urban vs suburban

urban vs suburban

in my twitter adventures, i get into lots of heated debates about all manner of subject. recently a discussion was had about the future of our urban environments and how to incorporate our current suburban architecture “into the fold” so to speak. during the course of this discussion I suggested that the suburbs won’t die till Americans get over their “bigger is better” mentality. a good friend of mine calmly suggests that “it is not always about bigger is better, SUV, etc. some people like the disconnect of suburbs”. and I have to wonder, is that true? do we really want to “unlug” and retreat to the relative solitude of the burbs with our minivans and flat screen tvs and 5000 channels all showing the Real Housewives of Orange County and Jersey Shore? or is the majority leaning more towards more dense urban lifestyles?

personally I think it’s both. there is a market for everyone. there are those that prefer the quiet suburbs and even the desolate rural areas that surround our cities and stretch across our country. but then there are also those that prefer the hustle and bustle of dense urban metropolis complete with mass transit and walkable micro-neighborhoods within the larger urban landscape. the real issue as we continue to move ever forward as developing nations is how do we connect all these different “islands” of development? how do we create vibrant, interconnected and inclusive cities that include urban, suburban and rural neighborhoods?

the simple answer is public transit – combinations of rail and bus lines that work in tandem with existing and future roadway networks.  this, in my opinion, is the future of “city life”. you’ll be able to live in a rural neighborhood, maybe with a couple of acres of land, your own small farm perhaps. but you work in the urban core as a stock broker or architect or whatever. you drive to a transit hub, park your car/truck and take a train into the urban core. the same would be true of living in a suburban area. and then going the other direction, living in the urban core it would be possible to take transit OUT to the suburban and rural areas of your city, to one of these hubs, and from there perhaps rent a car and go out to whatever activity is available – hiking, camping, river rafting…whatever.

I think we’re getting close to a time where the old ideas of utopian city planning are going to come true, but on a much larger scale than was ever conceived or even intended. whether this happens in the next 5 years or 20, what is apparent is that we can’t continue as we have. our total dependence on the single user auto is ending, suburban sprawl has failed and our urban centers struggle to stay viable. but if we connect all these “struggling” entities into contributing parts of a whole linked by efficient transit corridors then success is much more attainable and without giving up our diverse lifestyle options.

basic container design

As I continue working with shipping containers and designing structures based on modular technology, it’s become increasingly apparent that a “get back to basics” strategy sometimes needs to be applied.  Searching the internet you can find literally thousands of designs and design websites showing every design type from the most simple and “rustic” to the most complex and “archi-sexy”.

I recently came across this graphic on another blog and thought “this is exactly what I needed”.  It’s a simple graphic of “typical” container layouts.  Obviously this isn’t an exhaustive list of possible combinations, but it gives a good starting place for thinking about how to organize a home out of modular building blocks like containers.

image courtesy of residentialshippingcontainerprimer.com

As you can see above, the simplest modules are single story, side by side  and staggered configurations.  A side by side configuration lends itself to designing “pods” – one public (kitchen/living) and one private (sleeping/bathing).  By staggering two containers side by side you are able to take advantage of the offset in the form of porches or other exterior spaces.

From there, more complex stacked designs begin to offer double height interior spaces as well as balcony and covered outdoor spaces that can be used to blur the lines between interior and exterior living spaces.

The moral of our little tale here is, by keeping things simple you can open yourself up to some very dramatic and exciting design solutions.  The old adage “KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)” just makes sense doesn’t it?

And now for some random Google images of Container Structures that apply the above principle.

by architects Pieter Peelings & Silvia Mertens

simple house in Porta, Austria

Cordell House – Texas

student housing – France

mainstream isbu home

"the ranch" - copywrite r | one studio arch 2011

It’s funny to me that so many people are so resistant to building with alternative technology or alternative materials.  Especially in America.  I mean, we are the land of risk and experimentation, aren’t we?

Anyway, I was on another blog reading about some “container angst and opposition” and stumbled across this home built in Kansas City by an industrial designer.  Built from 5 standard high cube shipping containers, the home is roughly 2000 sf and, as you can see in the video, is more than livable.  Enjoy.

a balancing act

image courtesy of google images

the last couple of weeks have been insane. between work (my day job), class (my second job) and the few side projects that I’ve had going (my third job), combined with my duties as homeowner, husband and father I’ve been stretched a little thin.

