Architect of the Month / October 9, 2015 by S. Joshua Brincko

Mighty House Construction honored Josh as "Architect of the Month." Mighty House is a Seattle-based general contractor specializing in sustainable construction from small remodels to whole-house additions and renovations. Josh has worked and volunteered with Mighty House for several years with Sustainable West Seattle.

Check out their blog article here: http://mightyhouseconstruction.com/blog-2

If you’d like to learn more about our design process, visit www.josharch.com/process, and if you’d like to get us started on your project with a feasibility report, please visit www.josharch.com/help

7 Things You Can Do To Impress Your Architect / October 1, 2015 by S. Joshua Brincko

1. Refer to simple shapes as "Forms."

Architects get tons of training in spatial relationships and how they affect people. We were trained to call basic rectangles, squares, circles, amoebas, etc, a "form." Architects simplify most things to their most basic parts (or forms) because simple things tend to work better. A door is a form, a door knob is a separate form. A wing of a hospital is a form, and the entry canopy to the hospital is a separate form. Each form serves a unique purpose, so it has a distinct shape and material.

2. Refer to window patterns as "Fenestration"

I know some German and Italian, so I know "fenster" and "finestra" (respectively) means window. I'm not sure why we say fenestration when we discuss the patterns, shapes, and sizes of windows, but it must have derived from these languages somehow. You can say, "I like how the fenestration of the living area contrasts but still relates to the adjacent siding pattern."

3. Refer to spaces as either "Public" or "Private"

Architects distill most things down to their basic properties to make them easy for clients to understand, contractors to build, and occupants to use since simplicity tends to work really well. We often categorize spaces as either "public" or "private" spaces. Sometimes we also use a category called a "transitional" space to delineate the areas between. Bedrooms, bathrooms, and storage rooms tend to be private, while living rooms, dining rooms, family rooms, and kitchens tend to be public. Grouping all public spaces in one area and all private spaces in a separate area enables easier material choices, functionality, and perception of different spaces. For example, bedrooms and bathrooms tend to be private and therefor require solid materials. Kitchens and living rooms tend to be more public and therefor more open and transparent materials are suitable. Grouping these types of rooms together enables the glassy areas to be in one portion of a building and the more closed-in spaces in another portion. This enables the building occupants to inherently understand where they are supposed to be as a visitor. This also enables groups of open spaces to be collectively oriented toward the portion of the property that gets the most natural light while the private spaces, which typically need less natural light, can be collectively located elsewhere.

4. Refer to walls as "Solids" and windows and doors as "Voids"

Simple is good because simple tends to work really well. Solids and voids are the basic elements of architecture. They create contrast. Contrast creates a good building, a good meal, a good party, a good anything. Would you enjoy a meal where every single thing on the plate was brown and tasted the same? Doubtful. Solids in architecture are walls, floors, ceilings, columns, beams, cabinetry, etc. Voids are glass, doorways, or other openings. Put a window between a wall and a column, and you've create a contrast between the two solid elements. Think of the window as: "not a window." It's just a void. The void is there simply because, the floor, walls, and ceiling exist around it. So solids make voids. The contrast can be enhanced by making the void larger, and this creates more dramatic, interesting, and light-filled architecture.

5. Talk shit about the building department

Architects are highly trained, extremely knowledgeable in all facets of construction, and have all the best intents for their projects. Staff at the building department are often like the employees you encounter at the DMV when you try to renew your license. They treat you horribly, and they think you owe them something. They also implement asinine requirements like putting a construction fence around a tiny shed to prevent debris from washing into the neighbors' yards while repairing it. For these reasons, architects love to "dis" the building department and share horror stories of similar encounters. It's like a support group for abused designers.

6. Ask your architect to spend an hour being creative on something specific

Architects often get stuck doing technical drawings and project management, and the creative parts of the job tend to get overlooked due to tough schedules, budgets, codes, etc. If you're spending a ton of money on your building, it makes a lot of sense to take a step back and ask your architect to get creative for a minute. Architects are inherently creative thinkers, and they are likely to come up with an idea worth considering before you go down the ordinary path of typical construction,

7. Talk about Mies Van Der Rohe or Tadao Ando instead of Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank is a household name, and he did some great work. BUT, there are so many more great architects out there that most other architects idolize much more than Frank. Ando and Mies are two of my favorites. They are known for their simplicity of forms and honesty in use of material. You can read about them on Wikipedia: Mies and Ando

In Architect We Trust / September 1, 2015 by S. Joshua Brincko

Trust is something that must be earned. Do you trust your doctor? Your mailman? Your priest? Your teacher? Most people do with few exceptions. How have they earned your trust? You don't really know them all that well, but somehow they are inherently trusted to heal you, teach you, or deliver your mail. Trusting a doctor is much more important than trusting your mailman will deliver mail on time, but that trust is still very important.

