House Iterations

Here is what I have been working on in the last couple of days as far as design iterations are concerned.

This first design is focused on purely breaking the house up into the programatic elements of Public, Private, and Education. The middle entry serves as the Education aspect of the house as it would be the greenhouse and filtration center for the home. All of this would be on display while retaining a senese of privacy for the people in the home.

This second iteration focuses on the idea of using Procession through the spaces and the arrangement of them to help establish Public, Private, and Educating spaces. This would also allow for some overlapping in program. Note how the Master Bedroom is on the second floor and the roof planes are being engaged for various potential activities.

The third iteration is a reconciliation and expansion of the previous two ideas combined into one house. The central entry feeds directly into the greenhouse all while serving as the center of the water collection so that it can be displayed as well. While the living room is off to the left the rest of the house is not fully formed but will follow a similar logic to Iteration 2, such as a second story bed room.

Iteration 3 is the one I will be developing first and then possibly combining 1 and 2 for a second iteration. All of this depends on time which we are quickly running out of. Overall though we have a lot of great ideas being generated and it will be interesting to see what we can do by combining various aspects of each of them.

Origami house

Main ideas underlying design:

-Nature as filter (each space has an indoor/outdoor component)

-community outreach (the roofs reach out and spread toward surroundings)

We were thinking about the post-its from the workshop and how they had been arranged. We didn't have a copy of it with us, bu we settled on 8 main spaces: kitchen, dining, laundry, muli-use (office/guest bed), living, bedroom (x2), bathroom. We arranged them as we remembered and tried to fit in open outdoor spaces in the overlap...this didn't work like we thought it would, so we shifted some spaces and came up with a 'star-like' shape in which the arms were outdoor spaces which defined the overlap between main interior spaces. We then covered the spaces in a roof which defined each area separately and could be arranged in an origami-like shape...the mechanics of this may be difficult, but there are a lot of different ways this could be viewed. Also, walking through the outdoor areas may be fascinating due to a variety of shadows and overhangs-each space could have a personality of its own.

The "S" house

Thoughts underlying this idea:

-arms open to public (we envisioned the angle opening toward the recreation field)

-watering hole (have filtration system at the 'elbow' and allow clean water to gather in are facing public so people can come and drink water)

-nature defines circulation (planters define space)

A person would enter on the right end into the living are, led in via a curved wall. The kitchen would be divided from living by planters with edible plants. Planters curve through service space (laundry and bathroom) leading to private area of bedrooms. Service space also displays mechanism of water filtration on public side. Bedrooms open toward a private 'greenhouse' type space which is where water collection takes place. It has an exit to a private backyard defined by another curved wall.

Capture the Rain

Hey guys, if you have some free time check out this link to ArchDaily about one of the entries to the eVolo Skyscraper Design Challenge, they were one of the Honorable Mentions. Fairly interesting idea on how to capture rainwater on the macro skyscraper scale. Not exactly applicable to what we are doing, but the idea is somewhat related.

Enjoy.

http://www.archdaily.com/52671/capture-the-rain-h3ar/#more-52671

Lecture Notes + Concept Generation

Fairly self explanatory posting, just putting up my limited amount of notes from today's lecture and the pictures of the whiteboard notes from today's meeting. Please refer to these in the generation of your concepts and keep in mind this "Holistic Approach" we are trying to achieve, this layering of information, systems, ideas, etc...

Again I am really looking forward to what we all come up with, now is the time to run free with the ideas that we have all been thinking about. Remember, nothing is too crazy at the point, explore as much as possible, work out as many idea sets as you can, but most importantly, have some fun with it and you may have some surprising results!

Studio Notes from 3/11/2010

Hey guys, here are my notes from Last Thursday's Studio Session. Please review the assignment sheet that is listed below the notes for more direction on what we will be working on for next week. Please take the time to go through the research that has been posted on the FTP thus far, but the main focus will be on generating design concepts. Use any means/mediums you feel are necessary to help you produce your ideas. Also after this post I will be posting the pictures and notes from today as a reminder of what we discussed during today's meeting.

I am really looking forward to seeing what we can produce!

Studio Notes Part 2

Studio Notes Continued

These are the last two studio sessions, as well as notes from our Meeting and Activity with HAC. I will be scanning my notes from the in studio sessions from now on and posting them here to keep you guys in the loop in conjunction with the emails, since there are times I will forget something I write off to the side on the page.

Studio Notes Part 1

Just some of my notes from the Thursday night sessions, I will post the others notes and sketches as there is a five image limit.

Residential Catchment System

In optimum scenarios, 1 inch of rainfall collected off of a 1000 square foot surface can equal 600 gallons of captured water. If half of every household's water supply could be sustained by a Rain Catchment System, we would greatly alleviate the pressures on our current water sources.
Water use for an average household in North America is 293 gallons per day. In this chart, we can see that more than 50% of our average water use does not need to be potable water.

The average household is not designed to differentiate between fixtures that need potable water and those that don't.
System sizes are determined by square footage of catchment area, annual rainfall & water demand.
A home Rain Catchment System can supply water to any or all of these uses: * Toilets * Clothes Washer * Faucets * Dishwasher * Showers * Baths * Landscaping * Potable Use


http://www.wonderwater.net/