13 housing

guest room, west side arawana place, site plan

trellis

trellis

vegetables

single car garage

access

lake view

xeriscape garden

studio

trellis

master bedroom

Here are a few thoughts that arose during the work on this project:

traditional zoning bylaws Novel concepts are not encouraged in a building culture with a prescriptive regula- tory system. Achieving privacy through front, side and rear yards doesn’t work well unless development density is extremely, and unsus- tainably, low. I am not immune to rote and tradition, and I first had to be unhappy with many more conventional schemes before con- sidering this solution. The Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen was very helpful, approving the project without a variance as long as all setbacks were observed. I wonder

how much more convincing the scheme could have turned out without the completely useless 7.5m front yard — would the public interest have been violated? I can’t argue with the side yard in an existing setting, but new subdivisions could certainly do without them. The result would be greater privacy, yet higher density. I also wonder how much more diverse and interesting Canadian single family houses could be if rules would be less prescriptive and more performance driven.

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on |site 13

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