Project Updates – LS Porch

(Click on the images for larger versions.)

This is an old Greek-revival style farmhouse, parts of which date back to before the Civil War. I’m certain the detail isn’t historically accurate. I’ve worked on many projects where classical detailing was used, and while I wouldn’t consider myself an architectural historian, I think I have a pretty good awareness of appropriate historical style.

For this project, though, we weren’t trying to do historic preservation or to restore the porch to what it originally looked like. Instead, we wanted to give it detail more appropriate to what it once may have had. Rather than trying to match what was once there, I suggested that this was trying to rhyme with what it had been. From a purist perspective, I’m sure this is sacrilege. But I think it is an improvement over what had been there before, even if it’s not as accurate as it might’ve been.

The porch was showing some signs of serious distress. The original lintel beam had been stripped of its detail and covered in aluminum sheathing some time in the past. It looked like it was failing structurally, and the project was to stabilize it and return it to functionality, but not to try to make it a historical restoration.

The two center columns (which are round, fluted columns) are still in very good shape, and only needed to be stripped and repainted. The two outboard columns (which were square, built-up board columns) were suffering considerable rot at the base and needed to be replaced.

When the carpenters started prying off the aluminum cladding and the old boards, we discovered that the whole thing was a box beam that had been nested in for some time. There was lots of pine straw and grass, and also loads of walnuts (if I’m recalling correctly) though there hasn’t been a walnut tree in the area for more than a couple decades. Rather than re-facing it, once we opened it up, it became apparent that the whole lintel structure needed to be rebuilt.

When the aluminum was stripped off, it was clear from the paint traces on the old boards that there had been some kind of a band across the middle which had been removed before the aluminum was put on. And the pediment of the front door suggests what the original detail probably was. The dentils on the porch are larger than what is above the door (again, rhyming rather than matching), but they seem more appropriately scaled to the porch.

It certainly looked better after the lintel was rebuilt and the new columns were in place, but that wasn’t the end.  It took a while for the trim millwork to arrive, so it didn’t get installed before it was winter. But, now that the weather is getting better, Mike Kessler, the carpenter for this project, was able to get out there and finish it off. There is still some touch up and painting that needs to be done before it’s ready for final photographs, but it’s mostly done, and good enough to share these images.

It’s not unlikely that the corner columns are not originals, and with some of the details we reinvented there, we were repeating past mistakes. But, as I noted already, the main goal was to restore stability and functionality to the porch, rather than to try to restore it to a historical ideal.

 

US Army Abandoning LEED Certification [EcoGeek]

[Originally posted at EcoGeek. It's not entirely new news, since the Army began adopting ASHRAE 189.1 in 2010, but it's further movement in a direction they were already headed in. It's probably a greater blow to LEED, since the DoD was one of its biggest adopters.

AIA Michigan COTE has been working to get more information about the new International Green Construction Code (IGCC) out to our members, and I have to admit that I'm still not completely clear about how the IGCC interacts with current state building code. I do think that there will be an increasing move toward having green building practice embedded in code.

At the same time, I think that LEED can maintain its leadership by further pushing the envelope. LEED has become very mainstream, and that is both good (in terms of overall uptake of the message) and bad (in that it has become less distinctive). LEED has to finesse the balance between being cutting edge and being accessible. I think, as it has become more and more popular, it has become too ordinary, and it needs to regain some of its distinctiveness and its status as marking truly exceptional buildings.]

[Edit to add: Some further clarification came out after I wrote this original article. See the followup posted at EcoGeek, as well, for a fuller picture of what is going on.]

While the headline may sound dire, it’s not an indication that the US Army is giving up on green building. Instead, the Army has announced it will use a new construction code of its own which is based on the ASHRAE 189.1 standard for new buildings and renovations, rather than continue to use LEED or the High Perfromance Sustainable Buildings standards. This new standard will “govern all new construction, major renovations and leased space acquisition.” The Army had already adopted ASHRAE 189.1 late in 2010.

Some of the impetus for this change is political. In 2011, Congress acted to prevent any Department of Defense project from achieving LEED gold or platinum certification as part of that year’s Defense Reauthorization bill.

Moreover, LEED is fundamentally a marketing program that recognizes buildings built to a particular high standard of performance. At its core, the Army is more concerned about having better buildings that it can operate more efficiently. Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Dr. Dorothy Robyn stated that, “With more than 300,000 buildings and 2.2 billion square feet of building space, DoD has a footprint three times that of Wal-Mart and six times that of GSA. Our corresponding energy bill is $4 billion annually.” The Defense Department recognizes the importance of green buildings for its overall operational effectiveness.

