Onward

Hello,

Once again I apologize for the delay of my blog updates.  I'm doing one last post about Southcoast to close out my time there.

Here are photos towards the end of the semester.  We finished everything on the exterior of the house except for the screens which will be built under the house.  The only other thing left to do are the interior finishes.  The summer students will be doing this (drywall, floors, cabinets, appliances  ect.)  We hope to have Ms. Dang moved in by the end of the summer.  She's very excited about her mom being able to move in with her and starting to plant gardens around the house.

This was one of the last things I worked on.  (I even stayed an extra day to finish it.)  It was my one try at finish carpentry on this project.  A big part of living on the Mississippi Coast is the southern porch culture.  I wanted to give some special attention to the tactility of the hand rail on the porch, thinking about how it feels to human hand.  I planed a 2x6 and routed round edges for a smooth finish.  Ms. Dang was very excited about how wide the rail is and said, "I will set my coffee here."

Ms. Dang and I on the porch.  I plan to come for a visit in the fall.

I will briefly mention this semester's design project.  It was a home for the Coleman Family.  (Dorothy gave me an awesome recipe for collard greens.) They were really fun to work with; they had an exciting energy about them.  We could tell that they really enjoyed having company and family over to their home, so this was a big driver in the design phase.  

Their home is further north so it won't be elevated, it will also be SIPS.  This is my attempt at a quick and dirty schematic sketch.  Other important things in the design process were the distinction between the public and private sections of the house and a critical axis through the center where their dining room table (which was one of their only things that survived Katrina) will go.

Final massing model.

In a weeks time I will begin my next endeavor.  This time trying my hand at farming in the mountains of Thailand.  There will be some construction of farm structures, so I'm very excited to apply all I've learned at Southcoast.  Feel free to follow me at my other blog.  www.traystrawhorn.blogspot.com 

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Concepts

Yesterday was a very busy day.  I woke up early and competed in my first ever triathlon, grabbed a shower, and then hit the road to Baton Rouge.  This weekend LSU was hosting the AIAS southquad conference, we went to set up a table at the expo and recruit students for the program.  After the expo I had the privilege of going to the keynote lecture and hearing Brian MacKay-Lyons speak.  Feel free to look at my notes, which I took hastily on the backs of Southcoast brochures.

I'll talk about some of the highlights, since we all know that my handwriting is illegible at best.  He first spoke of buildings being two different things at once, both of which are true.  One example was a barn he built on his farm.  The window and door placement was based on the Russian deconstructovist works of art, big blocky geometries.  While the barn's facade does a great job achieving this deeper meaning, its functional value is that its an opening through which you can shovel horse manure.  Both are true.  Another project had a glass enclosed stairwell for egress, required by code in case of a fire.  Once the building was occupied, the stairwell became the unofficial smoking lounge.  Both are true.  Architecture becomes very rich when function and meaning (deep memory) have a relationship.

I really enjoyed seeing his early work.  It was a collection of small houses built for humble ship builders in his home town of which he was the self proclaimed village architect.  No one took out mortgages, so many of the projects were additive in nature, all were very affordable.  Spatial quality of a building is based on 3 things form, finish quality, and function.  He had very simple forms, took advantage of the local trade of carpentry, and was able to focus of making very functional homes.  The cost per square foot of some of these homes was as low as $80, yet they were still very well designed.

Over the years his practice and reputation has grown and MCL Architects is now been able to shift to realm of larger public projects.  Theres alot more money in the work he does now so he's able to experiment with alot more than just functionality and the reconfiguration of common materials.  While the scale of projects differed, I was impressed in the consistency of his design process.  For each building  he shared, he showed a early conceptual sketch, done in a bar or restaurant during a conversation with the client.  Here are a few I found online.

These simple sketches convey so much information: massing, day lighting, view sheds, circulation, form.   This is one of richest and most dynamic parts of the design process.  It is an act that distills the entirety of a built work into a few scribbly lines and shades of color.  There was one difference in how he treated the larger, public projects.  The means of construction is different, each different aspect is done by a specialized worker.  These buildings are made by a series of sub contractors, these trades he referred to as the "dirty arts".  He focused on each one being able to do his stage of the project as efficiently as possible.  He conveyed all his projects in a way that was very easy to understand, he did this by using alot of metaphors, explaining the buildings through things we already knew. 

I'll also share some other stimulating thoughts. from the lecture:

-Globalization hinders sense of place

-There are an infinite number of ways to practice architecture, we should never settle for one that makes us miserable.

-Sustainability should be inherit in the design process not something that we have to talk about.

-Structure = noun, Construction = verb

-Silent buildings that have alot to say.

-The people in the office who can sketch well are always the ones driving the bus.

In my last post I said I would be updating you on Mardi Gras week and I have not yet; I apologize for being a slacker.  This was a very festive time, the parades in New Orleans start a month before the actual day of Mardi Gras.  The largest parade out side of NOLA in actually the one in Pass Christian, that passes right in front of our house, twice.  I now have more beads than I know what to do with.

Kyle even came to visit.

We also had a large group of volunteers during this week who came down from Virginia Tech on spring break.  We split up into groups began many things this week (and finished a few). 

Some painted the soffits.

Some tyveked, (note that all these things take twice as long when you're working on an elevated house).

Some did interior framing

Some roofed (they finished)

Some did decking and stairs

And last by not least, some did siding.

I had done all these things last semester, so I floated around, answered questions, and made myself useful where necessary. 