My question for you out there: how do you balance your professional and personal lives as an architect? As architects, typically we are consumed with our craft and everything else becomes the “after thought”.  What successes and/or failures have you had in balancing all the different hats we wear?

ISBU Bungalow – in progress

I’ve been busy as hell lately designing ISBU single family and multi family homes with my buddy Alex over at Renaissance Ronin and I’ve just realized that I haven’t really posted any significant design work in a while.  So, I thought I would take a second to post some interior shots of an ISBU home that I’ve been working on for a couple weeks.  It’s a 2 bedroom, 2 bath single family home with a second story loft/guest bedroom.  Constructed of (2) 20′ high cube containers spaced 24′ apart, you get a 480 sf open space for kitchen/living/dining/laundry with access to front and rear porches.

Now, as the project is still in development, I’m not going to show you the whole thing, but I would like to get some feedback on these interior renderings.  At 800 total sf (approx.) for the project, would you feel comfortable in this space?  Is it adequate for entertaining?  Does the kitchen function and flow?  Obviously, these are all questions that I’ve already asked myself during the design phase, but then my idea of a functional public space and your idea may be completely different.  Criticism is important to me, so please don’t hold back.  If you hate it, great, tell me why and what you would do differently.  If you love it (which I know everyone will cause I’m the bomb diggity, obviously) then I also want to know why.  Architecture can’t progress unless someone offers an opinion on a design, so please let the comments flow!

Tiny House – Toronto

I’ve got a small bone to pick here for a second.  Over at Jetson Green there is never a shortage of good news on the tiny home/modern/green design front and I religiously check this blog every morning to see “what’s new”.  But this morning, the latest article is another in a long list of something that seriously troubles me and has held back the mainstream from getting on board with smaller living, in my opinion.

Now, first let me say that the home is beautiful.  From the photos it seems well designed and functional, which are the two most important qualities in a home that any architect should strive for.  And according to an interview at dwell magazine with Andrew Reeves, Principle at LineBox Studio, Inc., the house is “totally green by scale”.

So, here’s my gripe.  The home, coming it at an amazing 566 square feet and featuring an upstairs loft space was built, not including soft costs like land and parasite..uh I mean lawyer fees, came in at an astonishing $210k….this factors out to about $371 per square foot of living space.  This, to me, is insane.  Living where I live in Florida, for $371/sf I could buy/build A LOT.  There really isn’t much that would be out of my price range at that level.  And this, to me, is where the small living movement has fallen short and not attracted the kind of main stream attention that it deserves.  I mean, seriously $210k is a lot of money even for a house designed to “modern” standards (i.e. the typical 2500 sf monstrosities you see littering our sub urban landscapes) let alone a home of modest and modern materials at 566 sf!

Ok, I’m done with my little rant.  So you too can gaze on the wonderfulness of this design, here are some photos.  At the bottom are links to the Jetson Green and dwell articles as well as a link to the LineBox Studio website.  They have dedicated a blog to this project where you can see more photos and cost breakdowns.  Again let me say that I think this home is well designed and I’m sure more than meets the needs and expectations of the client.  But, I think also that we need to begin thinking about how to design homes like this at a more modest price point – between $150 and $200 per sf (getting us near a cost of $85k – $115k).  This to me is more to the heart of living a smaller lifestyle.

Links:

Jetson Green
Dwell Magazine
LineBox Studio, Inc.

happy v-day

image courtesy of google

Happy Valentines’ Day from R |One Studio Architecture

Now go hug your favorite building.  If you don’t have a favorite building within hugging distance, I suppose your significant other will suffice as a stand in. 

and the winner is…

Recently I did my first book review on Greene and Green Furniture: Poems of Wood and Light by David Mathias.  Reading through it in just a few days (cause it’s that friggin good), I quickly moved on to the next book in my life, The Not So Big House by Sarah Susanka and decided to have a small giveaway here on the blog (my wife gets angry when I bring new books home, so a few have to go in order to add more).  And without further ado, the winner of the first R | One Studio Architecture Book Giveaway is:

Joe Brewer – commenter #1!

