FEATURED Projects

This large custom home resides in an established golf course community with strict HOA design standards. ENGenious was tasked with meeting these standards as well as ensuring that the design would not be dated to past Architectural norms. This property backs up to multiple fairways and lakes, which made a key design to have as much of the home accessible to these views. A large deck and cover with 4 multi-slide Panoramic doors ensures every room has a view to enjoy.

Boasting  large alaskan yellow cedar timber trusses with black plating, tall expansive tray ceilings, large multi-slide panoramic doors, black trim windows, stone veneer, and a full size RV garage; this residence fits its Modern Mountain Lodge name. A touch of old and a touch of new will see this as one of the premier properties in this highly sought out golf course community.  

Sometimes Architectural aspirations make for difficult Engineering, exponentially so on large Custom homes with expansive rooms, tall ceilings, and intricate designs. So often these types of projects see higher construction costs for basic framing components, that with some tweaking can be minimized. By performing the Architectural and Structural Engineering design in tandem, from an iterative process, ENGenious is able to save a great deal on the bottom line while not sacrificing on Architectural intent.

ENGenious has experience in small and large projects, and no matter the size we implement the same techniques and processes. Value Engineering is a large part of what we offer, and when coupled with an iterative Architectural design, the outcome is a surprisingly affordable constructable product. After the completion of construction, no one passing this home will know of the Value Engineering added, but the client most certainly will. 

This new custom home presents a ton of modern flair, nestled in an established downtown Denver community that's undergoing gentrification. ENGenious LLC teamed up with an experienced architect to deliver a modern open floor plan that includes a detached garage, open floor plan to a large backyard and a roof deck for those beautiful mountain views! Oh and the 3D realistic rendering is second to none.

This 2-story home will sit on a 4,989 square foot lot, yet boast 3,320 interior square feet along with a 564 square foot roof deck. The lots in this Denver community provide a number of design constraints as it pertains to allowable building footprint and bulk plane requirements. This home maximizes the allowed use of this lot to provide the client with the upmost value.  

While Architectural designers love the open floor plan concepts, Engineers find them to be a bit more challenging than a typical home. Large floor spans either require deeper truss/joist diaphragms or mid-bearing beams. For this project we utilized a combination of both. By using a flush mount steel beam running front to back, the floor I-joists spans were cut in half along with reducing the diaphragm depth. A flat sloping plated roof truss allowed for floor loading at the roof deck without the added depth. Considering the bulk plane restrictions ever inch of depth counted against the overall ceiling height. By using multiple types of joists we were able to minimize Architectural changes along with keeping construction cost low.

 Modern elevations and floor plans are all the trend in today's residential homes. With these open floor plans we typically also see flat sloping roofs, glazing walls with little to no return walls, and large spanned floors. All of these great architectural features cause new engineering problems not typically seen in the past.  Maintaining the architectural intent is priority number one. By understanding the capabilities of all the materials available in construction, we are able to provide a design that uses the most cost effective material, not just the typical material used. This reduces construction cost and maintains the original architectural design.

An existing undeveloped retail space of approximately 4,200 sft needed to be modified from one single use space to three future tenant spaces with a shared bathroom and access hallway. The existing space was to large to attract potential tenants, therefore ownership decided that smaller tenant spaces would attract a larger range of potential tenants from restaurants to office space and many others.

The new shared hallway and shared bathrooms was designed to be utilized by all three future tenant spaces and sized to accommodate three restaurants if so needed. 

 The owner wanted to explore the idea of having gender shared lavatories, in an effort to minimize waiting time for either gender. By utilizing gender shared bathrooms, the overall required square footage for the bathrooms was reduce by 10%.   

During the design of the space, our Electrical Engineer noted that the existing structure had two switch gears of 400 amps each servicing the space. It was determined that two of the four separated spaces would likely need 400 amps of service, and therefore leaving a shortage for the two remaining spaces. By finding this deficiency during this stage of the modification, future issues with limited power were mitigated and will supply the amount needed for any  potential future tenants.

Even simple retail modification projects can present many hurdles. It's easy to just jump into these projects and hammer them out without any thought as to future needs. By including the owners, real estate professionals, property managers, and Mechanical/Electrical Engineers; we were able to design the modification of the space to accommodate any future desired tenants, and reduce the need for additional construction to the shared space.

 A community college in the Denver area was in need of additional storage for bicycles and landscape equipment. ENGenious LLC was hired to design a detached bike shop / storage garage that served the required purpose while maintaining an standard level of appearance.  

 It was apparent that no one on the design team wanted to build a garage that ended up looking like a standard shed, mainly due to the adjacent newly developed and modern looking student recreation center. The building had to serve the basic purposes of a garage, yet not look like one. ENGenious LLC used modern lines, LED lighting features and smooth finished cement panels and planks to obtain the desired finished look.  

