Shadowing Practice: Architect Steven Harris’ 5 Non-Negotiables When Designing His Own Home (Design Masterclass) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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I'm Stephen Harris, the founding partner of Stephen Harris Architects we're based in new
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york this is our house in rancho mirage california this is
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my husband lucerne reese roberts i am the founding partner of rrp
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which does interior design and landscape these are five considerations
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that are really important for us and virtually every project we do
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One of the non -discretionary things that we do when we're designing a house is think about the approach,
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the sense of arrival, and the transition between being outside and being inside.
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There was a young man who was ahead of me at
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Princeton who did his undergraduate thesis on psychoanalysis at the place of arrival.
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And that whole idea that one psychologically transitions from one situation to another is really important to me.
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There is obviously that point at which you move from outside to inside.
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There's a way that you can make more stages of the outside
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and more stages of the inside so that rather than it being a direct and abrupt transition,
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it goes from this to this to this to this to this to this to this.
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Here, I think of the front door as the gate.
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As you move around and approach the house, you get a glimpse of the house across the golf course and behind the kind of hills that we've constructed there.
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and you come around to this courtyard which is virtually blind then
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when you come in there is a whole sequence of how
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the view unfolds we then step down into the sitting room and the top of the mountains begin to reveal themselves
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so it moves you from one place to another
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another house that we did was on a quarry
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and similarly there is a cul -de -sac where you turn off the main road you go up
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that road and then you approach a driveway you go up
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that driveway you come to a courtyard similarly there is a blind facade you move through that
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and then as you move down the stairs the view of the quarry reveals itself it's a kind of tease
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if you will that induces you to keep going.
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So I think one of the most important things about architecture is inducing movement.
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It is not static.
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So understanding that which precedes it is very important.
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At the same time, that which antecedes it.
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After you pass through the boundary condition, finding a way to weave those two together So there's a kind of counterpoint from one side to the other.
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One of the non -negotiables whenever we do a house is the relationship between the inside and the outside.
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As a backdrop to most of our projects, we look to the landscape beyond the site of the house
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so that we can extend the sense of house and the garden to the landscape beyond.
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I think at the same time as you start thinking about what you want for a home
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and the spaces you want to create, you should start straight away thinking about the landscape
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and really as much about also where the sun rises and sets
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because you want to bring light into the house you want to enjoy light on the landscape around you
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and in the garden the other areas that we love is creating outdoor sitting areas.
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where people can congregate almost like an outdoor sitting room.
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Something that encourages you to come together and relax.
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And what is so special about this site is that we are on the middle of a golf course
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and it feels as if we're in a park.
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And what we did was to create contours and berms.
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It gives a sense of depth and it gives a complexity to the landscape
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which is essential to creating that intimacy that you want.
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Another relatively non -negotiable thing that we consider
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when we're working on a project is how one moves through the space, the circulation.
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I think when you're planning a residential project, find a way to make the best rooms those in
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which you spend the most time so with one hand make a flow chart
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and figure out what rooms do you spend the most time in
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if it's the kitchen if it's a dining room table
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if it is the living room whatever that is chart that
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and figure out where you're spending your time with the other
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hand analyze the site where is light best in the morning
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where is light best in the afternoon here we happen to know
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that looking west at dawn allows you to see everything
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with light on it it's magical then minimize circulation very rarely
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have hallways always you're moving through one room to get to another
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getting from the bedroom to the kitchen is less about expedience than it is about experience
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trying to choreograph a procession through rooms is really important
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so you actually come to use all of a space all
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of the house there's a certain perversity in this house where it's fundamentally a one -bedroom house
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which happens to have three guest rooms well the guest rooms
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are arranged like a motel you move outside through the garden
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to those rooms it also allows us to use this as a one -bedroom house
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if it is just us
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so it is the root you get from one place to another
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that strings the experiences together by reducing the amount of corridors,
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circulation, unusable spaces, so you actually come to use all of the space, all of the house.
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When we start working on a project with clients, we like to find out their domestic needs,
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the way they live, their agenda of what they want for the house.
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Being a painter, I knew what I wanted for a studio
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and this is one of the things that was very important for me to have in this new house.
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And on Stephen's wish list was having a garage where he could keep all his cars.
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My sense is the best way for a client to really
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think about what they need for a house is think about the process of each day and how they live it.
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And it's always creating a list, but it's also ideas about each space.
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And what we try and persuade clients is do not create spaces that you do not use, even with their more formal dining rooms.
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See if it can have another use, whether it's a library, somewhere to work.
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People congregate there, having coffee, chatting.
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And that's the sort of thing we try and encourage people to do, is that it should be multi -use space.
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The same with the living room.
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Sadly, when the TV is somewhere else, people often don't go into the living room.
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And we try and encourage people to put a television in the living room.