The rest of the semester on site will be spent finishing all these things we started.  The summer students will finish all the interior finishes.  Here is the house as it currently stands. (We also got all the windows and doors installed.)

One of the benefits of design build is the ability to change things on site.  Here are some examples of that.  The colors Ms. Dang wanted were a light yellow with blue trim.  That would have looked very bad.  We did find a way to give her both these colors, we did the siding and trim all yellow, but put blue on the underside of the soffit.  It has a really nice quality to it, like being under the sky.  The blue also masks the fact that the soffit is simply the OSB underside of the SIP panel, this is one of the things that helped us to get back within budget.

Another thing that changed was the ceiling in the master bedroom.  Originally there was going to be an attic over the entirety of it.  But we liked the way it felt unfinished so much that we left 2/3 of the ceiling vaulted, Ms. Dang was very excited about this.  Note this picture the interior was at a really interesting point the space seemed very continuous with the lone mass of the second bedroom in the middle.

It would be interesting if the interior maintained this continuity (maybe I'll use this idea in a future project), but last semester we decided to maximize the function of the space by putting a loft over the second bedroom so her son would have a place to stay instead of the couch (Ms. Dang's mom will be in the 2nd bedroom.)

We've also started designing a house for the new clients.  We're currently somewhere between schematic design and design development.  I'll share that after our first pin up on Tuesday.  

B. got a new outfit.

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Structural Insulated Panels

Sorry this is a little late, but its been a very busy past 2 weeks. I'm just going to cover week one with this post. In less than 4 days time, we we're able to get the Dang House framed, sheathed, and insulated. This was only made possible through the utilization of prefabricated SIPS which accomplishes all three of these things in only one step.

The entire envelope of the house was delivered in pieces on the back of a truck. When we first got the drawings back from the SIPS engineering team, I wondered why they broke the roof panels up into 5, 8 feet wide pieces instead of just leaving it as 1 big panel. When the truck came I realized that it was because the truck bed was only 8 feet wide. This was based purely on the ability to deliver the panels to site. The walls are 4 1/2 inches thick and the roof is 8 1/4 inches. So the dimensions of the panels are exactly what they would have been if framed traditionally. 

We used a fork lift with a boom to lift the panels from the ground onto our subfloor which is 12 feet high. The walls dangled upright and set into place. Any fine adjustments were done by beating the panels closer with a sledge hammer or using an industrial ratchet strap to pull the loose panel tight to the one already in place.  

The roof panels had a hole pre drilled that we inserted a pin into. The hole was placed so that the panel would dangle at about the pitch that it needed to be installed at.

Each piece attached to the next with a pair of 2x splines that fit into each other tongue and groove and was nailed along seam every 3 inches. 

The breaks in the wall panels occurred at every window/door opening or 8 feet, whichever came first. You can see the breaks in the wall panels in this image, each time the sipsteamsusa.com logo is stenciled its a the beginning of a new piece.  

The framing for the openings came factory installed, the headers stuck out an 3 inches and inserted into a precut slot above a double 2x4 jack on the panel adjacent to it on either side.

Every corner was screwed together with one screw every 6 inches using special SIP screws. The first 5 inches of the screw is unthreaded so that it will grab only the adjacent and suck the panel tight to the panel being screwed through. In the top image you can also see the 3 chases for electrical wires that run the entire perimeter of the building envelope. 

I'm going to show a couple of images of one of the more important sections of the assembly, the bearing wall the runs the length of the house. On this wall the 2x6 wall, an laminated veneer lumber (lvl) beam, the inside edge of both roofs and the clearstory all meet and carry the load to the ground. On the lower roof we built a sips curb, similar to that on the walls to attach the clearstory to, the upper roof then sits directly on top of the clearstory.

This past week we had a group of volunteers come on spring break from Virginia Tech. We started many things, roofing, siding, interior framing, and decking. Amongst this was mardi gras, numerous parades, countless numbers of beads, and my first ultramarathon. An update on those things will follow.

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To the Floor

We've gotten construction up to the point where we're ready for SIPS to arrive at site, which is next week. After having piles driven we had to go through and square them all relative to each other. We then notched them all with a chainsaw and thru bolted the girders on.

After this we put the floor joists up. In the design process we opted to set the joists on top of the girders and attached them with twist straps rather than setting them at the same level of the joist with hangers. In doing this we were able to cantilever the deck out and save some costs in material. 

Another cost saving thing we did was use bridge blocking to bear the load of the walls instead of doubling the joists underneath. This also allows some flexibility to move interior walls around if we make on site changes. The below photo also shows the twist straps. One thing that really surprised me was how flexible dimensional lumber becomes when its 20 feet long. It always looks so straight and rigid when its on a drawing, it really caught me off guard the first time I tried to walk across the joist. It doesn't gain its strength until you nail the subfloor to it.

After putting the subfloor on (which we learned actually comes in 3' 11 1/2" x 8' sheets not 4' x 8'), we installed the SIPS curb. The SIPS curb is one of the most important components in the assembly because it is wall ties the SIPS panels into the floor/foundation structure. This is done through 2 2x4's (3 in the corner) glued and nailed to the subfloor/joist and then thru bolted to the girder using threaded rod. This requires using a 2 foot drill bit and a big manly drill which is measured in horsepower. 

Our first week on site was a cold and rainy one. B, Ms. Dang's dog (one of the few to survive Katrina), has been sporting a wardrobe of winter wear in order to stay warm.

We've brought a radio on site this semester, so I've stayed warm by dancing while building. 

The final image is a gift for Evan.