After describing your symptoms to the best of your ability, you trust your doctor will diagnose the problem properly and quickly treat it. Why do we trust that will happen? Probably because the doc devoted his or her life to medicine, spent 4 years in college, spent 4 years in medical school, passed state board exams, and maybe spent another couple years specializing. The trust was earned from all that hard work. We trust the doctor has the same goal as we do: make me feel better.

As an architect, I find it rewarding that I often receive that same level of trust. People consider me an expert in my field, and frankly...I am. I also spent 4 years in college, 2 years in grad school, 3+ years apprenticing under a licensed architect, and passed 9 state board exams with recurring audits on my professional development and continued scrutiny from building officials. I also have additional experience working with 4 other award-winning design firms, and also running my own design firm for over 10 years. It is also interesting that I sometimes do not receive this level of trust from some clients. It must be earned in addition to these credentials. Here's what I find interesting about it: to earn the trust in these situations, I have to first complete the work (successfully) for that client. OK, so I eventually earn the trust, but what's the point? The client still worked with me anyway before they developed the trust which creates an inefficient relationship where the client questions the choices of the architect. The whole process would be much easier for everyone if the client would trust the architect they hired. Some clients will draw their own "floor plans," insist on doors or closets in weird places that bump into toilets when swung open, or don't consider the window they requested looks directly into their neighbor's bathroom while missing the great view and natural light on the opposite wall.

Why do clients hire architects? It's not to draft lines on paper. Architects are hired to offer years of experience and input on the construction of a building. It is most beneficial for a client to let the architect "do his thing" and trust it will turn out great in the end. Imagine a patient telling a surgeon how to make the incision or telling the anesthesiologist to increase the dosage. The wrong choice can have major consequences. Buildings are major undertakings. They cost more than most surgeries, and they can also injure many people if poorly designed. This is why it is very important to trust the experts we hire. They want what is best for everyone.

Architects evaluate hundreds of options formally and informally before presenting them to clients. These options consider the easier, obvious things like spatial constraints, code requirements, and material/construction capabilities, and even more difficult things are considered such as perception of privacy, emotions evoked by space/material, and complicated patterns of flow and functionality. Based on the training and experience of an architect, these factors are all simultaneously evaluated before choosing the best possible solution. Occasionally, a client will not realize this level of thought, and he or she might demand fallacious requests inconsistent with the matrix of factors the architect must consider. This happens. Some people need or want things explained in greater detail, and it is part of the architect's job to ensure the client is making an educated choice. It does get frustrating though when a client makes a decision based on the wrong facts, incomplete facts, or no facts at all. I believe it is unethical to allow a client to make a poor choice like that, so I would rather speak up and explain why another choice is, in fact, the right one. Many clients in the past have respected me for "protecting them from themselves." If a client would ever disapprove of this type of honesty, I would question their reasoning for hiring an architect and politely request they hire another one.

Buildings are expensive, and we don't want you to make the wrong choice. It's too costly and difficult to live with a bad decision. Not only do we want you to love your project, but we also want a nice project in our portfolio. All of our recommendations result in the best project which makes everyone happy in the end.

Should You Get Solar Panels? / July 30, 2015 by S. Joshua Brincko

Residential upper floor addition in Woodinville, WA with polyisocyanurate insulation, stack ventilation, and clerestory lighting...oh and solar panels. — Residential upper floor addition in Woodinville, WA with polyisocyanurate insulation, stack ventilation, and clerestory lighting...oh and solar panels.

You want to be green and live sustainably. That's a good thing. Solar panels tend to be considered the most sustainable thing you can do to your house. Why is that so? There's 2 reasons: they are visible...you can see them from the street, and everyone can admire them. Ooooo, ahhhhh...nice panels ya got there! The other reason is they are cool. The sun hits them, and electricity is magically made.

Although they are perceived as the most sustainable feature, are they really? If you evaluate the facts, they are really one of the least sustainable things you can do on the list of green design and construction principles. They are still a good thing to do, but let's discuss things you should do first BEFORE installing solar panels.