Congratulations Joe!  An email has been sent to the address you provided and your book will be on it’s way shortly!  I’m sure you’ll enjoy the book as much as I have!

container floors – part II

I recently got an email from my buddy Alex over at Renaissance Ronin offering a little more information on flooring for shipping containers.  Being a “corten crusader” for the better part of 3 decades or so, I like to think Alex has a little something to offer in the way of “practical experience”.  So, in the words of “the  man” himself:

I’ve been working with ISBUs since long before they were called that. In fact, we’re talking about the late nineteen seventies. We’ve built a TON of Corten Castles… (it averages out to about three a year in North America alone) stretching from Crescent City CA to Panama (and I ain’t talking about Panama City FL), to the “Tundra Two-Steppers” of the Great White North…

You do the math…

First, it should be pointed out that while  RFH (radiant floor heat) is a rallying cry lately, it is rarely the most cost effective or efficient option when dealing with a SMALL space like an ISBU home. A mini split HVAC unit will do the job nicely at less cost and almost zero  “OMG” potential for failure, later.

While I use radiant floor slabs in larger ISBU projects, for anything under about 1200 square feet, it’s just not the “best” solution.

Don’t get me wrong, in larger domiciles or commercial buildings we always start with radiant floor heating out there on the table. In the “right” space, it puts the heat exactly where you need it – in the “human and critter” band and not up in the ceiling.

Second, Jeremiah is exactly right, except that he gives that existing flooring far too much credit. The existing flooring in ISBUs is treated with a chemical concoction far more dangerous than simple formaldehyde and HAS to go. Period. People who work in the Chinese plants that make it die from exposure to it. I know it’s true. I’ve visited/inspected those plants. That’s how lethal those chemicals are.

In fact, the standing policy in my FIRM is that if you are set on keeping the existing floor, you look for another team. We WILL NOT work with you. Period. That’s how bad that flooring is.

Like Jeremiah has suggested, we strip out the existing floor material and send it to a HazMet facility. Don’t reuse it for anything. Lethal is lethal. While I’ve seen it used as outside ramp material for handicap access, or even siding…

… that’s still pushing the boundaries in my view.

And that includes keeping it stored safely and securely (so that people can’t “steal or appropriate it” from your job site) before it’s sent off to “horror story flooring hell”.

For flooring replacement, we always spec and strive to use lightweight concrete.  Rigid Insulation gets dropped in and then we shoot a floor. You’d be amazed at what you can do.

TIP: Shoot an inch of SPF on the underside of those same containers. You’ll get a massively insulated and “protected” floor that way. (Vapor and Moisture barriers)

First, concrete is “self leveling” and easy to work with. No special skills or expensive craftsmen/tradesmen required.

Add some stain (plus a little creativity) and a sealer to concrete and you have a floor that some will think is stone or even marble. And, it’ll be DURABLE. FOREVER.

Using concrete does a few things. It gives you some thermal mass to heat up using the sun. It adds to the structural integrity of the floor (helping to combat “floor bounce”) that kills your floor surface and even gets translated to your wall textures. And, it’s cheap.

Okay, like everything else, inflation is causing it to be more expensive, but I’d rather have a “finished” concrete floor, than a plywood floor that still needs finishing, if I’m on a tight budget.

We add an expansion joint every 10-12 feet. Period.  Those expansion joints will coincide with the supporting pilings under those boxes. You can’t just fly a box from both ends, you have to support it.

When you were born, your momma didn’t carry you around by your head. She cradled you in her arms, displacing your mass fairly evenly. She did that because you were easier to carry that way. The same rule applies to ISBUs.  Evenly spaced pilings or footed walled will carry that load and keep everything from flopping around. Those expansion joints will assist in that support.

The concrete floor will just help stiffen the spine, giving you a superior structure.

Seriously, you”re building a home out of steel, but it’s still going to get pushed around by Mother Nature. Those expansion joints will pay off. I hate patching floors.

And once that’s thru, we get another benefit from that (poured) floor. By inserting rain gutter material (it’s cheap and easy to form-fit) along the rails, I get a place to run conduit.

Why in heavens name, would anyone want to do that?

Um… If you create a channel in the FLOOR to drop electrical and plumbing into, you don’t need to go up into the walls at ALL. No boxes. No holes. No harm, no foul.

NOTE: This should be fairly obvious but DO NOT run plumbing and electrical in the SAME channel. Run one down one side and the other down the opposite side.

Top this off with a cool architectural grate and you get some added architectural character and an easily adapted and versatile system that allows you to make changes later.

Plus, you can push everything back  (like that TV) against the WALLS without having to allow for the extra inches that plugs require.

And, architectural grating can be found at salvage yards for almost nothing.

Reuse, recycle, repurpose. That’s me motto…Argh!

containers – a design primer

This post is also featured at Life of an Architect – check it out!

