How Small Smart Spaces Can Help You Build Faster and Better

There has long been a drive in the design and built industry to find that silver bullet solution to our homes. We face significant challenges: cost to build, cost to live in homes, cost to the planet, and cost to our health. All of these things on their own are not simple to solve, but combined make the challenge more complicated than what is convenient for a 30 second social media sound bite. And with a life of busyness, distractions, and limited attention space, we are at risk of outsourcing well considered solutions to a quick fix that eases our conscience.

The reality is there is no perfect solution, yet the industry that builds our homes, our nation, and shapes our lives is awfully good at using the excuse of perfection as justification to keep doing the same old thing.

Well, that is not something I aspire to. Back in 2020 I started down a journey of engaging in the MMC space, Modern Methods of Construction, offsite, or prefabrication space. There are many names for this space and indeed many players. My intention was simple: if we cannot understand the building blocks available to us as Architectural Designers and Architects, we cannot make them work smartly for our clients.

I was sitting at the annual conference one year and wondering, in the absence of many Architects and Architectural Designers (there was only a handful present in the room), who was creating High Performance Homes combining Passive House, Homestar, and offsite construction. I couldn't see anyone there. And then a quiet voice inside me said, perhaps that's me.

And so began the creation of Small Smart Spaces.

Great Design isnt about a long design process, its about fundamental good design principles in action.

I do give the group home builders a fair amount of a tongue lashing, but Kim Aitken from Truss House said to me one day over a coffee: "The solutions we need are design led." There has been a move away from the great architects like Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe to mitigate, reduce, and almost make redundant the value of good design. I have said, design is easy, but making design work is hard.

When we get good design fundamentals set in the principles of an approach, we set the intention to realise them, not just accidentally find them. Small Smart Spaces is my range of Architecturally Designed Homes that have Passive House, Homestar, and offsite set into their intentions. It's not about trying to make something work, it's about using what I know aligns with Modern Methods of Construction, works conducively with Passive House, and can also achieve Homestar. The trick has been to create an efficient process that works with all of these together.

Quality is guaranteed with the right combination of good products and good people

We talk a lot about buildings as products, but a home really is the spaces we create. Those spaces are created by assembling a kit set of parts, that need to work together to stand up despite natural disasters like floods and storms, and provide the barrier that protects a Healthy Home with a constant interior from a changing and variable exterior.

Key to making solutions that aspire to unlock as many results as possible is having good relationships and productive conversations with the right people. As much as choosing the right products matters, working with the right people matters just as much. Small Smart Spaces has unlocked efficient and smart ways of building because of conversations to create the best solutions. There is something magic about all the products and people who are a part of Small Smart Spaces. We all don't work for the same company, we all have different roles, but we are all open to doing things better. With that comes the risk of, as I put it, getting our butts kicked in the arena. In the spirit of Brené Brown and Franklin D. Roosevelt: it's not the critic who counts, the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.

There is a stripping down of ego and the need to be right and, in its place, collaboration builds a team of people investing in getting it right.

Village Series - Suburban Family Homes

Annex Series - Small infill homes and Granny Flats

Building better unlocks better mortgage options

There is a real tension between building better and being able to afford it. With power prices increasing and the cost of living rising not just here, but right around the world, we have to admit that simply looking at construction capital costs is not solving the very real challenges that most of society are starting to feel. We have good solutions for Healthy, Comfortable Homes that are affordable to heat and operate. And now we have access to finance options that reward building better with more favourable interest rates. Homestar, a rating tool by the New Zealand Green Building Council, is unlocking more favourable interest rates for Homestar rated homes and developments. This means not only Lower Power Bills with improved interior health and comfort, but also lower interest rates too.

Efficiency in a process, it’s a way of thinking.

After sitting in the Modern Methods of Construction, offsite, or prefabricated space I heard the word lean manufacturing used a lot. Essentially this is about an efficient process likened to that of a car manufacturing company. I have seen this at work on many factory floors. But what happens in lean manufacturing, lean being the term attributed to maximising client value while minimising waste, actually has its place in many more contexts. Recognising that maximising value while minimising waste can be attributed to time, material, or people. The real value in lean is understanding it's a design approach, not a design process. Efficiency needs to be worked backwards from setting the standard of value and then finding ways to realise that in ways that work smarter, not harder.

The process at Small Smart Spaces was exactly that. The intention to create High Performance, Passive House certifiable, Homestar ratable Architecturally Designed Homes using modern methods of construction. I started with the vision, the non negotiables in terms of quality, and then worked backwards to embrace the products, systems, and processes that efficiently unlock that with enough flexibility to keep delivering the value in multiple scenarios.

Our homes are our greatest asset, and I am confident that Small Smart Spaces and other approaches similar to this will unlock great efficiency not just in terms of cost and design, but also in terms of quality of time spent inside Comfortable, Healthy Homes we have created.

To have a chat about Small Smart Spaces, check out the range of designs or book a free presentation, use the link below.