Post-Occupancy Encomium

Silence is golden, but it can also be disheartening.

Usually when an owner moves into a new custom-designed house or commercial building of some sort, the architect never hears from them again. This is good and bad. Good in the sense that the presumption is that everything works well and the roof doesn't leak. Because if things weren't good, the architect would hear about it. The silence is bad in the sense that the architect never hears all the feedback and reactions to his or her design that could help the architect learn and improve in the future. We call these sort of post-occupancy evaluations... well... we call them post-occupancy evaluations!

Howard heard back again from the owner of the million-dollar house. After living in the house for nearly four months, the owner wrote a long email listing all the things that work well in the house as well as a shorter list of things that work "less well."

One pair of sentences was particularly striking, and I'd like to pass them on to you...

"We have received many compliments from people including neighbors, family, friends and even complete strangers (one woman relocating to FtC actually stopped and knocked on the door wanting to know if we would consider selling to her). I even had a neighbor ask me just this morning if I were an architect because of the design of our house."

Howard loves to hear this stuff!

The list of stuff that works "less well"? Howard will keep those to himself.