Sunday, March 9, 2008

The State of the State we're in

Studio - Sunday Morning, March 09

Well, today during the day we are all working on our Construction Tech projects because we have a mid-review on Wed morning that we need to have projects for - I also have a mini-review for my PV class tomorrow morning so I have a lot to get done this afternoon - but at 5 we are coming back together to 'story-board' our Thurs presentation of our single scheme. We'll try and figure out what types of drawings we need, what renderings and hopefully we can talk about visual styling a little bit as well.

Greenhouse over the Trane Unit

We met last night to work on design as a big group and try and make some decisions. I think there are a lot of good ideas floating around but we need to start pinning them down and getting everything to work with a consistent language. For the most part the programming and massing is staying put - the kitchen design has shifted a bit and the layout of the outdoor dinning area is coming along too. The greenhouse is still on top of the Air Handler. There is a PV canopy above a lower roof and the 'walls' of the space will be open-able during nice weather. We added a 'shade garden' and a water collection system to the South section, and the West is still for raised bed gardens, veggies with flowers and benches integrated into them.

Wood Flooring slicing into metal grating over Sedum trays.

I'm also trying something on the North end to make it a little more exciting. We'd like to integrate a bamboo screen along the parapet [vertical green, covers the brick, nice noise, etc.] but I still think we can find a way to reuse the sedum trays that are already installed on the site and apply a fiberglass or metal grating on top of them so that you can still use the space, but it also functions as a green-roof. The proj we keep referencing for this is the ASLA roof garden where they did this and it worked really well. But we have a much larger space so we can't just cover the whole thing in grate and walk away cus' it'd be a little brutal. So I think that if we can slice into the grate-field with the flooring from the other sections it could be really cool - if it was a wood flooring, we could extend some of the lengths and blur the boundary between the zones as well as give some real visual interest to the floorplane of the northern part. If we stay with the concrete pavers though, we could still do something similar - sort of 'pixelize' them and let them blend with the grating. We also have the opportunity here of using really cool lighting elements in the floor as a way of really bringing the ground to life.

Anyway, on to Construction Tech for a few hours.

ASLA Green Roof - Grate over Sedum.

Everything is a mess right now. It'll all change after spring break though. I promise.

1 comment:

sandmarg said...

I just came across your blog by chance and your work is interesting and important. Thank you for sharing. Ten years ago I designed and built my own home and I'd love to do it again...if and when I win the lottery, that is.