This is a short list of the threads and inspirations that have been influencing my work lately. Some lurk just beneath the surface, waiting for the right opportunity, the right site or the right client, while others are more thematic and make appearances again and again. I hope they’ll help to replenish your creative stores and inspire you to see the world around you through a new lens.
Plywood as Finish
Architects in search of novel uses for humble materials are now using plywood for a higher aesthetic purpose as a finished surface in living spaces. It’s become a handy means of modernizing and warming an interior for a relatively inexpensive cost. In this video I discuss ways to find out if it’s right for your project. I review: veneer types, grades, thickness, joinery, finishing, as well as where and how to use it.
Kinetic Architecture
Kinetic architecture, which moves or changes to adapt to seasonal, functional or daylight requirements has roots dating back to medieval times. A castle’s drawbridge served as a multifunctional kinetic wall, door and footbridge. The futurists and constructivists of the Russian art movement of the early 20th century explored kinetics by infusing their proposals with notions of highly mechanized, sleek, modern, industrial construction. In this video I discuss moving walls, roof planes, colossal doors, sliding screens, pivoting openings, and gizmos. These are all devices that can dramatically transform space and adapt a structure to its local environment.
Modern Firewood Storage Ideas
In this video I review modern firewood storage ideas and options. I discuss: sizing, location, orientation, and offer a few unique concepts to borrow for your own wood storage needs.
Modern Shutters : A Passive Design Strategy
Passive design strategies are becoming widely accepted as a way to drastically reduce the amount of energy a home consumes and low-tech solutions are gaining favor with designers and homeowners alike. Shutters are one such low-tech means of passively controlling the environment around a building. Operable shutters control light, temper heat, shield or welcome wind, buffer noise and provide privacy. Like a versatile three-season jacket they can help make life more comfortable. This video explores a few modern examples of the multipurpose shutter.
Channel Glass: An Architect's Material Review
This video is a primer on channel glass and an architect's take on the material. It's a 10-minute short course describing:
- Cost
- Uses
- Physical and thermal properties
- Finish and color options
- Attachment specifics
- Special design considerations
- Benefits and liabilities
Unlike standard float glass, channel glass has a high recycled content and the opportunity for improved thermal performance over insulated glass units. It's translucent so it provides natural daylight to spaces with privacy requirements or in tight urban sites where undesirable views are a design constraint.
Modern Handrail Details
In this video I review the process of designing modern handrail details. I advocate an informed minimalism whereby safety and function is the priority but I quickly move beyond merely what the building codes dictate (width, tread run, riser height, guardrail and handrail conventions) into meaningful design gestures and appropriate materials. Within the necessary safety and functional constraints, the modern examples I use to illustrate the concept in the video still manage to delight the senses. Be sure to read this related post on minimal deck guards and edges which describes in detail the guardrail for the Pond House project.
Polygal - An Architect's Review
In this video I review everything you need to know about multiwall (sometimes called twinwall) structured sheet plastic. I review the cost, manufacturers (Polygal, Verolite, Thermoclear, Palram, Sunlite), light transmission, thermal properties, installation details, size, color, shapes and possible uses. As with all of my videos I review the material from the standpoint of an architect evaluating the product for potential use in home design and construction projects.
The Shed Roof - An Architect's Review
In this video I discuss the reasons for choosing a shed roof shape as well as the design implications of the choice. Sheds are structurally simple, site responsive forms that are finely tuned to passive solar collection. With opportunities for daylighting via clerestories, rainwater harvesting and other aesthetic benefits they're a great choice to meld traditional and contemporary design languages.
I like the shed form for its humble roots and its directional nature. I've designed a few projects that utilize the shed roof:
Naskeag House
Modern Baseboard Design - 4 Ways
In this video I discuss four modern design attitudes toward the baseboard design and detailing in residential architecture. They are: no base, reveal base, flush base, and the applied base. Baseboard protects a highly trafficked (and abused) part of the home and covers the messy joint between the finished wall and floor. This collection of modern base details highlights the aesthetic language of modernism: functional, spare, humble, minimalist and expressive.
