About Madson Design
James Madson is a building designer residing in San Francisco with his musical spouse and two charming children. He holds degrees in both English literature and Engineering design, and worked and studied under Michael Malinowski, AIA, in Sacramento prior to moving to the Bay Area and launching his own design business.
James began his design work primarily in the remodel of homes dating from the 1920s and 1930s; his fondness for the crafted details and human-scaled proportions of homes of this vintage has informed all of his work since then. Madson Design has been providing contextual, integral homes since 2003 across a broad swath of Northern California, from the Sierra foothills and the San Joaquin Valley to the Bay Area up and down the peninsula. James brings his diverse training and skills to each home's design, a holistic, non-exclusivist approach that results in homes as varied and rich as the California cultures from which they spring.
Our services include the full residential building design process, from initial sketches and consultation to permit-ready plans, construction administration, interior design assistance, and site design.
Design Philosophy
Living in a well-designed home will restructure and rebuild you. Your surroundings have a subtle yet profound impact on your emotional well-being, your sense of self, and your relationships, yet much of the time, we are oblivious to our context and to the effect that context has. To a certain degree, good design should allow that, as we should be able to flow along in our daily lives without any overt impact from our dwelling space. But to a certain degree, a well-designed home should also remind us of what we truly value — it should be able to prod us occasionally to look up from our immediate concerns, calling attention to who we are and where we are. We need comfort, and at the same time, we need perspective. Our home should give us both.
Your home should be an anchor and a sanctuary in your life. The comfort and perspective it provides can be attained through a design that establishes connections between you, the past, the present, and the place. A multi-threaded continuum, or sense of continuity, is the result, and can be articulated in personal, contextual, and aesthetic terms
The Personal
Your home should fit you like a glove, and should also be a seamless conduit in the flow of your daily life, contributing to its ease and flux. This quality can be implemented by designing a floor plan that truly reflects you and your family’s needs, and that also has the flexibility to evolve over time, to accommodate inevitable changes and new needs. The character of the home—the materials used, the sightlines created, the colors, the aesthetic—should reflect and corroborate the homeowner’s core beliefs and values, should moreover provide ‘the missing piece’ that makes one whole again at the end of a day. Each room should be a facet of this overall character, providing different ‘angles’ of understanding in a consistent storyline.
The Contextual
We need a sense of place. When we travel, we relish the memory of those exotic locations we visited that felt ‘real’, that lived and breathed in a way that seemed more real and substantive than our humdrum lives in our home state, city, or neighborhood. Our daily lives needn’t feel like this, however—where we live is just as full of ‘real living’ as any other place. What does your neighborhood have to say about the people there, about people in general? What does it have to say about the history of this region? What was here before the neighborhood? What was the character and history of the land? Even a sprawling tract house neighborhood of nothing but California ranch homes has a story—a rich heritage harkening back to 17th-century Spain. What if you are building on open land? What kind of trees, what kind of soil, what kind of rock is here? Who lived here before, and what was done here? A starkly simple white farmhouse on the prairie harkens to some old American traditions, and by its contrast with the flat land makes commentary on our embedded cultural attitudes toward nature and our relationship with it. And by our intuitive understanding of that commentary, the farmhouse looks a part of the landscape, blended and integral with it. Our sense of tradition is measured and balanced with a more layered understanding of place—both a reassurance and a perspective gained.
The Aesthetic
All aesthetics have value, and if handled well can evoke the core qualities that inspired their inception in the first place. No style should be adhered to simply for the sake of recapturing a ‘golden era’—i.e., a faux nostalgia for a time we never actually experienced. If we are instead looking to recapture the unique truth of that aesthetic—its core qualities—and work with these with an understanding that all domestic aesthetic traditions are really reflections of one common goal throughout the ages—that is, a context that brings both comfort and interest to your daily life--then we are on the path to good design. Instead of slavish obedience to a particular aesthetic, this understanding allows a sense of play in the creation, which in turn brings life and humanity to the aesthetic, and links our living present to a living past, a present now more alive in the understanding of this continuity
Design Process
Madson Design provides complete residential design services, from the first rough sketch to the finished, permit-ready plans. Because we see construction as part of the design process, we also include construction oversight from the first budgetary discussions to the completed home. In addition to residential design services, we provide consultation on site design and interior design.
The design process — the process of bringing your hopes and wishes into physical reality — is built around a few common-sense principles that have had a proven record of success. These principles are:
Homeowner involvement and input: The development of the design itself must, in large part, be informed by the homeowner’s thoughts, wishes, and practical needs. A designer working simply with their own ideas, with little input from the outside, may be hard pressed to bring a profound uniqueness to each project; but a designer who can take the raw data that a homeowner provides, and truly hear what those needs and wishes are — verbal and nonverbal — will have endless opportunities to transform and deepen his/her aesthetic, and bring that expansiveness to bear on the project at hand.
