Custom Home Architects: The Difference Felt in Lifestyle-Centered Design | Shapiro & Company Architects
- Jul 1
- 3 min read
Home is the center of our lives. It’s the place we start our mornings and return to at the end of the day, the place where our children are raised and memories are created.
Home is more than just your house, but we believe that some houses are easier to call home.
The distinction, to us, is in the purpose behind a home’s design. It’s easy for us as architects to see how a slight shift might give back functionality to the family room you never use, how a hallway sequence could make the weekday mornings with the kids so much easier—but it isn’t always relayed to homeowners until they sit down and we start walking them through our design ideas.
We've put together a basic run-down on what we mean as a firm when we say “we design homes around your lifestyle,” and how that actually translates into real life.
The First Conversations in Lifestyle-Focused Home Design
When we first sit down with a potential client, we never start with “What do you want your home to look like?”
When your intention is to create a home that feels different, the real starting point is finding out who you are.
We always start with a conversation about you. “What does your weekday look like?” “What does your weekend look like?” “How many kids do you have?” “What are your hobbies?” We unpeel the layers until we have a good understanding of who you are, and what your current lifestyle looks like on an average day.
Then, we start asking about your goals. Are you a young couple planning to have children? Are the children grown up and heading to college soon? Is retirement in your future?
The most important resource for our design is our relationship with you.
Can we come over?
And we don’t want you to clean up or hide away that pile of laundry on your couch.
Once we have the full picture of you (both present and future), that’s when we can start talking about your current home in our “Discovery” phase.
We want to know the good, the bad, and the ugly of your current home: what does work is just as important as what doesn’t work. For example, maybe you love your kitchen, but it’s not big enough for the amount of entertaining you do.
We want to see everything with our own eyes because a lot of the time, our clients have no idea that even the smallest inconveniences in their home can be solved with good architecture.
Leave out the laundry pile, so we know you need counter space in your laundry room to fold clothes. Leave the kids sports equipment on the floor next to the front door so we’ll see that cubbies are on the priority list.
The real power behind our design is how well we can get to know you!
Lifestyle-Centered Design in Practice
When we get to the design phase, we take everything that we have learned to develop layouts, spaces, and circulation that suits your needs and routines.
When designing a bedroom layout for a couple, for example, we take into consideration their wake up routines and what their average day looks like.
For one couple who liked to go to bed and wake up at drastically different times, we designed a bedroom suite that minimized the chances of one waking up the other when getting up or going to bed. We designed their bedroom to have a separate entrance through the bathroom and closet areas, so that when one wakes up early, they can get ready and exit to the rest of the house with minimal disturbances.
Another family enjoys hosting large family parties at their home frequently, but they didn't like that guests would gather in their kitchen and see a mess of pots, pans, and dish prep. We designed an open concept living and kitchen space that still allowed for gathering, but also designed a large scullery area next to the pantry that could be closed off with pocket doors. That way, all of their prep could be easily hidden even when guests inevitably gathered in the kitchen.
Feeling the Difference
Even 20 years later, our clients still love their homes. Being trained in classicism—or the study of classic architecture –means that we have a sophisticated understanding of proportion and scale that translates into timeless homes.
Beyond just the timelessness of the design itself, there’s a timelessness felt when your home is designed with the next 20 years in mind.
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