Technology Designer
In a wonderful article in the Technology Designer magazine Sean Vincent O’Keefe mentions Supersizing Bliss. The article describes the design approach of author Toby Witte and the guidance of his clients throughout the entire home creation experience. Published in the Spring 2026 issue, the article also dives into passive house strategies, solar panels, and retractable TV screens.
“The residential real estate market in the U.S. seems to be based on two numbers — square feet and zip code. Neither has anything to do with the quality of life inside your home. My goal is to break those paradigms. My job is to provide clients with knowledge, to help them understand what makes a home enjoyable.”
Toby Witte
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“The main focus of my practice is to bring happiness to my clients,” states Witte from his home studio outside of Charlotte, North Carolina.
“Approximately two percent of singlefamily homes built in the United States involve an architect. The other 98 percent are built by developers stacking boxes together. In my book, Supersizing Bliss, I make the point that the state of housing in the U.S. is wasteful and misdirected.”
Witte’s firm, Wittehaus, focuses on high-performance homes. Additionally, he is an Adjunct Professor at his alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Just as he takes pride in contributing to the next generation of designers, he strives to educate his clients on the importance of design as the backbone of joyful living.
“Creating a continuous air barrier with the right insulation and orienting windows to let the sun heat homes in the Winter are central Passivehaus design strategies. Using overhangs to block the Summer sun, means the home requires less energy to cool when temperatures raise outside,” says Witte. “Solar panels are now to the point where they are essentially free, offset by the energy savings. So, for almost no extra cost, my clients end up with a resilient, net-zero home.”
He takes credit for having built about eight separate homes during his 25 years in practice. “Building homes helped me understand the entire process much better, including financing, how to sequence subcontractors, and the pain points of efficient construction. That allows me to smartly guide my clients toward cohesive, holistic, eco-friendly homes that offer a chance at pure joy.”
“The builders, Lynn Luxury Homes, I worked with at Gerendák were awesome. The Owner, Buddy Edwards, and I got to geek out on the building science of this home,” says Witte with amusement. “We used glulam beams, made of laminated, dimensional lumber, that create large, engineered wood structural members as strong as steel that store carbon rather than consume it. This means no walls, only glass. It’s like a tree house; incredibly simple, quiet and peaceful; a very Zen experience.”