Educational Website about House Design: is about this website: www.HomeArchitects.com . What may have begun as a simple website a dozen years ago has morphed into the leading website in the USA about INFORMATION & EDUCATION for residential architecture and construction.
The website now has more information organized to educate the firm’s Clients, Contractors and public about residential design, site selection & site planning, materials, systems, details, specifications, bidding, construction and administration than any other website in the USA (and likely, the world). There are presently more than 600 “webpages”, however, many of these webpages hold the same amount of information as would normally fit on about 6 to 10 pages. So, this website has more than 1,000 pages of information (if it were organized in a normal 8-1/2″ x 1″‘ format).
The company designs custom houses, bids them out to Contractors and administers construction.
Their role in Project Management for their Clients is increasing, when their Clients are too busy or in circumstances that don’t allow them to run the construction oversight aspects of their project. But prior to this, all Clients (and others) need to learn some things about the design process, their choices, construction and attain an understanding about what’s good, bad or middle of the road in terms of materials, design organization and the built project.
Realizing that this is an educational process, this design firm has embraced this wholeheartedly and has devoted major aspects of their company website to informational content to assist those needing to learn about house design and construction.
BOOKSTORE EDUCATIONAL INFORMATION
This website has a BOOKSTORE with multiple online e-books available for download (which further expands the page count of information to the above) about residential design, Contractors, Architects, Design Process, Home Planning Guide and other topics that might be of interest to anyone that is about to undertake a custom house project. Senior Staff Architect of the firm, Rand Soellner, ArCH/NCARB/LHI has written these books with the perspective of 40+ years experience in architecture, 33 of those years as a Licensed Architect. He is also a Licensed Architect in multiple states across the USA and has designed hundreds of projects over decades. This valuable information is available for free, for most of these online books. Each mini-book was created to be purposely short (30 pages +/-), concise and to the point, providing the crucial things people need to know in bite-sized chunks of information, in a plain-talk no-jargon vocabulary.
BLOG EDUCATIONAL INFORMATION
The company’s weekly posts (online articles) are typically about technical, design, construction and administrative aspects of the design and construction process. This is good, solid facts that can be used to help people better understand what they are undertaking and to also help them make informed choices, to help them get what they want.
THE COMPANY’S MAIN BENEFITS VIDEO
The website features a video of their Senior Architect, explaining a PowerPoint presentation of the main benefits of the firm’s services, educating people with critical information about what you would want your Architect doing. This video in placed on the Homepage, near to the top right of the website, just under the “Big Picture” slide show (which graphically displays many images of the company’s design projects).
HOUSE TYPE & SIZE INFORMATION
The company has organized many of their projects by type and size. On the Homepage, near the bottom, you can see the following (in tan circles than fade in and out): 2BR Home Ideas, 3BR Home Ideas, 4BR Home Ideas, 5+BR Home Ideas. When you click on any of these, you are taken to website pages with designs having these features. The intent is not to “sell” any particular existing design, but rather to educate Clients and others as to some possible optional arrangements that might stimulate thinking about the organization of a new house design meeting the requirements of the new Client and new site.
INTERVIEW EDUCATIONAL INFORMATION
The Homepage of this website has a button on the right side, about midway down the page: “Click to see & hear interviews of this firm”. This provides both audio and video interviews of the company. There are several interviews by substantial sources such as the Wall Street Journal (in progress), Business of Architecture, and Entrepreneur Architect, and other presentations. This provides detailed information “from the “horse’s mouth” from credible sources in an interesting format to educate visitors of the website on a host of considerations.
PROJECT DESIGN 3D VIDEOS EDUCATIONAL INFORMATION
In several locations, including on the website Homepage, several high-tech near photo-realistic 3D videos of proposed designs underway are presented. When you click on the links, you will see a YouTube video of the designs, with people moving around in them, SUVs driving along the driveways, people swimming in pools, cats, birds flying in the sky and clouds breezing through the air. This graphic information educates you about how this firm communicates graphically.
SEARCH TOOL ACCESSES EDUCATIONAL INFORMATION
Unlike many design websites, this one features a “Search Our Site” button on the right side of the HomePage. This simple button allows you to type in whatever you are looking for and then call up all pages and posts about this subject on the website. This may sound simple and it is, but it is also powerful. You can easily and simply find whatever you want.
PROJECT INDEX
The website has a Project Index where a variety of project design are revealed. Once again: the main intent is to simply expose optional arrangements, not to sell existing design documents. Although the company starts some projects with existing designs and a starting point, then revises them to suit the new Client’s Lifestyle and Land (what they call the “2 Ls”).
INFOTAINMENT PAGES & BUTTONS
There are many buttons fading in and out on the Homepage on which visitors can click, to be taken to that subject matter. For instance: “See Testimonials”, “Learn More about Timber Frames”, “Learn About Mountain Homes”, “Review Services Offered”, “Learn About Green Design”, “Post and Beam Knowledge”, and many more. The idea of having these various “info-tainment” buttons fading in and out is to not overwhelm visitors and knowledge-seekers with too much at one time.
LARGE FOOTER SHOWING INFORMATION GATHERING PROCESS
At the bottom of all pages is a large block of links, categorized into 5 sections:
Project Type Info
#Bedroom Home Ideas
Publications/ Knowledge Library
Credentials/ Validation
Moving Forward with Your Project
Under each of these categories are many links related to that part of a visitor’s journey during their mission to obtain information in an organized manner.
GREEN HOME
ARCHITECTS & GREEN HOME DESIGN UNIVERSITY
This exciting webpage is the largest accumulation of Green Home Architecture information in the USA. More than 60 reference links lead you to related pages on this website. Also, there is the GHDU (Green Home Design University) that allows you to take a series of course right on the website and earn your GHDU certificate. All here on the main website.
This company intends to further expand its mission to provide quality information about residential design, planning, construction and management to its Clients, Future Clients, Contractors, other Architectural firms, and the public.
Educational Information Architectural firm: Rand@HomeArchitects.com 828-269-9046
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