Letter to two families developing a rural site:

It turns out that in my small kitchen, if my fridge were about one inch to the right, my life would kind of suck. Here’s the scenario: one kid would be loading dirty dishes into the dishwasher, and the other would try to put away the gallon of milk and “bonk!” the fridge door hits the open dishwasher. They fight, the kitchen doesn’t get cleaned, and it’s a life of squalor and poverty from there on out. Those appliances could be made of platinum, but that one inch is what would really make the difference.

With kitchens, and buildings, and the whole stupid world, we need all these things. They take up room and they need to go places. They can be obscenely expensive or really cheap, but they seem to sit around for a long, long time. Just deciding where those inarguably necessary things go can make the difference between “nope”, “yes” and “I see life differently now.” That power of placement is a secret weapon that us non-billionaires have to really make a difference in our lives.

What you and your families must do down there on the tip of Vashon Island is put in some pretty expensive things. Electricity, septic, water, roadways, not to mention your dwellings, workshops, and possibly accessory dwellings for parents. And then you’ve got the most expensive thing: time, during which the trees and your children will grow up, and you and your spouses will raise them, and your selves.

Any way you slice it, you will be paying for and putting in those things, and the results of those decisions will be both magnified (and softened) by the years.

Here’s what I think design is:

It’s a clear mental space, separate from family debates and preconceptions. It’s asking lots of questions and boiling down the specifics into drawings. It’s finding conflicts and turning them into opportunities. It’s doing more with less. It’s all the trades being coordinated with a vision and a drawing. It’s rising above the practicalities to the possibilities, because everyone deserves that. It’s a process, not a person.

I believe in your project on the southern tip of Vashon. I can picture kids exploring, couples working, food cooking, grandparents watching. I can imagine inexpensive ways that structures can be situated to maximize natural beauty, privacy, community, economy and function. I would love to get together with you all, if just one time, and we could talk about ideas. If that was as far as it went, I would be happy that I participated in some small way in your process. And if you all decided you wanted to work with me, we could find some way to make that happen