Beautiful homes evolve from innovative designs, but who creates those designs? Sometimes it’s a team of people working together, and at others it’s a talented individual who envisions a home and inks it into reality. In some cases it takes an artistic eye and a great imagination to create the perfect balance of aesthetics and practica­lity smaller lots and defined spaces now require. Luckily, these types of designers are out there, and Noah Tang of Morrison Homes is one of them.

Noah says from a young age he thrived on art, constantly drawing and creating. In high school he won a scholarship in his art program for creating a painting with a western theme for that year’s Calgary Stampede. But this exper­ience would lead him not to a path as an artist, but instead toward drafting. “Once I was talking to my high school art teacher, and she was telling me that unfortunately artists don’t usually become famous until after they have died, and that artists didn’t usually make a lot of money when they were first starting out,” he says. “So this encouraged me to consider other areas … and I decided that maybe I would go into archi­­tecture.” After he graduated from high school, Noah entered the architectural techno­logies program at SAIT, and his creativity proved an advantage. Noah won the design competition, and as a result caught the attention of one of the judges—who offered Noah a job with a design company. The rest, as they say, is history. “I’ve been in the industry for ten years now; starting off as a draftsperson, learning the basics of what goes into a home design,” says Noah. “I slowly worked my way up to where I am now, designing homes ranging from starter houses, move-up and estate homes, all the way up to full custom homes.”

Noah now has a young family, and has been an architectural designer for Morrison Homes, seven-time builder of the year, for nearly three years. He creates a variety of different floor plans, and one of the newer designs is called the Argyle. While this 1,705-square-foot home would normally be considered a starter home, it has some features that most starter homes do not, Noah notes.

These include a double front-attached garage and a bonus room on the second floor, not to mention a spacious open-concept floor plan, both of which proved challenging from a design standpoint. “I designed the Argyle for the north-central community of Sage Hill, and one of the toughest criteria I had to meet was a front-attached double garage on a narrow lot,” he says. “This feature leaves only a small area for the front door, so I had to design it in a way that makes the rest of the house still feel like a big home.”

One challenge at the front entrance was the bumped-out closet, but the main living area’s open concept definitely compensates for the smaller foyer. “I think the best feature of this home is how we tucked the staircase at the front of the house, leaving the back of the home open,” says Noah. “Additionally this feature creates an element of privacy on the second floor by separating the bonus room from the rest of the rooms.”

Noah says when designing the Argyle he took Morrison’s best-selling estate home and condensed it, keeping many of the same great elements. He cites the openness of the main floor, and especially the big dining room, which uniquely offers enough room for an eight-seat dining set in an area often reserved as a smaller eating nook in similar homes. Noah has made sure to waste no space in the Argyle, and to also ensure the plan is compatible with different lifestyles.  NL