View from Rand Soellner’s
Falcon Cliff Lodge of Laurel Knob, the largest rockface in the
eastern USA.
We
Begin by Listening to You
and understanding how you want to live in your special mountain
home.
Rand
Soellner Visits Your Site with
you and documents the best views you prefer, which we incorporate
into the home design, so that when your house is built, the views
you loved enough to purchase the site are framed with large window
areas. In instances where clients would rather we review their site
remotely, we use satellite imagery (please see our Site Consultation
page).
Then,
We Determine the Best Locations for Your:
main home
garage - porte-cochere -
carport
guest parking and backup
zones for your vehicles for ease of maneuvering
septic areas tested or
that need to be tested by your local health department, repair
area, tank location
driveway
possible secondary
structures such as a guest cottage, workshop, additional
garages, or other facilities
We
Review with You
the general appearance preference you may have for your home.
Next,
We Create the Main Level Floor Plan
and review it with you; incorporating any changes you wish. Next we
create the other level plans and the main front elevation and review
that with you. Once again, you have the opportunity to review,
reflect on and request revisions to allow us to make your home what
you want it to be. By this incremental process, you and Rand
Soellner Architect are part of a team working toward one goal: to
create the home you want. At some point, usually after
Schematic Design and before Design Development is complete, we
recommend bringing the building contractor into the team. We
will help you find a builder if you do not have one. We only
suggest state-licensed contractors. They are able to give cost
and availability feedback to the rest of the team, so that you as
the owner can make informed choices as we proceed and add further
information to the documents.
Space
Planning Optimization:
Rand
Soellner Architect “optimizes” its arrangements as
part of its normal procedures for all clients. This means
that we don’t waste a square inch. We get a kick of
making our floor plans as efficient as possible. Our
arrangements are spacious, yet robust and healthy. When
you look at one of our plans, you can sense the vitality of
organization that comes from well-planned space. We sweat
the details. We show our classic mountain door trims right
on the floor plans so that we know our interior designs will
work. We rarely have hallways or corridors, as we prefer
to access rooms from useful spaces that perform desired
functions other than mere circulation.
We work to
get that extra couple of inches in your closet. Our
kitchens have all the latest appliances and the proper distance
between them so that doors and drawers function properly and
look great in the large islands we create. We think about
what we do. We make sure that your Master Suite feels
large yet is not over-done. We align your interior
circulation routes with large windows, framing your views.
We arrange walls, doors, windows and furnishings in artistic
compositions. Our homes and buildings are well-designed
and make good use of space.
During
the Bidding- Negotiating Phase, we
can help you evaluate the pricing to insure that the numbers you are
hearing reflect the home that was designed for you.
During
the Construction Phase,
we offer Construction Administration services to visit the project
site periodically to review the progress and compare it to the
construction documents. We issue reports to you and the
builder to help keep your project on track and in compliance with
the approved documents.
Passion
& Enthusiasm We
are passionate about design and enthusiastically embrace every
opportunity to create a unique project for you, custom-tailored to
your site, lifestyle, family and functional requirements. We
embrace your vision of your project and share with you opportunities
we see suggested by your site and objectives. We are here to
help you obtain your Mountain Dream!
Friendship
We extend our
friendship to you. Friends are people who improve the quality
of each other’s lives.
This is
accomplished by Word (as in discussions with each other in
which you give and receive wise advice and/or are supportive and
nurturing),
Thought (as in positive thinking,
intentions and prayer) and/or
Deed (through
financial enrichment, acts of physical assistance, and beneficial
administrative actions or other helpful acts).
We endeavor
to enrich your life by designing a wonderful mountain home for you.
How our
designs accomplish this:
1
Logical,
functional organization. Rooms, windows, appliances
and other items are where you want them and where they work best
for your desired lifestyle. All the things that have
frustrated you in the past in other homes (perhaps in your
present home) are solved, corrected and improved.
2
Aesthetic
enhancement: Your exterior, interior and site will be
eloquently designed, if we are allowed to develop the design as
we recommend. Our projects seem to typically be
publishable, although we do not generally seek this exposure;
the magazine and book publishers are coming to us. There
seems to be an accepted trend in the special mountain home
category that places us in the top mountain home architects in
the world.
3
View/
window/ glass placement that enhances your enjoyment: Rand
Soellner used to work for one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s main
apprentices. He learned about View Systems. This
technique allows us to electronically align your window locations so
that they are placed to take best advantage of your views.
YOUR PROJECT
WILL BE THE BEST WE HAVE EVER DONE TO DATE
We
regard each project as an opportunity to advance the state of the
art in mountain home architecture. For that reason, each new
project stands on the shoulders of those we have accomplished in the
past. Therefore, yours will be better than what we last
accomplished. We are constantly learning from structural
engineers about things like lateral wind bracing or from contractors
regarding constructability and how to design things more
economically and deliver the best home for the best value. We
embrace the entire design/engineering and construction as a team of
people dedicated to providing you, our Client with the best possible
home. After 37 years of designing buildings, you’d think
we know it all, and while some of our clients think we know a lot,
we know that we have to be eager to learn new things every day to
make your project that much better.
