Since founding Oasis Architecture and Design Inc. in 2001, Mark Morris has stuck with the idea that a home should be like a vacation away from home, a refuge for those living there.
Located at 1015 Turquoise St., Oasis focuses primarily on custom residential and some commercial properties. From 1,000-foot additions to 13,000-square-foot homes, the staff of four offers personalized service.
“We may not be doing 25 homes a year,” Morris said, “but we can definitely do a home a month without any problem.”
His said his passion is residential work.
“I really enjoy the clients more than I do anything else because the clients are real fascinating to me, interesting to get to know them and to learn a lot about them.”
Morris said that on the other hand, in commercial work, you meet the client for 10 minutes and they don’t care as long as it fits their budget.
“Commercial is not real personable,” Morris said. “They always say that in a commercial building they don’t care what a closet looks like, but on a residential house they do. So you end up designing everything, and you can’t really design everything for them without understanding who they are.”
Many clients in the custom home market travel all over the world and see great resorts.
“When they come home, it is a letdown,” Morris said. “So a lot of what we do is try to create an oasis for them.”
In his own global travels, Morris is always on the lookout for unique elements that add a distinctive charm.
“You start to understand how the client lives, and you say, ‘What would your life be like if you had this,'” he said. “But if you really understand how someone lives, then you might find that that’s not necessarily the right program for them, what everybody else is doing.”
Take a family that gets together for dinner every night, but they need an informal space, not a formal dining room, which is too large. Instead, Morris creates a nook.
“The nook is off the kitchen. The nook is not open to the family room because that means people are sitting there watching TV and they’re not communicating as a family,” he said.
However, if they sit around, light candles, make dinner and communicate with each other, they could learn what their kids did in school, what problems they are going through and what their life is like.
“Then you finish up. You have quick, easy access to the kitchen. Someone could be getting food ready. The other (person) could be sitting there waiting and talking. It creates a conversation space that functions the way that they live,” Morris said.
Even with clients that want Oasis to design their house from top to bottom, upon completion they often say it’s more money than it would be to buy a new home.
“So they put the project on hold and buy a new house. They get into that house and they call us and say, ‘There were three things about the house that you designed that we didn’t get accomplished in buying the new house,'” Morris said. “Now we want to remodel it.”
He said that once you see how you can create a space appropriate to the way you live, all of a sudden you can’t find a house that fits.
When contractor Greg Thomas wanted a new home, he tore down his existing house on Archer Street in North Pacific Beach and built a 2,200-square-foot contemporary three-bedroom, three-bath himself. He enlisted Morris as his architect and with plans and permits; the whole process took four to five months. They completed the space two years ago.
“It was great working with him; he’s a great architect,” Thomas said.
Morris interviewed them to determine their style, and with that bit of information, Thomas said,
“He really gives it vision, what you’re thinking, and it didn’t take much explaining.
“The good thing about Mark is he’s super-passionate about his work so he’s really into it. This is not a job to him. He truly loves it, so you can’t beat that when you get someone that really likes what they do. You end up with a great architect and a great house.”