The armed forces have been one of the biggest early adopters of LEED, and if all of the services are going to move away from using LEED as their standard for improved performance, that is likely to have a strong effect on USGBC, GBCI, and the LEED program as a whole. “The repercussions of this announcement will be widespread,” notes Green Building Law Update. “For federal contractors, this is a game changer. The LEED AP credential will be less valuable. Past performance highlighting LEED certification will be less valuable, if not totally irrelevant.”

ASHRAE 189.1 is not some lesser standard. It was develeoped by ASHRAE (the professional organization of mechanical engineers), US Green Building Council, and IESNA (the professional organization of lighting engineers), as well as the International Code Council. Moreover, the Army’s action is not unprecedented. The International Code Council has also developed the International Green Construction Code (IGCC) which incorporates the ANSI/ASHRAE/USGBC/IES Standard 189.1 as a “jurisdictional compliance option.” Increasingly, building codes are going to directly incorporate green measures instead of relying on third-party standards that are merely optional.

Ultimately, this may push LEED in new directions. LEED was meant to push the envelope and to transform the marketplace. In that respect, it has accomplished much of that initial goal. As the industry has moved to embrace LEED, perhaps in the coming years, LEED will again push for even greater improvements in building technology and again make LEED an indication of a truly elite building.

via: Green Building Law Update

 

Open Building [Green Building Elements]

[This article was originally posted on Green Building Elements several years ago (April 2007). With the recent discussion about the concept of "open building," I thought it would be good to copy it here for reference.]

The strategy of “open building” can be traced back to European and Japanese roots. While it has been widely adopted in those parts of the world, it is only relatively recently beginning to see any use in North America. However, an increased interest in pre-fabricated construction is helping to expand awareness of this approach to building.

The principle is to maintain a separation between the different aspects of the building in order to be able to make repairs and do upgrades with a minimum of interference with other elements of the building. Open building stipulates separate zones or chases for different functions and services. This will, for example, make it easier to change plumbing systems without needing to repair other systems that cross or interfere with access to the necessary parts of the plumbing system.

Open building also makes construction easier by minimizing the interference between different systems, so that the installation of different systems can take place at the same time, rather than needing to be staggered one after another. With each trade and system given its own designated area, the builders (and also the future remodelers or repairers) of those systems can do their work with much less concern about damaging other elements of the building.

Open building lays out six “layers” with different lifespans. They are:

• Site – the location; building site itself. Timeless duration
• Structure – the framework; the “bones” of the building. 100 to 300 year lifespan
• Skin – the cladding. 40 to 100 year lifespan
• Space plan – the interior partition walls. 10 to 30 year life
• Services – electrical, plumbing, mechanical, and heating/ventillation systems. Updated every 1 to 10 years
• Stuff – belongings and furnishings. Can change monthly

Open building is often incorporated into pre-fab systems. Concentrating all of the plumbing elements in one area, for example, helps to put all elements of that system in one area for easier repair access. It also serves to reduce the amount of plumbing material needed. If all water uses are concentrated in one area, there is less piping needed which can mean a reduction in the amount of copper or other material used in the construction. The benefits of engineered construction with pre-fabrication, rather than having all of the installation of the services done on-site, can make for better use of materials and better buildings.

Taken to its extreme, however, open building can become restrictive, forcing configurations on the building that do not serve the needs of the inhabitants. If other parts of the plan are forced into awkward configurations in order to accommodate the structure of open building, then the savings in that one area may be lost in other areas. However, there can be benefits to understanding open building even without wholly embracing the open building system as the chief principle for constructing a building. Looking at the building with an eye to the life cycle of the different systems can lead to a better building, and can help reduce later problems.

Buildings need to be built to meet immediate needs. But they also need to be constructed in a way that future needs and changes to the building are also given consideration. Much in the same way that we need to conserve resources for the use of future generations, the buildings we build today will also be used and re-used well into the future, and a longer-term approach to building is another part of building green.

Article: Reinventing the House (Fine Homebuilding reprint – PDF)

 

Getting Cited (in a good way)

Several years ago, when I was writing for Green Building Elements, I posted a piece on the concept of “open building” which was a concept being espoused, at the time, by Bensonwood Homes. And the idea derives from earlier writing by Stewart Brand. In short, it is a principle that is based on recognition that different parts of a building have different lifespans, and attempts to accommodate that in the design. To quote myself from that earlier article:

The principle is to maintain a separation between the different aspects of the building in order to be able to make repairs and do upgrades with a minimum of interference with other elements of the building. Open building stipulates separate zones or chases for different functions and services. This will, for example, make it easier to change plumbing systems without needing to repair other systems that cross or interfere with access to the necessary parts of the plumbing system.

