How Far We've Come
Submitted by admin_green on Mon, 09/14/2009 - 14:46
We said this was going to be interesting. Boy, did we nail that one.
This, for the moment, is our final site plan. Fool me once... Click it to get a closer look.
We created this site to share the learning experience of being first-time innbuilders. The last few weeks have been a learning experience for us and, we hope, through this site, for you as well.
We really thought the last design was going to be our final layout. It appeared all the issues had been considered and all the challenges had been met. Turns out, not quite. We left out one thing.
It's highly unlikely that fire engines will ever come to the Green Leaf Inn. We're going to be non-smoking, and we intend to meet the strictest fire codes. But if a fire engine ever did come up our driveway, it would have to be able to turn around. Our designs, up to now, didn't leave enough space in the parking lot to allow that to happen.
Which marks our lesson for this week: small details can have profound consequences. Incorporating this one, relatively unlikely detail into our plan (there was never any question that this requirement be met) has forced us to make a profound change to the plan for the Inn. In order to add the necessary turnaround space (it's the green space above the pond on the left side of the new layout), we've had to go from two suite buildings to one. The new single suite building will be three stories and incorporate an elevator. New challenges and new technologies to learn about!
We have renderings of the new building as laid out in the current plan. You can see them by clicking here and checking out our gallery page.
Have we finally found our final design? Stay tuned, folks.
A recap of how we got this far
The site plan for The Green Leaf Inn continues to evolve, and it's been a fascinating process. There are other words that come to mind, but in the end, it's been fascinating.
This initial architect's site map was presented to the Town of Delavan Plan Commission.
This image shows the plan as it existed when we made our first presentation to the Delavan Planning Commission. At that time, we envisioned a single-unit B&B, in two stages, with the existing house being the only separate structure. Our main goal initially was to allow maximum southern exposure for the sake of the solar panels.
But then events took an unexpected turn. Please remember that phrase, we're going to be using it a lot on this site.
Walworth County is currently expanding Route 50, the road that runs by the grounds. This has been a much-debated project in the area; while most agree that the road can be a bottleneck to traffic, it also passes through much beautiful, and much privately-owned, land. Considerable sacrifices will have to be made by those living near the road to allow for the necessary setback of the expansion.
Including us.
Clearly, we needed to allow greater setback from the existing road to allow the County room to build their highway, while giving Green Leaf Inn visitors a proper sense of privacy and quiet.
This site plan accounts for the need to set the grounds farther back from the existing Route 50
Our next site plan made these accommodations. The structure was moved back and turned to more closely follow the path of the road. As this took us off our desired southern exposure, we elected to break the B&B into two separate buildings. We also elongated the parking lot to decrease the visual effect of its presence.
This is the plan that's currently shown on the home page of the site.
Practicality versus Aesthetics
We had accomplished a lot with this redesign: visitors could park closer to their suites, we had reduced the length of the paths, and we'd opened up a bit more green space.
Our most recent site design update.
But what about the visitor experience? One of the buildings now blocked the other's view of the garden, which is an important part of the experience at the Inn. Practicality and aesthetics were working at cross purposes. Time to try again.
We've experimented with several ideas since, including several that involved moving the Visitors Center in between the other two buildings. That approach would have minimized travel distances to the dining area for breakfast. But again, we didn't like what was happening to the overall look and feel of the place.
In the end, we believe that a sense of privacy and "remove" is key to the B&B experience and to the philosophy of the Green Leaf Inn. So we've sacrificed some Southern exposure and swung the westernmost building around, almost like circling the wagons, to create an enclosed space encompassing the main garden area.
Are we there yet? Guess not.
Finally, or so we though. This was the layout for the
house and grounds, up until a few weeks ago.
We thought we'd finally found the perfect balance a few weeks ago...then reality knocked on the door and added a new challenge. So this is not the final design.
While overall layout of the structures changed just slightly from Round 3 (see below), to improve access to the parking lot, we made some major design decisions concerning the architecture of the buildings themselves. We are incorporating design elements derived from the Prairie Style architectural school...appropriate, as Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio are located less than an hour away, as well as elements representing the history of the Midwest. We will be using contrasting textures on the exterior faces, and enough trim details to keep things interesting without getting overly showy.
You can see a full set of images of the elevations for this design on the gallery page.
We have already decided that one of the Suite buildings will be powered by the wind turbine, the other by solar panels. We've extended this idea to incorporate the Four Elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water, to match the four structures. We have a Wind Suite and a Sun (Fire) Suite. The geothermal heat pump will be located in the Welcome Center, so that is now the Earth Building. And our existing home will have the cistern attached, which makes it the...oh, come on, take a guess.
Will this be the final revision to the plans? We're not going to make any more predictions, and we'll keep you posted.
