VictorEric Design Journal Our latest news and thoughts on the Design industry

Right now we have another exciting opportunity to design a house on the west side of Vancouver. This house is located on Angus drive and it has an impressive half acre lot for us to explore and design. The house will be about 9000 square feet with 6 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms. There will be an outdoor pool with an amazing 45 foot waterwall and an indoor hot tub with separate sauna and steam rooms in the basement. The overall style of this home is west coast contemporary. The owner is an avid car collector and he was very open to all new and interesting ideas that we had to offer. This will be definitely be a big project for us for the rest of 2010 and it will be exciting to watch our vision come to life.

It’s not often that you can hear a physical space speak to you, ….but when you do, it’s an awesome experience. In our recent exclusive VictorEric Premium Homes open house event, people were telling us that the space was definitely speaking to them. They were feeling the language of design on a whole new level; A level they’ve never experienced before; A level of magnificence!

To us at VictorEric, hearing this is one of the most rewarding satisfactions of what we do. Where else do you get paid to day dream? Where else are you entrusted with designing someone’s dream home? To top it all off, we get to be a part of building it and seeing it happen brick by brick, stone by stone. When we design, we strategically layout the walls and define the space so we can guide the flow. We purposefully select the best combination of materials to evoke the right emotions. We technically select and layout the lights to create the ambiance crucial to the inhabitants. All this, in the perfect combination is the language of our design.

Some of the words that kept coming up for people as they experienced the space were:
(use bullets if you can)
- one of a kind
- magnificent
- amazing
- beautiful
- intriguing
- love the different use of textures and attention to detail
- good use of water and great positive energy flow
- feels like a resort, very relaxing
- love the spacious layout without being too open

Please click here to view a video speech from our Principal, Eric Lee for the event.

Back in January, Eric blogged about his experiences with a young couple looking to build a new home in Aldergrove. Now after seven months, we have completed the plans and renderings for this unique project. The owners, Kerry and Robin, had a great vision of what they wanted their home to look like and allowed us to utilize our creativity in designing the perfect space for them. They wanted a custom one level modern mansion that would fit their needs. This home sits on 138 acres of land and also comes with a warehouse-size garage measuring over 17,000 square feet! The main house itself occupies approximately 7,000 square feet of space. One of this property’s special features is the infinity swimming pool at the rear of the house overlooking a fantastic view. We have just completed the architectural drawings. We have no doubt that this will be another defining project for VictorEric once it is fully built.

In June, I blogged about the excavation process at our new project on West 8th Avenue in Vancouver’s West Point Grey area. Since then, most of the framing have been completed and it looks like we are on our way to a beautiful finished home in a couple of months. Ray from Kellog Dream Homes have graciously provided us with the latest pictures of the working site.

This is what the second floor looks like right now

As you can see in the picture below, the view from the second floor will be absolutely breathtaking and a great focal point for the home.

Our vision at VictorEric Design Group is to be recognized as the premier design firm that not only provides quality design, but also excellent company culture and most importantly, unparalleled service which makes for an unforgettable experience for our clients. Funny enough, we have been unconsciously doing this by working from the “inside out”, which is our exact design philosophy. (If you haven’t seen it yet, feel free to check out the great YouTube video which shares some of our design methodologies here).

In this case, we have been working on our internal company culture. We make a conscious effort to ensure our office environment is a place where people look forward to working in everyday. Our vision is to develop a tight knit group of people who can work cohesively as a team. We reserve Fridays as our weekly company lunch so that everyone can get a chance to interact after a busy work week. Please see our blog for one such outing. We do not strive to be the biggest in what we do, instead, we would rather give up the quantity of projects so we can focus on the quality and the people. This allows us to deliver the full service that clients have come to expect from us and be the best at what we do.

Our principal, Eric Lee, was fortunate enough to have found his passion early on in his life and loves his work because of that. He actively encourages each and every staff to find their passion within the design discipline. His belief is that when you perform your work with passion; you will find your true purpose. The quality and success in what you do will then naturally follow.

Everyone at VictorEric is encouraged to pursue their passion and play their unique part to make this company the well-respected company it is. We have realized that by first taking care of the “inside” of our company, everything else that we target for on the “outside” will manifest itself; integrated company culture, quality design, and unparalleled service.

Some of you may know us from our great residential projects and some of you from our commercial ones. But there are many of you that don’t know we actually do both. For this reason and to help better identify our core services, we are excited to announce the launch of our two distinct brands; VictorEric Premium Homes and VictorEric Commercial Interiors. Feel free to click on the link to our new and improved web page or you can also get there through our main site www.victoreric.com.

VictorEric Premium Homes is a refinement of our residential services which has been the cornerstone of our business. With the new brand, we want to further distinguish the high level of design and unsurpassed level of service we bring to every project. Most importantly, we want to emphasize that we are able to provide a complete and holistic approach to building a home by offering architectural design, interior design, and construction management services; all with the same team. Now, you can have the same team who designed your home, also build it for you. We call upon our past 13 years of construction experience to offer a streamlined approach so that the discerning client can experience a home that embodies our full and complete vision.

VictorEric Commercial Interiors offers interior design for our retail, restaurant, and office clients. The first impression of your space is key in order to set your customers in a buying mode. We can help you with everything from lighting design, to merchandise display, to colour and material choices. Some of the award-winning commercial spaces we’ve designed are Azia Restaurant and Bblonde Salon. Please let us know if you want our great design team to help you with your business space.

VictorEric’s own principal, Eric Lee has been shortlisted for the 2010 Western Living Designers of the Year! Congratulations to Eric and the rest of the firm for a job well done.

Check out the entire shortlist here

Today was another great example of why we love what we do. We had a meeting with Anjela and Igor, a great couple who’s looking for a unique, modern design home. Like always, we had the pleasure of listening to their unique requirements and had the chance to provide a design solution. The conceptual design has always been my favorite part of the whole design process and this project was even more so. The design ideas came to me in abundance, like water flowing naturally through a stream. We first developed a space plan which flowed and addressed their spatial requirements. We then enveloped it with a great west coast modern exterior. The best part of it all was to hear that our design was exactly what they were looking for. In fact Anjela had stated that “this was much more than what they were expecting”. Another job well done and another great experience for a client!