A single business woman in Sales called me to ask if I would meet her at a property she was considering purchasing. When I got there I realized why. It was densely wooded and really steep, but it had an amazing view of the water. She told me it had been on the market a long time and the current owner was desperate to let it go for a song. She had already checked with the county site planning office, and they believed the lot to be unbuildable, effectively condemned, as there was no way to build a house in the only location that would also allow for a septic field and a driveway approach that did not violate minimum grade slope standards.
She had an old topographical survey which was enough to spark some ideas. She showed me examples of what styles she is drawn to, and sounded open to some pretty unconventional modern shapes. I sat at the bottom of the road, did a little math, and sketched out some ideas (literally on the back of napkins), and showed her a configuration that just might work.
She hired me to develop a preliminary design and find a cooperative civil engineer that the county staff would be familiar with and trusting of, because we would need to sell this if it was going to work. Initially he also said it could not be done, but agreed to produce a new and more accurate topo survey. I got to work on the floor plans, matched those up on the new survey, calculating where each floor level would fall in the grade slope, finished elevation height of the garage slab, and proposed a driveway shape that would offer the necessary run in linear feet to allow for a slope that would pass.
The engineer was able to turn that into a working drawing that could be submitted, and the customer closed on the lot sale. We obtained permits, and coached a builder to get on board with this odd structure, convincing him it was designed as simply as possible to put together, like following directions for a Lego set. The resulting final building plans, photos of the completed home, and those original napkin sketches look so eerily similar you might think I cheated with a time machine.