150,000 in what’s basically a vacation home and land. You live, work, build your career elsewhere. Visit when you can. Send a set of keys to everyone you love to do the same.
- Invest in $50,000 increments to add bedrooms, offices, extra bathrooms, amenities, productive infrastructure (energy, food, water, protection). Gradually spend more time here until paying rent doesn’t make financial sense.
- Do as much of the work yourself as possible. What you can’t, purchase prefabbed. Know how everything works, and how to fix it.
- Live. Permaculture your land, hydro/aero-ponics inside, aquaponics your pool. Have friends and family live with you for extended periods. Help them build their own homes in your enclave. Continue to work on a global scale, but embrace you and yours.
-Shlok
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