When I started in the architectural industry in 1999 the luxury homes we worked on mostly focused on looks, feel, and wow factor. That has changed dramatically over the last decade. Now our high-performance luxury home clients are focused on how the house will enhance their lives, bring family together, and deliver a space that is healthy, energy-efficient, and durable. Architecturally compelling is still in the conversation, but not at the expense of creating a space that facilitates the life our clients want to live. Our luxury home clients want human-centered, health-focused spaces to live, work, and play.
We noticed the shift from an open floor plan and vaulted ceilings to how will the kitchen flow and can family gather while making meals. The spaces we are designing now think through not only “wow” factor, but also how the space makes you feel warm and comfortable. These spaces have healthy indoor air quality, temperatures are evenly maintained, and they are safe. Not all of these homes are considered to be custom green home design, but that is certainly where it started when we designed the first EarthCraft Certified home in Virginia and followed up with the first LEED for Homes certified home in the Southeastern United States. Now the concepts we incorporate in our net-zero and carbon neutral homes are integrated into almost every home, even if they are not planning solar pv from the start, they want solar-ready design.
We have worked extensively to understand building envelopes and even provide air leakage tests on existing homes to make sure we are addressing the air leaks. Today’s luxury homes feature resilient design, lifetime home strategies, continuous insulation, encapsulated crawl spaces, triple-pane windows, ERVs, high performance HVAC systems, air tight construction, and robust thermal envelopes. When designing in a mixed humid climate specifically in IECC Zone 4A (which includes Charlottesville, Waynesboro, Staunton, Harrisonburg, Winchester, Lexington, Salem, and Roanoke) you have to get the thermal envelope of a luxury home exactly right. The details need to be worked out on paper before construction ever starts. You also need trusted building partners that understand the little details are the hardest.
The conversations around the heating and cooling units include filtration and fresh air. This is not new, but now it is a priority for our clients to the point where we almost always pull in the HVAC company during early design phases. We want to make sure that our HVAC systems are planned into the design and exceed basic ACCA manual J load calculations. We make sure there are not drafty rooms or big temperature changes from space to space. Our local insulator knows our work, we actively talk with the contractors doing the work to make sure we know best practices for installing systems we design, and we practice integrated design.
This is the path to a luxury home. We work as a team, architect, builder, and sub-contractors to deliver the dream home our clients are asking for and make sure luxury is delivered.
Planning a high-performance build in Virginia? Contact our team to schedule an initial design consultation.