Caulk. Don't get too cocky about your solar panels unless you first get caulky with your caulking gun. Typical construction has a lot of gaps. Each time a window or door is installed, the builder essentially cuts a hole in your house. Each time a water line, sewer line, electric line, vent duct, etc penetrates through your house, those are more holes. When plywood is attached to the stud walls, there's minute gaps between the panels. When a sill plate is attached to the top of a concrete foundations, there's more gaps. You get the idea. There's gaps EVERYWHERE in construction, and those need to be filled. These gaps enable the unwanted air infiltration. Heat travels from areas of warmth to areas that are colder. That's just the way science works. So, in the winter, you pay a bunch of money to heat your house, and that warm air leaks through all these gaps. In the summer, the opposite thing happens. Caulking, otherwise known as "air-sealing," will prevent the majority of this heat loss which saves a dramatic amount of energy.

So what does caulk have to do with solar panels? Well, caulk saves energy, and solar panels make energy. Compare the cost of a $5 tube of caulk, and the cost of a $1000 solar panel. Next compare the amount of energy a tube of caulk can save to the amount of energy a solar panel actually makes. Lastly, compare the embodied energy of a tube of caulk to the embodied energy of a solar panel (embodied energy is the total amount of energy used to manufacture, ship, package, etc a product). A solar panel saves/creates nowhere near as much energy as a good caulk job. Every building, building material, and building site is different, so I cannot cite specifics, but the energy leaking out of an un-sealed building is far more than the energy created by a few solar panels. My advice is to caulk every seam and tape every joint with an air-sealing tape during (or after) construction. This will give you much more energy savings. (Or you could just buy solar panels to create energy, and let that energy leak out of your house). Would you expect a fancy North Face coat to keep you warm with the zipper still open during the next winter blast?

Another significant green construction strategy that should be done BEFORE investing in solar panels is upgrading the insulation value of your house. This is a major savings. As previously discussed, heat travels from areas of warmth to areas of cold. So, even if you do have a tightly air-sealed house, the next easiest place for you to lose energy is through your walls, floors, roofs, windows, and doors. The building code requires certain insulation values for all of these items, but energy still leaks through unless you surpass the requirements. A simple strategy is just to change from batt insulation (the fluffy pink stuff) to rigid foam insulation which comes in boards or can be sprayed as foam. Within the same thickness of wall, roof, or floor, you can more than double the insulation value by switching to rigid insulation. Closed cell spray foam polyisocyanurate insulation can give you about 2.5 times the insulation value as the regular pink stuff. This means you are saving 2.5 times the amount of energy because you aren't allowing it to leak through the building. Is a solar panel going to MAKE 2.5 times more energy than your house wastes? No.

Another strategy is to layer insulation. You can use the less expensive batt insulation as usual, and on the exterior surfaces of plywood, you can additionally cover those with foam board insulation. One side of the boards is even covered with foil to help reflect the heat back inside. The foam boards are like a winter coat wrapped around the building, and these can also be caulked and taped to really trap the heat in. (In the summer, this also traps the heat out to keep the indoors comfortable). There's also more advanced strategies such as overlaying wood strips between several layers of insulation since heat has a hard time traveling from a solid, then through air, then through a solid again. There's also a lot of other strategies for lighting, heating, cooling, ventilation, water saving, etc that you can do to save a lot of energy too.

The moral of the story is to FIRST SAVE as much energy as you can before you start making more energy with solar panels that will just be wasted again since there's so much more savings of energy when compared to creating energy with solar panels.

Once you have installed all the energy saving strategies, lets talk about solar panels! I know how to get the power company to buy that energy from you for double the regular selling price.

This article shares more info if you’re interested: https://raystowatts.com/solar-generators-for-homes/

Math + Codes = Not Architecture / July 1, 2015 by S. Joshua Brincko

Many people assume architects take tons of math courses in college. That's false. In fact, I took a course called "Math for Architects" one year. It was the standard 15 week long college math course that all college students took, EXCEPT after 10 weeks, it was determined (the passing) architecture students had satisfied the minimum requirements for the profession. So in reality, architects get less math training than most. On a typical day, I do add/subtract/multiply and maybe even divide, but who doesn't? On rare occasion do I ever need to do anything more complicated than that.

Do architects get tons of technical training in building codes or construction practices? Nope. Short of a few mentions of it here or there in college, all of that stuff is learned on the job. I learned to build stuff from building stuff, and I learned to comply with the codes by being diligent and reading the phone book sized volumes of zoning, building, residential, health, and fire codes as needed on each project. Anyone can figure those things out if there's a willingness to dedicate the time.