Over the last couple of months I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about and designing with used shipping containers as building blocks for single family homes.  This is a niche in architecture that has been getting a lot of press on sites like treehugger and inhabitat, among others.  The press mostly surrounds nice glossy photos of radical and not so radical modern designs that, from my point of view, are not any different in terms of cost and materials than your typical hyper-modern home at about 250+/sf.  I think this goes against the notion of why you would use a shipping container in the first place to design a home.  And this is exactly what I would like to talk about here:

How do we design with shipping containers to save cost without sacrificing space, function and style?

This may seem like a tall order, but I assure you it isn’t.  But let’s start with a little background on shipping containers: shipping containers (or ISBU’s - Intermodal Steel Building Units) are basically modular rectangular steel cubes.  The most common dimensions are 8′-0″W x 8′-0″H x 20′-0″L.  Longer lengths are available at 40′-0″, as well as what is called a High Cube container at 9′-6″H (length and width are static).  I believe there are also 5′ and 10′ extensions, but that’s not important.  Being modular, containers can be easily moved, stacked and mechanically connected in great numbers.  They are also EVERYWHERE.  Just go to your local shipping port and stare googly eyed at the massive sea of containers stretching out before you, if you don’t believe me.

image courtesy of google images

Ok, so we’ve got these cubes, these building blocks.  What do we do with them?  First, like any good architect will do, you want to lay out your building program (duh, I know) – how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, a modern or traditional kitchen, indoor/outdoor flex spaces…in other words, how is your home going to work.

Next you begin laying out your floor plan.  The big difference here, though, is you have set dimensions that you have to work with instead of being able to just push and pull space wherever you damn well please.  More careful thought has to be put into how the various programmatic spaces will work together within the home.  Obviously you could just take a dozen or so containers, smash em all together and make your typical “McMansion”….but that’s not really what we’re after here.

The trick is to use as few containers as possible while still providing adequate space and function in the home.

This can be  a real challenge for many architects and designers who are used to designing homes and spaces that, quite frankly, are much larger than required for the average user.  For example, a single 20′ container can be designed as a single unit, or pod, to include a single bedroom and bathroom while another 20′ container can be designed as the public portion of the home.  By putting these two containers together, you get a 1 bedroom, 1 bath home that can be built quickly and, depending on the quality of finishes, very afford-ably (think IKEA, Home Depot and Target).  This is even the type of home that, given some basic construction knowledge and the help of a few close friends, can be built by the homeowner, saving thousands in labor costs.

1 br/1 bth container home - 320 sf - entry view

1 br/1 bth container home - 320 sf - side view

Using the same design above, but instead using 40′ containers, we have an example that perhaps gets closer to what would be considered a “real home” that, as my wife puts it, “normal people would want to live in”:  a home with 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and all the “bells and whistles”, so to speak, but still in only 640 sf (conditioned). Looking at the above model you can even see the opportunities for sustainable technologies that can easily be added to reduce or remove this home’s dependence on fossil fuel energy.  Solar panels can easily be incorporated into the gable roof, rain water can be collected and stored underneath, passive heating and cooling can be used by carefully placed openings (depending on location).  Because of the small square footage, less energy will be required within the space anyway, so your investment in sustainable tech will be less as well.

I know, you’re thinking “640 sf is not enough space to house 2 bedrooms and 2 baths and still have comfortable living spaces.”  Well, I say to you, think back to your first apartment.  My first apartment was just over 900 sf and it was HUGE!  2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, living, dining, kitchen and a deck.  Way more space than I needed and I’m sure with a little finesse I could have added a third bedroom in there easily.

The moral of our little tale here is, containers allow architects and designers to think differently about how space is used and organized for optimum use in minimal square footage.  We still have to abide by our state and federal building codes and accessibility requirements, this goes without saying, but think about the last house you designed – where could you have saved some square footage without sacrificing function, design and style?  I’m betting you’ll be surprised if you think about it critically for a moment.

While I was writing this article a friend of mine sent me this small article that offers photos of some container projects from all over the world, both commercial and residential.  These projects are real, they’ve been built and they are successful, i.e. people WANT to live in them.

The Daily Green

Used shipping containers provide an affordable building block for any type of construction project, but especially for single family and multifamily homes because they can be purchased inexpensively, assembled quickly and, depending on how you choose to insulate and finish, constructed into a finished building in less time with less expense than conventional construction.