Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Numbers, Materials, and the Greenhouse Moving to the Third Dimension


Man, how about that spreadsheet in action. I heard from Mark, our steel guy, yesterday with a preliminary Structural Steel price based on our schematic designs. Lets just say I was less than thrilled. So - we have to re-imagine some of the steel work here - and we'll continue getting prices from other outfits and try and reduce our costs. Sigh. Steel is just sooooo expensive right now (well over a $100/ton higher than this time last year). But the brackets are the real kicker cus' we would be paying for the man hours to fabricate them. We'll figure something out. I want to redesign the whole thing as timber or small built up members but Johnny said it isn't time to freak out yet - so I'm just gonna let it be for now and keep working on other stuff. Grrr.

We've been playing with materials for the greenhouse for a while now - Star's pile of polycarb is about up to the ceiling at this point. These are more Gallina samples that we got yesterday - I think we might be able to go with the Pentaglass ones though which would be great cus' they are way nicer.

Gallina, clear for the west wall and semi-opaque for the north. Not great stuff - but not horrible either.


The dichroic colors projecting through - this stuff is 16mm - too thick and too opaque to recieve enough color if you ask me.

I'm on 3D Modeling duty right now so that we can export initial render views for the photoshop team to start to flesh out. We ordered material for our full-scale mock-ups but it isn't going to come until tomorrow at the earliest so we are trying to get as much of the renderings/filing set/prep-stuff done right now. I have the Mosswall and the East Garden modeled and Johnny is finishing up the west and north gardens as well as revising the ground plane. I'm working on the Greenhouse at the moment and then we'll flesh out the kitchen, clean it up, and pump out some views. God - how did people make architecture before sketchup?

Greenhouse, west and north sides, in process.

Greenhouse ridge detail, it dies into 2 LVLs which are trimmed to form a cove for lighting.

Quite a collection, I know. I think its about time for new flowers though.

The invitation to our Final presentation.

I heard through the grapevine that David Childs is coming to the presentation, and I know that Tom Mayne is going to be here for the 3rd year reviews on Friday - so a hell of a week for the architecture nerds around here. Yikes! Alright . . . back to it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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