OK...so what does an architect actually get trained to do? We get trained to create appropriate experiences within our environment. What does that mean? Think of any past memory: Where are you? Who are you with? What are you doing? Try to think about your surroundings in this memory. This memory is likely largely facilitated by some architect somewhere. The space (inside or outside) that you were in was designed by someone. It may have been an architect, a builder, a park ranger, your uncle, a committee, or anyone else who came up with the idea to make that place. Depending on how that space was designed, you are more likely to have different types of experiences. Was your kitchen open and filled with light as a kid? If so, you may have great memories of gatherings in that space. Was your bedroom facing a busy street with poor lighting? Were the materials interesting? Architects understand how places can inspire people and evoke certain human behaviors. We analyse so many factors including math, codes, views, materials, privacy, lighting, solar angles, ventilation, human perceptions, etc. Everybody is different, and so is every project. All design starts with understanding the people who will interact with the space.

How do architects get this training? In college, we did tons of very time consuming projects that had various parameters involving different types of people, cultures, materials, and methodologies. Applying appropriate solutions to the assigned context was the focus of our training. Did you have any friends in college that were architecture majors? How often did you see them? We were absentees since we were required to spend countless hours (more than a full-time job) in our design studio working on these projects, getting feedback from our professors, and starting the projects over again to incorporate that feedback. 90% of the students dropped out of my program because it was so rigorous. This type of training continues on the job where architects get more and more exposure to more projects.

The good architects never stop working. We are continuously flying through our projects while we are trying to sleep. We are thinking through all the possible scenarios of how people will experience our spaces, what materials would be most suitable, the best possible way to construct it, etc. We cannot look at the world the same way we used to. Every environment is full of design decisions, and we analyse them to see if there's anything we can learn from those places. Sitting in a restaurant, we look at the chair, the bar, the lighting, the movement of the patrons, the movement of the staff, etc. We go to the bathroom just to see the bathroom, not just because we need to use the bathroom. It's a never-ending pursuit to understand how humans experience and interact with various spaces.

Sure I can help you with the budgeting, permitting, construction of your project. That's easy. Anyone can figure that out. I can help you with so much more though. I can help you with things you've never dreamed of. Things you didn't know you needed. I can help you make a place that will become a great memory.

Why I'm Different from Most Architects / June 1, 2015 by S. Joshua Brincko

I attribute this to 2 main factors: I have a background in construction, and I'm from Ohio.

Living in Seattle is great. It's a unique place with a lot of beauty and many wonderful recreational and professional opportunities. Seattle is filled with smart people with a mindset geared toward innovation. I love all of this. All of these things result in prosperity. Prosperity also enables options. Options can also enable bad decisions and stagnation. If there is not an option, you only have one choice, so you just act on it. I've noticed that Seattle has the luxury of trying different options and talking about them for a long time before choosing one and making it happen. That is the opposite of what I am accustomed to growing up in Youngstown, Ohio.

Youngstown is in the center of the "rust belt." A decent sized city between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, it has been shrinking since the steel mills moved over seas decades ago. It was once a hub of activity, but now it's polluted with vacant factories, a failing auto industry, and no jobs for its inhabitants. As an architect, you get trained to build cities, but there's really no training on how to shrink one. You can only convert so many vacant lots to public parks before there's no resources to maintain them and chase the crime away. It has made the top ten list many times for murders per capita. Living in this type of environment leaves you with little choice. When something needs done, the resources are so limited that there's not much of an option for how to address the problem. It requires an optimistic, get-your-hands-dirty, MAKE-it-happen type of attitude to get anything to happen. This is the environment that raised me. My parents pushed me to simply START doing the things I wanted to do because nobody else was going to do them for me. Once you start, momentum takes over, and it's easy to finish.

I brought that "go-get-em" attitude to Seattle many years ago. While people are waffling over the options, I've already carefully considered the pros and cons and started doing the best option. Once you start, you can quickly decipher whether or not you made the right choice and adapt as necessary. I'm not saying anyone should jump to conclusions, but all too often, the deliberating is more costly than making a wrong choice. Deliberating is speculating, and many projects are so complex that speculating is merely guessing. I believe it's best to carefully analyse the information that is easily attainable, make a choice, and try it. The attempt will yield much more useful data than time (and resources) wasted with endless speculation. This meaningful data can then be used to confidently move forward down the correct path.