Last week, I found my name being cited on the Greenbuilding-list, from David Bergman, who has written a book (Sustainable Design: A Critical Guide for Architects and Interior, Lighting, and Environmental Designers). I had some correspondence with him when he was working on the book, but I didn’t think I had really contributed all that much; mostly I thought I had pointed him at Benson and Brand, but he was talking about it “based on a combination of Benson, Stewart Brand and Philip Proefrock’s writing on the idea.”  So apparently, I’m a source to be cited on this.

Even more, when I tried to look up the original article, so that I could link to it, the top two hits in my search were a couple of articles posted on Treehugger by Lloyd Alter that cite me on the concept, as well. I had no idea!

Bergman’s graphic is a nice combination of the nesting of elements along with the respective timelines for each of the six levels:

I still think the reasoning behind the approach is sound, but it needs to be balanced in application. Building lots of additional chases and access points for the different building components is more likely to result in adding on extraneous stuff, rather than reducing the amount of material in a building. Exposed ducts and services certainly allow for easy access and flexibility, but that aesthetic isn’t always appropriate.

With Bergman’s book due out in a couple months, I should maybe think about this concept some more, and have some additional writings about this as an approach to building. I’ll also get that original article reposted here in the near future.

 

More Thoughts on Shipping Containers

I’m still intrigued by the idea of the shipping container as an element for some kinds of basic construction.

There are cases where it becomes nothing more than an image element, and the containers themselves are so worked over and re-engineered that any benefit that may have come from using them as a simple prefabricated system is lost. I still find those interesting visually, sometimes. But I don’t particularly like the abandonment of the essentials of the material. If you are going to use something, you ought to use it honestly.

I’d like to work on a small house concept that uses a couple of containers as the structural base. I have a couple different elements I have been thinking about, but I’m not sure they are compatible with one another.

One idea is that the container itself is able to support a good deal of load, and that one of the biggest drawbacks in using them is that the containers themselves are narrow. But it should be possible to set two containers down with some separation between them, and then use some other structure to span the gap and create a larger space.

Another idea I’ve had is to create a bracket that could be attached to the container itself which would serve to create an overhang and roof. The projection from the face would help to provide shade for solar control. I’ve also thought that vegetated roofs for shipping container construction just make so much sense. Containers are strong enough to support the load easily, and this bracket idea should be robust enough that it could carry the roof system out to the edge.

Putting the two ideas together means that the spanning structure needs to become heavier if it is going to carry the load of a vegetated roof. So the two ideas aren’t incompatible. But I don’t know how well they go together necessarily.

One further idea is the concept of using shipping containers stacked on top of an existing building as a fast and interesting method for adding inexpensive space to a building. The image at the top is an incomplete model for the Longshore project (what I previously called the Theoretical Project, where 56′ long containers would be used to span the existing one-story building (assuming the masonry walls were, in fact, adequate to support the added load).
This photo from an earlier post about that project shows the existing building from a similar perspective.

The projecting roof on top of the containers that is, in fact, the bracket/overhang green roof. The stack of 3 containers (meant to be a stair tower to the new second floor) is perhaps committing the very sin I was just complaining about in using the container look, but requiring a lot of extra structure to actually make it work. This was never anything but a concept, so I never got further into how it might actually work.

I expect I will keep on exploring these ideas in the coming year. Stay tuned for more.

Other articles on the topic of shipping containers:
The Pros and Cons of Cargo Container Architecture from Arch Daily

Exhibition about shipping container architecture in Dusseldorf earlier this year. (Click the headline image for the slide show)

 

December LEED Links

A list of common mistakes occurring in LEED-H projects. Good for reference.

Top 10 LEED snafus – an article to share with LEED classes.

Green or Greenwash The Quiz This one, from Building Green, isn’t easy, even if you’re deeply involved in sustainability and green building. I got what I’d consider a borderline pass on this myself (9 out of 12), though I would argue the subjective nature of one of the questions that I answered differently than their correct answer.

 

Thinking About Students and Project Presentation

I’ve been a juror/visiting critic/guest for several different sets of final presentations for various architectural projects in the last week or so. That has gotten me thinking some more about architectural presentation boards, particularly after the last set of presentations, which were for a competition.

A lot of what all of the visiting critics were asked to address was the presentation of the information. In a competition, you aren’t there to explain your board(s), so all the information needs to be there and needs to be well organized and readily understandable. Getting into that mindset has gotten me thinking about that whole part of architecture. While it is (at least one hopes) helpful to provide feedback to the students about their projects, it is also good to stretch some of the mental muscles with thinking about things that often don’t get that much consideration in the post-school working world.

I also saw this image in a recent AIArchitect newsletter (about the stalled projects database, which is a topic for another day) which I thought was particularly effective. Instead of just looking at it and hoping that I remember it, I’m saving it here for future reference.

