Since 1990, our office has provided clients throughout southern British Columbia, Alberta and the continental United States with custom design services for both new construction and renovations. We have gained a reputation for work of distinctive quality that stands out because of its careful siting, functional and comfortable interiors, and attention to detail throughout.

Builders like our work. In addition to making a satisfying final product of which they can justifiably be proud, all our projects are put together with straightforward construction in mind. Wherever possible, conventional materials are employed — albeit sometimes in novel situations. Every effort is made to reduce waste and labour during assembly. We are becoming more widely known as a designer of affordable housing — housing that frequently costs less per square foot than its blander contemporaries.

Most importantly, though, clients like working with us because we listen when they tell us what they want, and, perhaps most importantly, how much they want to spend. We recognize that the home is the largest single financial commitment most of us make. Staying within a financial comfort zone can have a huge impact on our quality of life and on our ability to ultimately enjoy our new home.

Working with a Designer
We believe that every building project undertaken by an owner is absolutely unique; nowhere else will we find the same combination of site conditions, personal needs and wants, taste, budget, materials, and other significant factors.

This is the primary advantage of hiring a designer to help create your home. Our expertise is in marrying the functional, structural, and aesthetic requirements of your project in a way which best suits you. This is something hard to find in a plan from a book. At its best, custom design results in homes and personal spaces that satisfy profoundly on every level.

Contrary to what many people might think, hiring a designer can also end up saving you money. In our office particularly, we are adept at maximizing the use of space. It has often been possible to trim 100, 200, or even more square feet from a house by optimizing the layout, reducing unnecessary area lost to corridors, combining functions, and by doing an in-depth analysis of how our clients actually use their dwellings. Many people, for example, use their formal dining rooms only three or four times a year. A combined kitchen/dining area with an efficient but aesthetically pleasing layout, utilizing well thought-out lighting and other means to differentiate the two functions, can in many instances be a very satisfactory alternative at a savings of more than 100 square feet and many thousands of dollars.

Few people have built enough to be entirely comfortable with the "nitty gritty" of the construction world. Cost over-runs, shoddy workmanship, slow progress, and other unforseen crises are unfortunate facts of life that can arise in the course of constructing a house. The designer — with a knowledge of the building process, construction techniques and materials, and with the client's best interests at heart — is uniquely positioned to act as advocate in dialogue with the builder, subtrades, building inspector, and other officials.

Finally, in our training and over years of practice we have acquired special skills — such as decor, colour, and lighting design — which we offer to clients who wish a higher degree of professional assistance in planning their home.

The Design Process
Should you decide to work with us to design a new home or renovate your present home, the process can be as interactive and participatory as you wish. We see our role as facilitators, helping our clients to clearly identify their needs and articulate their preferences.

The first thing you get to do is tell us what you want your house to do and how you want it to feel. We do a room-by-room inventory, identifying every significant factor including, spatial needs, relation to view, sun and privacy, and special furnishings and cherished works of art. We ask for your feelings about light, materials, and how you live in and move from space to space. We ask to see your magazine clippings for clues to your tastes. All this information makes up the program, a document which guides the design development and ensures that all requirements are being addressed. We also study the building site extensively to determine the best orientation, access, and efficient servicing for the house.

Then, work usually proceeds from the general to the specific. Following a few weeks of gestation and preliminary design development, we will present to you one or more initial design concepts. These will form the basis for a dialogue in which we discover and keep the ideas that work and discard those that don't. We continue to go back to the drawing board to come up with a reworked and redveloped scheme until everyone is satisfied.

At this point, called Final Design, we begin to prepare the construction documents. For a simple design, this generaly consists of 4-5 pages of working drawings. More complex home designs will also include written specifications. Our drawing package will be sufficient to obtain building permits, accurate cost estimates, and to guide the course of construction.

Services and Fees
Design services are provided on a fixed-fee arrangement, which clearly spells out costs in advance and spreads them out throughout the design process. Fees are calculated as a percentage of the estimated construction cost of a new structure or renovation, and reflect the degree of professional involvement, responsibility, and level of detail provided by our firm.

For more information
If you are interested in finding out more about the services we offer and would like to discuss a custom-designed home or renovation, please contact our office.




Copyright 2006
John Gower Design Ltd and BC Mountain Homes
Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Toll-free:1-877-366-2502

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