A building department might say, "You can't build that addition because the slope is too steep to build on." Don't tell me what I can't do. Let's talk about what we CAN do. My immediate response to the building department is, "Fine, the addition won't have any affect on the slope because it won't touch the slope ... it will project above it...everyone happy? Good. Let's move on." A builder might say, "I'm not sure if we can make this trim work well. We have to think about [this, that, and the other] before we make up our mind." In the mean time, I'm cutting out scrap material to show you how it CAN work. Problem solved ... let's move on.

Quick thinking is part of the difference, but my construction background is likely the most important aspect that has lead to my successes. All too often, people forget that architects are part of the construction industry. An architect's job is to come up with solutions intended to be built, but most architects don't know how to build those ideas. I can build all of my ideas, and if I can't, I am the first to admit it and immediately work with the craftsmen to properly analyse the idea to determine if it is a reasonable one. I'll also typically join the craftsman on install day to get practice with the new method or material. (Although I can build most things, I do not want to confuse anyone to think that I am good at it. My craftsmanship is nowhere near the level of the experts in the field who practice daily.) I got this experience starting from childhood with my dad and Lefty (my next door neighbor who runs a construction company). They taught me how to be diligent, work your ass off, and to think through the task start-to-finish before you begin. (Simple things like putting a garbage can next to the saw, so you can drop waste in it instead of wasting time walking around the job site.) I learned to appreciate the expertise of the tradesmen who dig holes in the snow through the frost line and the roofers on a black roof on 100 degree summer days. How many concrete blocks can you carry? by hand? in a wheelbarrow? in a wheelbarrow going up a plank? How many bags of concrete can you carry and mix in a day? As a youngster, Lefty showed me how different buildings go together from start to finish, and he empowered me to try working on things that kids ordinarily shouldn't be trying. (While building a tree house, he showed me how to work a nail gun.)

Although I'm not born into a "privileged" family, I'm truly privileged to have the background I do. It wasn't easy, but I paid it forward. It has made life pretty fun and easy for me today.

How I Earn a Living / May 1, 2015 by S. Joshua Brincko

It depends what you consider "living." I value actual living - that is doing things in life that I like to do. Those include baking bread, hanging out with friends and family, building things, playing hockey, teaching, surfing, watching the Seattle Sounders and Ohio State Buckeyes, and designing things. Those are the things that fill my life. I like doing them, so I keep doing them. Everything we do has negative aspects - including the fun stuff. Burning your arm on a bread dish, the cost of building fun projects, wipe-outs in the surf, building department debacles, etc. Despite the negative aspects, the good parts tend to outweigh the bad. The bad parts are so important though. They create CONTRAST. Bad makes good seem great. The same thing is true in design. Light enables dark, simple enables complex, closed enables open, etc. Doing a lot of different things in life also makes contrast. It is human nature to be inspired by contrast, and it is also human nature to feel good when inspired.

So, diverse living is how I earn a living.

Luckily I get paid for some of the living I do. I like talking about design and sustainability, so I teach college courses and participate in community events on those topics. It's fun, rewarding, and they actually pay me for it. It gives me a break from sitting at a desk, and it also gives me access to the school's wood shop. This brings me to the next aspect of living: building stuff. I have a lot of my own carpentry tools, but the school's wood shop has all of the items (and space) I don't have. I have built many of my own projects and helped students with their own projects over the years. This gives me the chance to experiment with different methods and materials which enables me to have a great understanding of custom solutions for my design projects. I also get practical construction experience from other places including my own home remodels, my rental home's maintenance, and because I commit to building one of my design projects per year. This is how I keep it real. When I suggest a design idea, I'm simultaneously thinking about the practical construction of it. I don't get paid for baking artisan bread or surfing - life's not that sweet. When one "job" is slow, I don't need to worry too much and hit the panic button. I can still keep my cool and focus on doing great work. The diversity of doing "other things" keeps my main gig so fun and exciting. When I'm sitting on my surfboard, staring at the horizon, waiting for the next set of waves, I feel at peace, and I can clearly think about the creative challenges that design work brings. I truly enjoy sharing my inspired mind with you.

Josh Brincko advising a group of designers for a fashion show.

