What is Your Original Evergreen Experience?
It probably looks something like this:
Well, now it’s time to rethink your Evergreen Experience!
Some of the best ideas start on napkins, in garages, or even as a joke! The Original Evergreen Experience started as a mild protest against the ordinary; an ordinary request for an ordinary guesthouse, in an extraordinary woodland glade, with a peek-a-boo glimpse of the Puget Sound!
In this case, the original joke was to present a client with an ‘original concept’ for a guesthouse as an “evergreen experience”; as in evergreen containers set amidst the evergreen forest! Add some big red wheels and some glass, and suddenly everyone’s in love with it, for real!
So now we’re moving forward to make this design into a reality; including budgeting and working out the logistics (you don’t just hook these up to your SUV!) Not only are we thinking about the design (form and function), but more important we’re thinking about the context; what a guest will want to see, feel and experience during their vacation week in the Original Evergreen Experience.
We are eager to get moving now, and we need your “customer experience” input sooner, not later.
Think of this as an outdoors vacation experience, sort of a 6-star camp out for you and your family. It’s not going to be so much a budget holiday, but an rather an extraordinary ‘original evergreen experience’, an experience you are willing to pay for, and expect outstanding value in the ‘experience’ department. So don’t think cheap! Think Unusual! ExtraOrdinary!
Thinking out loud here; part of the experience is that the location is ideal for cycling scenic rural byways, kayaking the rocky coastlines with sea otters and the resident eagles. A little gem of a state park is within walking distance, populated with deer, eagles, harbor seals and an occasional orca or two or twelve. All part of the original evergreen experience, interacting with, watching, and photographing wildlife, not crowds.
That’s the outline; now tell us what experiences you want: in the accommodations, do you want a total green experience, to teach the kids the fragility of our natural resources? Do you want to live like a wild-west wagon train, a band of gypsies? What amenities can you live with, must have, could live without?
We have reserved our domain names OriginalEvergreenExperience.com
Tell us about your Original Evergreen Experience preferences! Here in comments, on Google+ or email? A survey? Somewhere else? Let us know! We’ll bring it all together, so we can design for customer experience; original, and evergreen!
GREEN IS IN THE DETAILS!
James Ferris
Note from CASUDI: James Ferris is my design partner of 23 years, He is principal and creative director of our boutique consultancy esse group and architectural design firm inclinedesign. He recently blogged at barnfindriva, a niche blog about a classic Riva speedboat, which climaxed in a book. He is passionate about design, a perfectionist and always looking for better designs, materials, ways to build things and improve life.
James has promised to guest post here on design related things that interest him, and I hope will interest you?
March 4th, 2013 at 12:16 pm
I love this idea! Someday I want to live in a container home.
(See some posts I wrote while dreaming: Strip Mine City – http://www.dr1665.com/?s=strip+mine+city&submit.x=0&submit.y=0)
What would make a 6-star experience? Fit and finish, methinks. Perfection on this order will be akin to Perlita Too, but even the more flawless of steel containers is still just a big metal box. The orientation and final presentation would be key.
One idea? Park one on a mountainside. One click of a button – on your smart phone – and the entire west-fascia opens, folding out and down to form a giant patio. Guests slide chairs over and watch the sunset around a portable fire pit.
Another idea? Could 2-3 be arranged in a tree-like structure, with equal parts rainwater collection and planter boxes, to be both treehouse and tree?
Keep me posted on this one, mate. Love the idea.
.com still sounds more legit. Redirect one to the other and A-B test conversions over time. See what works.
March 17th, 2013 at 3:56 pm
Love the concept, found it a little confusing to call it the container company name instead of something like An Evergreen Container for Better Living or something along those lines. I always go for .com as they are easier to remember, just my take. Look forward to seeing what you do with this, no doubt it will be extraordinary!
March 17th, 2013 at 7:19 pm
Thanks Melissa for checking in here. You should just come and absorb the Evergreen experience, which has less to do with containers than being in an evergreen woodland glade, and a total sense of “green” living…..what ever that really means. Relaxing, quiet, refreshing……. in this context!
March 17th, 2013 at 7:20 pm
Brian, we are already focusing on a big deck space, including a fire pit (with safe screening from the forest) and a place to star gaze…..communing with nature is a big part. Rain collection and storage of course, an outside shower (maybe) and a gray water system which is filtered by the plantings. One question which keeps coming up is should this be a internet free zone? There is no cell coverage in that particular woodland glade, so what say you?
As always fab to see you here.