An affordable home: There is little purpose in creating a beautifully drawn set of plans if those plans cannot then be implemented--used to build your new or remodeled home. At every stage of the design process, from the first sketch onward, the homeowner is encouraged to share the plans with a qualified builder to get real costs. The builder’s input will help define the project’s scope and should help guide the development of the design from start to finish; by taking this approach, the finished set of plans should be in full compliance with the homeowner’s budget.
Design philosophy goals: Incorporated with the above requirements, and informing the whole, the final design should include the goals of the designer, as described in the design philosophy. A careful, multi-phased design process allows for the integration of the homeowner’s, designer’s, and builder’s contributions in the final product: a buildable set of plans for a beautiful and unique home.
Costs
Madson Design provides adaptable fee structures that allow the homeowner the ability to sculpt our services and costs in a manner that meets their budget and needs.
Typically, the first two phases of the project are charged at a flat fee, as the time invested for these phases is fairly predictable. When it comes to Design Development, however, the time investment in this phase depends upon the particulars of the project, the homeowners themselves, and the local municipality's zoning regulations and permitting process. The decision-making process for each client is unique and is usually the key factor defining the hours spent in this phase. Consequently, Design Development can either be billed hourly or can be based on a per square foot cost (of area affected only), or some combination of the two. The final phase, Construction Documents, can also be billed per square foot or by hour, depending on the project and the homeowner's needs.
This approach has proven to keep our design costs down to a very competitive level. In addition, at each stage of the process, the fees are revisited with the client to verify that we are all in accord with the progress and costs thus far. As with the design process itself, our individualized fee structuring is collaboration-based and customer-focused.
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Phase 1: As-built Reference plans
The necessary first step, before any design can begin, is to measure the existing house and parcel and create ‘as-built’ CAD drawings of the property, including floor plan, exterior elevations, and site plan. These drawings will be used as ‘background’ in all subsequent design sketches and drawings.Phase 2: Programming
Homeowner and designer meet to discuss design scope, budget, and priorities. Homeowner shares photographs, drawings, etc., that depict their vision and hopes for the remodeled home.Phase 3: Preliminary design sketches
We provide three or more alternative schemes, based upon previous discussions with the homeowner. These will include floor plans, at least one exterior elevation, and diagrammatic sketches of the interior, as required. The intent of these schemes is to provide an extensive selection of design options, which the homeowner can then use to make decisions and set priorities. The sketches are comprehensive enough to allow for rough or “ballpark” construction cost estimates early on in the process.Phase 4: Design Development
After the homeowner has had an opportunity to review the preliminary designs and come to some decisions, the various design elements chosen may be incorporated into one scheme, in CAD, including, at a minimum, a floor plan, all four elevations, and a site plan. The goal is to have a package of drawings that will further articulate the design and provide a point of discussion for greater detail and fine-tuning; these drawings should also provide enough information for more specific construction cost estimates. At the end of design development, the design should be fully defined and in line with the estimated construction costs.Phase 5: Construction Documents
In this final phase, the plans are prepared for the permit. Provided typically will be:
• Site plan
• Floor plan
• Exterior elevations
• Building section
• Window and door schedule
• Reflected ceiling plan
• Electrical plan
• Construction detailsItems not required for the permit, but supplied per the client’s request, would be:
• Interior elevations
• Interior design plans
• Landscape and hardscape plans -
Phase 1: Design Programming & Proto Design
To start with, a site visit is necessary to ascertain the restrictions, practical requirements, and general ‘character’ of the new home’s context. I meet with the clients to discuss their needs, both practical and otherwise, for the new home, working out the number of rooms, their basic arrangement or relationship with each other, and how they may be situated on the site. Basic square footage is defined.Following this, I come up with some proto-design sketches that provide a variety of room layout options, evaluating these based on flow, function, orientation of the sun, and landscape elements such as trees and views. Also discussed are room sizes and area optimizations that can reduce square footage and therefore cost. One goal here is to create a floor plan that is as economical and efficient as possible, so that there is a reserve for both future construction ‘unknowns’ and for architectural ‘treats’ that make the home a unique and personal work of art.
Phase 2: Preliminary Design
With the client’s choosing of a proto-design, we move into the early stages of design development. A CAD drawing of the floor plan is created, delineating basic room sizes and further articulating flow, composition, and character, via discussion of window and door locations and connections between spaces, both indoor and out. We would also talk further about the general aesthetic character of the home and the site, and begin to conceptualize the exterior elevations and how the floor plan may be tweaked to accommodate the exterior composition. By the end of this phase, a site layout, floor plan, and at least one exterior elevation are agreed upon as the ‘direction’ for the design’s further development.Phase 3: Design Development
With the design direction now settled, the design will be further refined and articulated, per revisions and discussions, until we reach a “final” design that is acceptable to all parties. At the end of this process, the design should be fully defined and in line with the estimated construction costs.Phase 4: Construction Documents
In this final phase, the plans are prepared for the permit. Provided typically will be:
• Site plan
• Floor plan
• Exterior elevations
• Building section
• Window and door schedule
• Reflected ceiling plan
• Electrical plan
• Construction detailsItems not required for the permit, but supplied per the client’s request, would be:
• Interior elevations
• Interior design plans
• Landscape and hardscape plans