The
Appearance of Our Website as Compared with Other Architect’s
Websites:
You may have
noticed that most architect’s websites are much like their
buildings: Spartan and minimalistic. Some might even call this
cold. I really don’t; I used to be that way. It
starts in architectural school: professors teach us that decorative
elements are heresy and that less is more (actually that was Mies
van der Rohe (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe), a great early to mid-20th
century architect, who waged what amounted to a philosophical jihad
against texture and decorative features and was able to help found
an entire movement in architecture called Modernism. Today,
even adoring apprentices of the late great architect have realized
that it has been high time for something more interesting (e.g.:
Philip Johnson, FAIA, who has become very eccentric during the last
couple of decades, forsaking his earlier square glass boxes (except
for his own lovely home from that era which has become an American
icon)). So, because I matriculated through this modernistic
education and practiced architecture in this mode for nearly half a
century and even became futuristic, I understand it and I believe
have earned the right to rebel against it, at least for nice
mountain homes and themed resorts. Clients have told me what
they want: warmth, texture, coziness, distressed historic large
wooden beams, stone fireplaces, big views, something that looks like
it grew naturally from the mountain environment. So, that is
how we do it now, and our website has embraced this warmth and
texture, to communicate the philosophic basis of our mountain home
design philosophies. I always harbored a special love for the
mountains, and in my work, for decades, this kept creeping out,
well, now we have fully accepted and enjoy this loving, warm
relationship with the mountains in which we work.
Responsiveness
We
have heard from some of our clients that they have never had
responsiveness as timely as ours. Some call our practice
Responsiveness with a capital “R.” You are paying us
to design your dreams with you and we take that as a sacred &
enjoyable mission. We will do whatever we can to respond to
your phone calls and e-mails immediately (which is the norm for us;
we give you our cell phone number, home office, OnStar vehicular and
residential numbers). If we don’t do this, then we
respond within the hour and if not that, certainly within 24 hours
(and that is very unusual and too long, in our opinion). We
are in residence and working on your project and others about 360
days a year. On those rare occasions when we might be visiting
an out-of-town relative or perhaps on a vacation (which are very
rare), or performing construction administration, we share with you
our in-transit phone numbers, our hotel phone and room number, and
we always keep our cell phones turned on, even when they are
charging. I admit that I don’t keep a phone next to our
bed (so that I can get a good night’s sleep to work on your job
the next day!), but that is about the only circumstance in which you
can’t get to us about 18/7/365. I answer my own phone 9
times out of 10 and I am usually here working on projects, so you
will find the refreshing experience of actually getting straight to
the guy you thought you hired when you contact us. Also, I am
genuinely delighted to hear from you and you can tell this by the
friendly tone of my voice, my patient and attentive demeanor, and
conscientious focus on both the “big picture” and on those
important details. I personally create your design and
construction details; you get the top man doing your work for you,
not some hired “draftsman.” I am a licensed
architect in multiple states and I have a master’s degree in
architecture from a leading accredited university and graduate
school and I have about 38 years of experience in architecture.
When you call me, you get me.
I think this is the way
it should be and I have never thought of it as unusual; I just
presumed that every Architect or other professional conducted their
business in this fashion. After all, I work for you. I
know this and I am very appreciative of your business. I am
here to help you realize your dreams. So give me a call!
Focus
When
you hire Rand Soellner Architect, you receive my undivided focus; my
exclusive attention to your project. That’s what I do for
you. Sure, I am working on several projects, typically, and
when I am working on yours, my attention is focused on your needs.
I have considerable attention to bring to bear on your objectives:
38 years of architectural experience. My specialty is custom
mountain home design. I have quite a comprehensive track
record of projects, including projects for NASA, AFTAC (Air Force
Tactical Air Command), Corps of Engineers, school districts, fire
stations, world-class resort theme parks, multi-family housing,
office buildings, major utility facilities and other project types,
totaling over $3 Billion in construction value and millions of
square feet of space. I bring all this considerable experience
to bear on the design of your mountain home. I guess that’s
one of the reasons why Rand Soellner Architect is ranked by Google
as the World’s leading mountain home architect. When I
work on your project, the focus is intense. It is like playing
three-dimensional chess, evaluating how certain decisions affect
other situations, finally coming down to the best solutions for your
project. Some of the people I know are experts in Tantric Yoga
and they say that what I do is very similar; that when I “come
to” hours later, I find that much progress has been made and
that the design is very well thought out. This ability to “super-focus”
is one of the reasons Rand Soellner Architect is so good at
designing mountain homes and resorts.
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