Using 3D modeling is the step done after the initial concept gets sketched out on the iPad. This is where things get fine tuned in three dimensions, surfaces selected and verified, views examined and everything honed and ready for working drawings. Modeling the site after sketching it lets us look at sun and shade through the year, apply actual surfaces like the tile and virtually walk through the space.
Urban Patio
This is what happens when you downsize: every square foot needs to count. Just to make things more difficult, there’s a four foot setback at the rear that doesn’t allow screen planting. So away goes another hundred square feet!
Putting everything on a diagonal helps the spaces flow so the garden looks less like a bento box (sans tempura).
The curving seat wall runs through the fountain and wraps around the firepit – so hot and cold weather are covered. Tall, narrow plants go between the wall and the setback to screen the adjacent house (the real wall is even taller than I modeled it!).
Folding bistro furniture can be stored on hooks in a small utility area, making the space modular and adaptable.
New Back Yard
Another small urban space with an ambitious feature list: new pool, dining area, plants, portable spa, basement access stairway, and more decks because the house’s finish floor is almost two feet above grade. Oh, and there’s very little fall to the street for drainage.
The way to make these things work is to overlap spaces: posts rise from walls, planters are also seat walls, and strips of artificial turf replace channel drains around the pool. The basement access is a “lookout” from the deck that unlocks and folds away for access, but no longer looks like a ramp to nowhere.
These renderings also show how the sun will fall at a given date and time, a way to check that the shade structure does indeed shade the windows. They’re not ultra high resolution, since that slows things dramatically where the point is to modify, check, repeat until everything looks good.