Vermont Plat House - some details

I received a few more close up shots of the house progress yesterday. The owner is clearly enjoying seeing this come together and has been very generous in sharing it here with us. This is looking out from the side patio next to the master bedroom. The owner may screen in the porch here. We will have to see what he chooses. Now at the other end of the house looking at the overhang of the main roof. The standing seam roofing work is just about done. I think the anodized aluminum looks just great. The chimney is clad in the same material. Here is a close up of a section of siding going on. These windows are into the master bedroom dressing area and bath. That is an exhaust fan outlet from the bath up top, and a fitting for an outdoor shower on the wall. The windows are from Eagle - an aluminum clad wood window, the company was recently purchased by Andersen in order to compete with the likes of Pella, Marvin, Weathersheild, and Lowen in this category (Andersen windows are vinyl clad wood). I think they look great - I belived they are anodized aluminum on the exterior which looks great with the roof fascia above.

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Vermont Plat House - more progress images

More progress, more images. What more could we ask for? Hey? What happened to all the snow? Not sure, but it was 86 in Philadelphia today (crazy!) The fire place is coming together. More siding outside - this time marching around the guest bedrooms. The owner is using this recessed extruded aluminum baseboard. Thar she blows!

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Vermont Plat House - moving along

Even though the snow looks like its here to stay, the outside work is moving along now. The metal roofing is going down, and the siding has begun. The machine on the trailer is the pan former that rolls the standing seam panels from the metal coil. The roof panels were going to be anodized aluminum, but I am not sure if that is what was finally used. It could be galvalume. Meanwhile progress has been made inside. Rough in is complete and drywall hung, everything closed in. Here we are looking across the living room towards the kitchen. The large window in the kitchen opens to the dining porch. And outside the siding has just begun. The plywood panels are protecting the tinted concrete floors. A lot of finish work to complete, but almost in the final stretch.

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a material and product resource blog

My friend Justin, who many of you may know as ModernLover at several of the busy modern housing and prefab messageboards, has always been an incredible source of material and product knowledge. As a remodeling contractor for many years he's had his hands in everything, and the son of a resource librarian for a large design firm, he's also had a pulse on what is coming down the road. Well, he's finally put it all together in an awesome blog called Materialicio.us. It's not officially launched yet, but Justin is filling out the starting content at an amazing pace - spilling his guts as the saying goes. Downloading a big chunk of his knowledge and resources every day. Its going to be a great resource for us all. Thanks Justin.

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small wind

I am fascinated by small scale wind power generation. The whole idea that you could have a bank of small generators along the ridge of your home, or integrated into a balcony or stair rail, just fascinates me. At some point our entire structures must participate in making power this way. There was a great piece in the TreeHugger blog today about tiny wind generators: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/03/hong_kong_inven.php Continue reading "small wind"

IBU - Competition Entry

We have completed the competition entry featuring the multi unit building composed of 1 bedroom IBU modules. And as promised earlier I am posting the drawing panels here on my blog. The proposal was for a student housing village composed of a series of these stack IBU structures. As the competition was being held in concert with a conference on green building, the student housing was proposed as a test bed for new sustainable energy and building systems. It was proposed that the units serve the Engineering school allowing for the students to live in and work at innovating and optimizing the new systems being designed at the school. The first panel showed a conceptual site plan, and larger floor plan of typical units. Click on the images for a larger version. The second panel described characteristics of the experience living in the complex. One of our stock plans, the Steel Case House stood in for a demonstration house that was part of the concept for outreach. The final panel contains the exploded view which was previously posted, and describes the modular system in more detail, including outlining other options that are not illustrated. In some ways this panel has the most important information if you wish to understand how we will make the leap from this project to individual houses. Many of the accessories described here will be part of the house system as well, and the roof top options are particularly interesting and fun. I am really looking forward to developing these.

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