BuildConscious is growing. With the first collection of articles, I’ve found myself intuitively reaching for the elements that evoke the How of my approach to custom homebuilding. The articles are short and to the point. They don’t aspire to be lengthy treatises on a wide, sweeping swath of ideas.
Instead, they’re more like units of thought.
As that notion has evolved, I’ve started to think of BuildConscious more like a toolkit. Articles are simple and accessible enough to stand alone. They can be used to accomplish a single task, as a hammer does for a nail. But they can also be assembled into larger pieces to form larger realizations that are greater than the sum of their parts.
Like tools, they can be combined in different collections and sequences to accomplish a task: Measure first, then cut, then place, then fasten.
At the foundation of this approach are three articles in Getting Started section of the BuildConscious Guides:
- The Communication Matrix — A tool for thinking about how, when and where to communicate in order to produce the greatest effect with the least effort.
- The Tradeoff Triad — A tool for understanding the three elements of any decision and how optimizing for certain elements can affect the others.
- The Multidimensional Decision — A tool for seeing how certain decisions can have a radical impact not only in space but in time, and how acting in the present requires an understanding of the future.
None of these articles are about a specific trade, or material. Instead, they are ways of thinking about, understanding and navigating the process with the common goal of increasing understanding and decreasing stress.
If you’re a homeowner, an architect or a builder, I’m curious: What questions do you have? What do you struggle with on a regular basis in your projects? What seems like a perennial problem that just won’t go away?
As BuildConscious continues to grow, I’m excited to build what you want to see, and create guides that will light up the path from daydream to dream home.