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It can be hidden, there are different ways to do that.
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But it will also encourage people to use what can often be the best room in the house.
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There's a big difference between size and scale.
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Scale is much more a question of proportion.
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than it is dimension.
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Most horizontal space is foreshortened in perspective, while vertical space is not.
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So organizing proportion and scale is critical to making a room which,
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although very large, can also feel intimate for two or three people.
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And in many cases, it's the space between things that is more meaningful than the actual space itself.
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It needs to be such that people can have an ease of conversation without it feeling too big and spread out.
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And if that means, as in this house, there are two conversation areas in one room.
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In this case, the fireplace in the cold winter days, and on the warmer days, they're congregating on the other end.
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I think people sometimes equate the size of a primary bedroom with the importance and value of the house.
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I think in fact a proper dressing room, a proper closet with an island, and a generous bathroom is at least as important.
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One typically spends more time or wake hours in the bathroom, the shower, the tub, the loo, all of that than you do in the bedroom.
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You're typically asleep in the bedroom.
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If you don't get the proportions right, all the fancy materials in the Western world aren't going to help.
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I think lighting, whether it's natural daylight in the mornings or artificial at night,
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is so important to how special the room feels.
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And it makes it feel more expansive.
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So you don't need to overdo this with scale.
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And one of the most important things is to have a sense of generosity and ease and comfort,
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but also an intimacy about where people congregate.
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I hope you've enjoyed watching this and are showing you the different spaces both indoors and outdoors.
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Not only are these things which are important for us, I think they're important for how one thinks about domestic life.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Architect Steven Harris’ 5 Non-Negotiables When Designing His Own Home”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: space, landscape, bedroom. This video has 110 sentences and 1512 words to shadow. The speech runs for 12:03. The speaker talks at a steady 125 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| congregate verb | /ˈkɒŋɡɹəɡeɪt/ | To collect into an assembly or assemblage; to bring into one place, or into a united body. |
| circulation noun | /ˌsɝkjʊˈleɪʃən/ | The act of moving in a circle, or in a course which brings the moving body to the place where its motion began. |
| proportion noun | /pɹəˈpɔɹʃən/ | A quantity of something that is part of the whole amount or number. |
| dine verb | /daɪn/ | To eat; to eat dinner or supper. |
| negotiable adjective | /nɪˈɡoʊʃəbəl/ | Able to be traversed; navigable. |
| induce verb | /ɪnˈduːs/ | To lead by persuasion or influence; incite or prevail upon. |
| quarry noun | /ˈk(w)ɔɹ.i/ | A site for mining stone, such as limestone, or slate. |
| intimacy noun | /ˈɪn.tɪ.mə.si/ | Intimate relationship. |
| driveway noun | /ˈdɹaɪvˌweɪ/ | A short private road that leads to a house or garage. |
| courtyard noun | /ˈkɔɹt.jɑɹd/ | An area, open to the sky, partially or wholly surrounded by walls or buildings. |
| abrupt adjective | /əˈbɹʌpt/ | Without notice to prepare the mind for the event; sudden; hasty; unceremonious. |
| antecede verb | To go before; to precede. | |
| choreograph verb | /ˈkɔɹjəɡɹæf/ | To design and record the choreography for a dramatic work such as a ballet. |
| contour noun | /ˈkɒntɔː/ | An outline, boundary or border, usually of curved shape. |
| counterpoint noun | /ˈkaʊntə(ɹ)ˌpɔɪnt/ | A melody added to an existing one, especially one added to provide harmony whilst each retains its simultaneous identity; a composition consisting of such… |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| go up verb | To move upwards. | |
| come together verb | /ˈkʌm tʊˈɡɛðɚ/ | To assemble; to congregate; to combine. |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. | |
| move around verb | To relocate to new homes repeatedly; to not live in any one place for long. | |
| move down verb | To demote | |
| pass through verb | To go through, to travel through, to transit or lie across a place or from one place to another. | |
| spread out verb | Become further apart. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are arranged · can be hidden · is foreshortened |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | man who was · courtyard which is · things which are |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | we've constructed · you've enjoyed |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 17 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, you're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: circulation /ˌsɝkjʊˈleɪʃən/, proportion /pɹəˈpɔɹʃən/, negotiable /nɪˈɡoʊʃəbəl/, discretionary /dɪsˈkɹɛʃəˌnɛɹi/, mirage /mɪˈɹɑːʒ/
- Long words — get the stress right: circulation /ˌsɝkjʊˈleɪʃən/, negotiable /nɪˈɡoʊʃəbəl/, intimacy /ˈɪn.tɪ.mə.si/, discretionary /dɪsˈkɹɛʃəˌnɛɹi/, expedience /ɛkˈspiː.dɪ.əns/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like congregate, circulation, proportion.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.