For modern baseboard details I've designed see:
The Dogtrot House Plan Origin Story
In this video I discuss the origins of the dogtrot as a plan archetype, its history and how it came to be. Although commonly thought of as a Southern building type early settlers of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the Swedes and Finns brought with them the "pair cottage" from Northern Europe. This shaped the early dogtrots in the United States. It was widely adopted in the South because is offered an ingenious method of passively cooling the home. This is the first of a three-part video series. In part 2 I discuss the design process for the modern dogtrot floor plans I've developed which were inspired by these early prototypes.
Modern Fireplace Design - Concepts and Ideas
In this video I review and contrast two distinct approaches for designing the essential architectural elements of the modern fireplace. Each concept is illustrated with a contemporary architectural example. By intentionally emphasizing or minimizing different components varying effects can be achieved.
For more fireplace images see here.
Industrial Style - Metal Mesh for the Home
In this video I discuss how to put metal mesh to work in your home. I'm always searching for new materials to use in my residential work. I’m particularly drawn to adapting simple, utilitarian, industrial materials for use in the home. Industrial metal mesh is an excellent example of this and one that deserves consideration for both interior and exterior use. In the video I review the different types of mesh available from bar grating and metal fabrics to screening and wire meshes. I discuss the substrates and specific applications. Each is illustrated with images depicting their use.
Phased Construction for Residential Construction
In this video I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of phasing your home construction project. Phasing intentionally and selectively plans for and delays certain aspects of a home's construction. While it saves money up front, it usually costs more in the long-term. The advantages of phased construction are:
- Lower Initial Investment - it takes less overall to get started and can spread the costs of a larger project out over time.
- Shorter Construction Time - the smaller scope of work nets a reduced (initial) construction timeline.
- Experience - living in a partially completed home while its under construction not only offsets living costs but allows you to truly experience the size and scale of the home before undertaking future phases.
- Design Changes - phasing opens the door to pivoting design ideas over time. You may decide you don't want the detached guest house planned in phase two, rather you want it incorporated into the home as an addition.
The disadvantages are:
- Complexity - overall phased construction is more complex.
- Longer Total Construction Time - even though the initial construction sequence is shorter it will take longer to realize the entire project.
- Higher Total Cost - because of the longer time frames involved, financing costs, higher design fees and the extra mobilization costs, phased projects are inherently more costly to undertake.
I discuss the details of financing concerns, planning issues, sequencing, phasing plans, staging, scheduling, and living with the mess of construction.
Phasing is an overall more complex process, but it makes sense in certain cases, the video explains those cases supported with lots of visuals.
Garage Style Doors for the Home
In this video I review new ways to put the common garage door to use around your home. I review the types of garage doors: pivoting, sectional, and coiling as well as the materials, hardware options and special considerations you'll want to review before committing to using this design element in your home. The images offer proof that the overhead door doesn't have to be relegated to only the garage anymore.
How to Separate Space in an Open Floor Plan
In this video I review seven of the most common tricks I use as an architect to separate space in an open floor plan. I talk about the advantages and disadvantages of each including: the room within a room concept, open shelving, thin wall planes, thick wall masses, sliding walls, fabrics (metal and cloth), and hybrid systems.
Choosing Pocket Door Hardware - Pro Tips
In this video I discuss the secret to pocket doors' success - selecting the proper hardware. I discuss quality architectural hardware specifics from manufacturers like: Hafele, FSB, MWE, Halliday & Ballie, Sugatsune, Accurate and others. I review the optimal track configurations, flush pull handle sizing and shape considerations, and the all important lockable pocket door function.
Embracing the Narrow Home
The simplicity, directness and beauty of a narrow floor plan makes it suitable for many building sites, not only those on tight lots. In the video I discuss in detail twelve compelling reasons to embrace a narrow home design. If I've convinced you; be sure to check out my offering of efficiently designed, affordable, narrow home designs in the shop.
Advantages:
- Light
- Warmth
- Ventilation
- Efficiency
- Flexibility
- Expandability
- Vertical Separation
- Horizontal Separation
- Cost Savings
- Sense of Exploration
- Borrowed Space
- Diversity
A Kitchen Remodel That Costs More Than a School
As a residential architect, I've had the privilege of working with some amazing clients. I'm truly fortunate to be able to work on such interesting projects for people who care deeply about architecture. The impact of the single-family residential work that I'm commissioned to do – the work that supports my family – is naturally limited in scale and scope.
