Rand Soellner Architect is receiving as many requests for smaller high-quality homes that live big as for larger residences. Many people want to downsize, or simply pay less during challenging economic times. Soellner has responded with a series of higher-quality compact houses that have spacious organizations that defy the imagination as to how small or large they are physically.
This is a perceptual art, refined by Soellner over decades; since his days working on his Master’s Degree in Architecture at the University of Florida. He also has a minor in Environmental Psychology, in which he researched people’s reactions to space. Soellner also designed projects for one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s main apprentices, Nils Schweizer, FAIA. Wright was a master of overlapping spaces in residential design. Soellner learned this while studying the buildings at the Florida Southern campus and designing for one of Wright’s main proteges.
Soellner has created an assemblage of compact plans that are just about unbelievable, in terms of features and rooms, when compared with the square footage. For instance, he has a Cardinal Camp Cottage series that has a 3-story design with 2 stories over a walkout basement. It has 5 bedrooms (one an optional den/home-office), and 3 bathrooms. It is a very compact 2,472 hsf (heated square feet).
That also includes: a recreation room in the walkout basement, a laundry room (yes, with the large washers and dryers of the 21st century), a mechanical space, a pantry closets, walk in closets in bedrooms, ample large door areas facing views and exterior living area porches, a larger than normal gourmet kitchen with a center island AND another bar for pull-up stools, a 48″ wide gas range, dining space on the view, a great room/living area with a fireplace, a foyer, a master suite with its own fireplace, a master bath and master walk-in closet, an optional pop-out luxury master bath, a sleeping porch, an outdoor living room, outdoor dining with summer kitchen, stairs, a front porch, an optional garage (2 car oversize standard), an optional powder room, an optional shop in the garage, an upper loft level with loft/bridge overlooking the great room below, a bathroom for 3 people at once, and double doors to the upper loft bedrooms. Yes! All of that in under 2,500 hsf! Seem impossible? Soellner himself would have thought so, until he created it.
Be among the first, few lucky homeowners to experience this luxury in such an affordable package. Just recently, clients visited Soellner to review these schemes with him and were delighted by the affordability, luxury, and functionality offered by these amazingly spacious arrangements.
Soellner has created about 7 main optional arrangements, with scores of options for each plan, to allow people to tailor a custom house for each family. “People are special,” said Soellner, “Everyone is unique and has particular needs, desires, and dreams for their house. Consequently, each design for each client develops their signature on it.” The method developed by this custom residential architect is to allow people from all over the USA and the world to come and visit him in his studio, where he will enthusiastically display his designs, discussing the direction that new client might wish to pursue. Then, when contracted, Soellner creates the scheme appropriate for each client’s wishes.
“Part of the secret to accomplishing these compact houses that live big is to use Wright’s principle of overlapping spaces in open plan arrangements,” said Soellner, “this is something I studied decades ago and have used in my designs since I was a young designer.” Soellner explained that his new compact residences still have internal views as long as 34′, a distance not expected within smaller housing. The secrets as to how this architect accomplishes this is revealed to those new clients who visit him and have one created just for them!