 The building is classified as a light commercial structure, yet the design approach mimicked techniques used on residential detached garages. By utilizing this approach, ENGenious LLC was able to design a very basic structure that included a shallow frost protected foundation that only required 12" deep turn-downs with a monolithic slab foundation. By utilizing this construction method in lieu of conventional methods, the savings to the client was in the range of 20% overall project cost.  

 Sometimes Engineers and Architects can over complicate a design. The IBC references many other design methods and standards, and by keeping up to date on that additional documentation along with the IBC and IRC, we as designers can find better ways to build that end up saving our clients in the long run.  

 Detached accessory structure for garage and office space. 2,400 sft of garage floor space, 300 sft of loft storage, 300 sft enclosed office space, and an additional 750 sft of 7' tall ceiling attic space.  

 Exterior aspects designed to mimic an existing main structure while keeping a unique accessory building look. The project area includes adjacent large lot parcels of which many have accessory barns and outbuildings. By designing a structure that mimics a barn in certain aspects, it fits in with the surrounding properties and the existing site.  

The client for this specific project was looking to use a pre-designed pole barn structure that ships to the site in individual pieces and then is constructed on site. After looking at those plans and the initial estimate for the project, it was clear the price could be substantially  decreased by use of other construction methods. The pre-designed structure had a 14' plate height with scissor trusses. ENGenious LLC optimized the design by changing the construction method to a conventionally framed system with a 16' plate height. We added a loft area with 600 sft for additional usable space for an office and storage. We provided the client with two truss profile options. One was a scissor truss as seen in the pre-designed building with no usable attic space. The second option included an initial sloped bottom chord with a transition to a flat bottom chord once reaching an 8' ceiling height in the office/loft space. This allowed for there to be a large void in the trusses, which  resulted in an attic section with a 7' ceiling height and amounting to an additional 750 sft of usable space. In addition to the extra usable space, the second option was 20% less expensive due to the additional truss depth.

 ENGenious LLC uses value engineering techniques in every project we design. We take the care and effort as if it were our own personal project and investment. We try to maximize value and reduce cost in any case, whether its as simple as revising a truss profile or completely changing the construction method.  

 A two-story secluded mountain retreat with 1,800 sft of livable space and a front deck that boast a beautiful view and the essence of living among the trees.    

 This home is being developed by an entry level investor with limited capital; therefore this home has been designed to keep construction costs down, minimize time of construction, yet maintain a mountain home appeal for an easy sell.   

 All aspects of the design included value engineering tactics.  Typically the most efficient home floor plan in a square, as it maximizes sft with respect to exterior wall length. In this case, the property has a steep slope, so to minimize required excavation and full height foundation walls, a rectangular floor plan was determined to be more cost effective.  

 While this home and this design may not be an Architectural wonder, it is a method of Architectural design that can save a potential builder, investor, or home owner from being able to feasibly develop a site.  

 Multi-million dollar custom homes for a Denver based custom home builder. Both plans boast large floor plans with huge rooms and fully usable garden / walk-out basements.     

 Architectural design performed by builders Architect.  We can work hand in hand with any Architect. All we need is the base floorplans, roof plans, and elevations to get the process started.

 These luxury custom homes are OVER engineered; on purpose. These homes boast huge expanded rooms (3,000+ sft garden basement pictured above) with large vaulted ceilings and ever changing roof planes. The intent of the design was to build a solid structure that exceeded minimum IBC/IRC deflection limits, there by not allowing for any floor movement or potential future serviceability issues. The future owners of these homes can be confident that not only are the finishes top notch, but the structure underneath is as well.   

 The IRC and IBC can be frustrating at times. There seem to be requirements that are overkill and tedious. The same can be said for requirements who's minimum allowable levels are in poor practice. Requirements such as these can cause huge serviceability issues for a builder. By understanding the difference between an under performing requirement and an overkill one, we are able to mitigate these risk for our clients and optimize the design.  

 Large Cedar Pergola utilizing 8x8 posts for a grand look and feel.      

 The client wanted a larger than normal pergola structure to span a majority of the rear width of the home. The pergola was used to create a separate outdoor space while maintaining interior views out the back of the house.  

 By designing large posts and rafters, the pergola fits dimensionally to the existing home, while creating a comfortable outdoor space. The large scale allowed for larger spans and overall larger structure as desired. The pergola was designed to use standard material lengths so that the client had not cut off loses, maximizing the investment. The existing site has expansive clay soil, which is extremely hard to dig by hand. By increasing spans, we were able to reduce the supports needed for the structure to three foundation elements, which limited overall construction effort and cost. 

 This larger than normal pergola was designed to match available material sizes and to simplify the construction process, where as the client was able to assemble the structure on their own without the need of hiring a general contractor.