This year I'm committed to building something larger than 30X40 can do alone. To honor that commitment, I've chosen to give to Pencils of Promise, a non-profit that builds schools around the world. They offer a chance for all of us to expand the reach and impact we can have in the world. For less than the cost of a typical kitchen remodel in the United States today – which stands right around $28,000 – PoP can build a school in Ghana.
An entire school.
That’s a school in one of the 75% of communities they visit that doesn’t have one.
Imagine for a moment what your life might look like today without a school in your past. Every one of us can name a teacher who, at some point in our lives, made a difference, who inspired us, who pointed us in the right direction. Imagine your life without that teacher.
Without school, my life today would be profoundly different.
I'm just one architect building a small business, but I want to do something big. Something outside of the bounds of my private practice. With your help, I hope to fund the construction of a school in Ghana and give the gift of education to children who live very different lives than we do. These are children and communities that deserve the same educational opportunities we often take for granted here in the US.
Pencils of Promise is an organization that takes action and builds things. The fundraising goal I’ve set is for $25,000 - the average cost to build a school in Ghana. I can't do this alone though, I'm just one guy with a small business. It's a big goal, but it has big consequences, I hope you'll be a part of making the world the better place, one school at a time.
To that end, 30X40 Design Workshop will match every dollar of the first $2,500.00 contributed.
Thanks for supporting my campaign and Pencils of Promise.
An Architectural Recipe...of sorts...
I received a box of concrete samples from Get Real Surfaces recently. Small, 3"x3" squares of varying finishes and color mixes. Perfectly sized to fit in your hand, for sharing with a client in a meeting, or for toting around to the job site to imagine them in a finished space. The samples themselves are beautifully rendered objects in their own right. For an architect, materials are the cooking equivalent of ingredients. Just as a chef enters the pantry to select ingredients for an entree, the architect consults their sample library. For me, this happens throughout the design process. In the very beginning a material concept informs the building concept. As we move deeper into the design that concept is shaped by the building layout, the client and the site. Together it evolves.
Stone, concrete, wood, tile, glass, metal - the raw materials of building can be chosen for their reference to particular place, one's taste or just because of their beauty. But I have favorites and they're a narrow few.
Here's why.
The paradox of choice is such that having more options doesn't actually yield more freedom to choose; rather it makes it even more difficult to feel like any selection you might make is 'correct'. Having a few favorites means the project quickly can focus on the features inherent to the design - its form, light and the environment all of which the material selection can highlight and not simply on using the most fashionable faux pebble tile.
The Japanese Pritzker prize winning architect, Tadao Ando's work offers a rather extreme take of this position. His material of choice is reinforced concrete and he uses it everywhere, in every project. It's weighty, but there are moments of extreme lightness too in the scale of the volumes. The gray of concrete is a canvas upon which light softly renders form and space. The earth and weather develop a patina on the concrete that helps to fold it into the site, it's rugged and supple at once. I admire the stillness of his work and his ability to achieve such depth of emotion from a singular material. Less, in fact, is more.
Focused choice in material selection allows this kind of a simple dialogue to take place. It allows the place and the building a voice. Solid and void. Weight and weightless. Dark and light. Warm and cool.
I love concrete as a building material deeply. Not only for its color and its tone, for its feel and its weight; but also because it's expressive of the process by which it was created. The form-work permanently reveals the skill of the craftsman who built it and the subtle markings of the ties and the aggregates that comprise its mass.
For me, concrete also needs the warm counterpoint of wood. The informality of Douglas fir, the ruggedness of Red Oak, the refinement of Maple, the tailored appearance of Mahogany, the evenness of White Oak. Each of these pairs beautifully with concrete and elicits different emotions. Like concrete, wood can be subtly effected by the way it's finished or cut: plain sawn, rift-sawn, or quartersawn; each reveals a different graining pattern and tonal character. Subtle but wholly beautiful.
These are effects that are heightened and only appreciated when there's little other noise to drown them out. Just as the tenderloin requires salt, concrete requires wood. Nothing more.
...except perhaps a side of glass?