I’ve noticed that architectural presentation (or display) boards (and variants thereof) are one of the big search terms that keeps leading people to this site. I don’t think that I’m a particular source of information on that topic, but maybe it’s something that I can actually be helpful with for others, as well. Architects can always use more visual ideas, and I’ll stay on the lookout for other sites with good images for presentations. I’d appreciate references to other good sites with info about this, as well.

It would be interesting to do a course that was entirely about information presentation, and the project design was secondary (or even a non-factor entirely), not unlike my old materials and Methods class, or other non-studio classes I took where we still tried to incorporate a bit of design in the assignments, but where that wasn’t the focus of the class.

The other class idea I’ve been thinking about is a materials and research class that would focus on developing the skills to search out and evaluate new materials. Again, it would not be a studio class, but would be focused on seeking out new materials, critically considering their claims and benefits, and figuring out how they might best be used in actual practice.

 

Untitled Mixed-Use Project

One of the architects I regularly follow on Twitter, Andrew Maynard, recently wrote: “Just received a new commission to work on a small warehouse in fitzroy that I had always dreamed of playing with. #Fate?”

I’d like to share his fate, with a similar circumstance; there’s a building that is now for sale in Ann Arbor at Beakes and Fifth, just north of Kerrytown [here's the real estate listing for it].

I’ve long had an idealized view of this building as an architects’ studio/family loft. I’ve seen several Chicago loft conversions of old industrial buildings like this that have been turned into residential/office spaces like that, and the building typology and the location would be pretty wonderful. I just don’t happen to have a spare 7 figures to spend on this.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t work on it as a project.

Eventually, someone is going to buy the building and want to do something with it. Unless it’s another architect who buys it (someone with my kind of ideas, plus a less anemic wallet), they’re likely to need an architect for it, and I’d be thrilled to be involved in working on this.

Apparently, this building has been being used as an indoor parking garage for quite a few years. It deserves something far better than that. It’s only a single story, so there could be an opportunity to build upwards. The site is at the edge between the Kerrytown district and a residential neighborhood. It’s not right for a huge expansion, and I suspect the irregular size and tight site would make it prohibitively difficult to do anything that really blew out the existing building.

So, let me know if you’re interested in doing something with this building, or if you know someone who would like to do something with it.

 

Architects and Business

Part of my transition from employee to sole-practitioner running my own small firm has been the issue of dealing with the business side of things. Not only are architects often not comfortable talking with clients about money and business matters, but they are also not very forthcoming with each other.

One aspect of my career as an employee was that I constantly wanted to have more knowledge and insight about the business practices of running a project and running a firm. The moves I made when I changed firms were, at least to some extent, driven by a (perceived) opportunity to have more exposure to that level of the business (though I’d say in retrospect, it never really worked out like that). So it’s good to find an article discussing the business side of practice.

I’m not sure now who flagged it to bring it to my attention (someone on Twitter, I think), but this is a very good article about When ethics of professional school and business clash that discusses some of the dichotomy between education and what the operation of a business requires.

I’m always interested in finding more information about the business of running a small architectural practice. When I was at the state AIA meeting a few weeks ago, I learned that there is a statewide Small Firm Roundtable. At present, it’s a pretty dormant group, but there’s supposed to be new information coming from the national organization to give the different state and regional groups a new impetus, so I’ll look forward to that.

I should also be more on the lookout for other small firm practitioners who are blogging and writing about the day-to-day aspects of practice. It’s lonely out there, and professional colleagues are a good thing to have.

 

Creatherm Radiant Slab Base – [JetsonGreen]

I posted an article for Jetson Green on Creatherm: A Simple, Flexible Radiant Slab. I think this is a pretty interesting product. I really admire the flexibility it offers for unusual tubing layout when you want to do something that isn’t strictly on a 6 x 6 wire mesh grid, which typical in-slab installation requires.

It should also be a lot faster to install, since it locks the tubing into place instead of needing to be tied on at regular intervals. I think I’d be less likely to use it on an upper floor instead of a slab, but I would certainly still consider it. But I see a definite advantage to having a single material that provides both under-slab insulation and tubing layout in a single material.

The only downside I see with this is that the tubing is buried further down in the slab, which makes it less responsive and takes longer for the heat to propagate through the slab.

I’m still trying to find out pricing information about it.

Radiant flooring is a popular method for heating a space. Typically, installing a radiant slab on grade has required the time- and labor-intensive process of laying down wire mesh and then tying the tubing to the grid of the mesh to provide an even layout. But using the Creatherm radiant floor panel makes it faster and easier to install radiant tubing, as well as providing an insulation layer beneath the floor.

[Read the whole article at JetsonGreen.]