Drywall Is Boring / April 1, 2015 by S. Joshua Brincko

Do you agree? Why is it boring? I think it's because you end up in a box with a flat ceiling, flat walls, and flat floors with no depth, texture, or unique shadow lines. It's ironic that there's plenty of depth and texture behind all that drywall, but we always cover it up. There's studs, plywood, columns, beams, etc, but we typically consider those items to be "rough framing" materials even though they can offer a lot of interest if not covered up by boring drywall. The problem is that normal studs and plywood for example ARE rough framing materials. In certain applications, these materials may be appropriate to celebrate instead of hide away. Fortunately, there are different options when it comes to rough framing materials. The studs come in different grades and appearances. If you are going to leave the studs exposed, you can spring for a nicer grade of wood that's straighter with nicer grain patterns and many different options of wood species. Instead of ordinary plywood, you could use a plywood with a nicer veneer of nearly any wood species you like. Alternatively, you could use tongue and groove boards (similar to flooring) instead of plywood. All of these items have so much more texture than drywall, but you may be wondering if it costs more. Well, it depends. Drywall is pretty cheap, but it does need cut, attached, taped, mudded, sanded, textured, and painted. The stud and plywood method needs none of that extra labor or material, so it can be cheaper. Studs and plywood are required regardless of your finish materials, but the difference is the quality of the studs and plywood if you choose to leave them exposed. You can spend a little more money on the grade of the studs and plywood to offset the money you're not spending on the boring drywall.

Instead of drywall ... tongue and groove sheathing and exposed studs in an art studio.

Now you may be thinking about insulation. Where does it go if you're going for the honest look of leaving the framing exposed? Newer, more advanced construction methods, allow for insulation to be placed on the OUTSIDE. This is a great approach since the ordinary approach of putting insulation INSIDE the walls means your're leaving about 10% of your wall un-insulated. This is because you can only insulate the space between the studs, and the studs (which are about 10% of the wall) do not provide any substantial amount of insulation value. Additionally, typical insulation batts (the fluffy pink stuff we are used to seeing), will sag over time. This leaves the top part of the wall completely un-insulated, AND this is where most of the heat escapes your house in the winter since we all know from 4th grade science class that warm air rises. The thermal image below indicates hot and cool spots. Notice how the studs are visible as cold, and you can see the slumping of the insulation at the top of the wall.

So how does insulating on the OUTSIDE help us? It's because we can use foam insulation boards that are continuous. This means there are no interfering studs which leave un-insulated strips every 16". The foam board also has a much higher insulation value than regular batt insulation, so it does not need to be as thick as usual. Polyisocyanurate foam boards (ok, say it out loud: Poly - Iso - Cyan - Urate) offer about double the insulation value, AND they are also impermeable to air and water infiltration when installed properly. This gives your house an air-tight seal, so you can really retain more of the heat indoors with less insulation since there's virtually no gaps left for heat to leak out. These foam boards also have a reflective coating to initially reflect the heat back indoors. Over top of the foam board, the next step is to add a strip called a nailer. This helps to hold the foam board against the wall while also providing a surface to nail the exterior siding. When nailing the exterior siding against the nailer, this leaves an air gap between the siding and insulation. I call this air gap a drain plane. Typical siding is nailed flat against a wall, and any leaks or condensation (like on the outside of a Corona bottle) gets trapped inside your wall. Since this moisture cannot escape easily, it starts to rot away the building and cause mold or mildew to occur. The drain plane prevents this. Water intrusion is inevitable, so we have learned over time to plan for it instead of ignoring it. Knowing the water will occur due to condensation since your house is warm inside and cool outside, we need to provide a way to evaporate the unwanted moisture. The drain plane allows for the airflow necessary to keep your wall dry, as well as to prevent a solid from touching a solid. In other words, siding is a solid material, and so is plywood sheathing. We also learned in 4th grade science class that heat is retained and travels more easily through solids than liquids or gases. By putting an air space between the siding and plywood sheathing, the heat cannot magically jump across from the solid plywood to the solid siding. There's a lot of dynamics at play here. This approach can work with any type of siding - inside or out.

Nailer strips attached over foam board insulation on the exterior of the building.

So maybe you're not into the honest look of leaving your studs and plywood exposed. It's not appropriate for every situation. This means you're back to studs covered with drywall. Rather than finishing the drywall, it can be used as the underlayment for almost any building material. The cost of finishing/painting drywall is relatively inexpensive, so there's typically not a savings to cover the drywall (or backer board) with marble, tile, wood panels, metal panels, stone, translucent glass, etc. The added cost will result in a better result that gives you a durable material that functions well in your space, and that added cost can be strategically allocated to specific areas that require that added functionality. My approach to architecture involves finding those special spaces with special requirements, grouping them, and specifying the appropriate material to enable that special space to function as best as possible. (Form follows function).

Drywall is a conservative solution. Live a little.

Seattle Modern Architect & Artisan