A day on the house model: four variants of the new house, a cost estimate, and an independent critic proving half the checks could never have failed.
What I did
Four variants of the new house went in — B, C, D and F — plus E as a plan for building it in stages.
Variant C got a rough cost off the model’s own quantities: about 6.7 million with the reserve, some 35 thousand per square metre of usable floor, ±30%.
I set the brief for a living room and kitchen over 28 m² and had the rooms laid out against it.
A circulation study went in — the shortest path from the front door to every room, and how much of the floor the corridors take.
The corner of the house still reached into the water main’s easement, so the old route was rejected as a source and the connection is now planned to be relocated.
I had the fence and the plot recomputed against the live cadastre, which produced a correction to the site plan’s registration.
I settled the external walls at 550 mm.
New ways of working
I added an interior design skill and had the model work as an architect.
An independent critic showed that half the checks measured against a number the checked script had computed itself, so they could never fail.
A mutation test went in: it feeds the checks deliberately broken data and expects them to shout — sixteen mutations, none got through.