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The Steel Case House may have a great living room, but the kitchen and family room is where everybody hangs out during a party!
Continue reading "0357 Steel Case House party is always best in the kitchen"
The living room of the Steel Case House has a nice feature - a small niche, a room within a room if you will. This is a perfect spot for a more intimate seating group, perhaps a place for smaller video screen, or a place to set up a home desk, or a spot for that collection of whatever it is you collect. Its your call.
Continue reading "0357 Steel Case House living room niche"
In a nod to the Case Study House #8 which inspired the Steel Case House design, the master bedroom is configured like a loft overlooking the living room. Although the rendering shows this as an open loft its possible to configure this for rolling shutter that would provide privacy when desired.
Continue reading "0357 Steel Case House bedroom loft"
In the spirit of fully describing our house plan designs, today we take you to the upstairs hallway of the Steel Case House. This space is at once very ordinary, and completely demonstrative of everything this house is about. Soak it in!
Continue reading "0357 Steel Case House upstairs hall"
The entry foyer of the Steel Case House is so much like a traditional American colonial house - right inside the front door you are confronted with the home's stair hall, a coat closet off to the side, and kitchen one way, living room the other... But all the ways it is so not like a colonial house is more than obvious everywhere else!
Continue reading "0357 Steel Case House entry foyer"
One of the interesting things about the Steel Case House is that its available in several version. The logic here is that a steel house remains unusual, and as such difficult to get built. Either home builders have no experience in steel, or large commercial fabricators have no interest in doing a structure that is small like a house. By offering a range of configurations for the rest of the construction it makes it easier to find a combination that is workable with the trades you have easy access to. So the original uses a combination of masonry and wood frame to finish out. The SIPs version trades the masonry for insulated panels, better for cold climates. And the metal version trades carpentry for all steel trades, good if you have a light commercial builder to tackle the whole thing. And last the Timber Case version trades all steel for wood construction.
Continue reading "0357 Steel Case House metal edition, as in all steel"
The Steel Case House doesn't let on much about what is happening on the other side of that front door. On arrival you find a covered front door, a window from the upstairs hall overlooking the parking court. And a whole lot of solid don't you mess with me block wall. Well just on the other side of that front door is a glass box of a house that gives you a great slice of the view from every room. But you've got to work for it first - you have to get past that block wall. Good luck.
Continue reading "0357 Steel Case House reserved on the outside"
This has always been one of my favorite view points of the Steel Case House - in the living room, simultaneously experiencing the double height living room, the more intimate niche off the living room - perfect for a conversation oriented seating area, or a smaller screen AV viewing spot, or a great niche for a home desk. And at the same time getting the long view down the curtain wall of the house to the kitchen and family room at the far end. This image is of the SIPs version of the house, utilizing insulated sandwich panels to offset the large glass areas.
Continue reading "0357 Steel Case House - in the living room"
There it is - we've said it. The Steel Case House is inspired by the legendary Case Study House #8 designed by design leggings Ray and Charles Eames. The Case Study houses held the promise of a future of modern houses, an optimistic view of the future unhinged from all the presumptions and baggage about what a house should be like. The Eames house for its part was fabricated out of an assortment of catalog parts made for industrial buildings - warehouse window sash, lightweight steel truss joists, and a factory made spiral stair, all put together in an elegant way into s simple steel box of a house. Unfortunately as we know, the dreams of the Case Study Houses did not play out the way they hoped, but they were and remain a huge influence on modern housing today. For the Steel Case House we took away more than the open spaces and steel aesthetic. The Steel Case is designed to be put together from standard off the shelf parts. While a steel house will never be as inexpensive as a typical wood framed house, the ability to use common products such as windows and siding allows you to control your budget.
Continue reading "0357 Steel Case House inspired by the Case Study House 8"
The Steel Case House was our first effort to make a steel house in a catalog plan. Houses of steel have always held an iconic image for people interested in modern houses. But it remains a difficult thing to achieve because the construction business is just not set up to deliver small steel structures. Never the less the goal here was to make a simple steel structure, and then let the carpenters take it from there. Once the carpenters get in there, its all pretty normal house building.
Continue reading "0357 Steel Case House is a steel house for the rest of us"
This plan set has been kicking around on the back-burner for a few years now. I had created the Design Prints and started on the Construction Prints, but set it aside to develop other designs. Its nice to have four variations on the Steel Case House, but getting other designs published took priority. But I'm in spring cleaning mode now and it was time to finish this and get it online.
The Timber Case House differs from the rest of the Steel Case line in that it substitutes an engineered timber frame for the steel frame that gives the line its name. The SIPs entry wall and roof increase the performance of the building envelope making up for the vast glazed area on the back side of the house. If you have not studied this design in while now is a good time to take a second look.
0357T Timber Case House
A few more plans sets to go and the initial collection will be complete.
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Continue reading "0357T - Timber Case House, Construction Prints Done!"Finally, introducing the Timber Case House, an all wood version of the Steel Case House.
Why oh why would I do this. Well there have been a number of inquiries over the years for a wood version - people who have liked the house but did not want to venture into the exercise of procuring the steel frame; or simply had a preference for wood. On my part I have a fascination with our current engineered wood products, parallel strand lumber (PSL) and engineered roof and floor trusses. This was a perfect opportunity to make a house that showcased this technology rather than bury it in the walls as is so often the case.
An interior showing the exposed PSL posts, beams, and wood/steel floor trusses.
And the familiar exterior with pressure treated PSL members for the exposed posts and beams.
Design prints will be completed shortly, and Construction Prints to follow soon after. I'll announce it here as usual. This will complete the 4 variations of the Steel CaseHouse which I mentioned earlier in the blog. Next I will try to get back to some of the other designs that are in progress.
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Continue reading "0357 Steel Case goes Timber!"The cold climate version of the Steel Case House is complete.
Design Prints and Construction Prints of the new cold climate version of the Steel Case House are complete. The design now has its own page on our catalog site. The primary change from the original is the replacement of the masonry wall with a SIPs panel wall of the same thickness. This 8" thick SIPs panel greatly raises the average U value of the envelope offsetting the large window area. In northern and mountain climates we may still need to reduce the window area, but along with advanced glazing this provides more options for balancing windows with energy efficiency.
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Continue reading "0357 Steel Case SIPs version complete"The cold climate version of the Steel Case House is taking shape
the renderings are done, Design Prints prepared, and the web page coming together.
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Continue reading "Steel Case cold climate"the cold climate version of the 0357 Steel Case House
This is a modification of the original 0357 Steel Case House to prepare it for colder climates. The thrust of it is the replacement of the concrete block wall with a 8" sips panel wall. It is looking a bit like this under way:
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Continue reading "also in the works"adding depth to 3d images has long been the holy grail of 3d modeling
We have all experienced stereoscopic images. We have stereoscopic vision, so everyday sight is what I am talking about. The few inches between our eyes provide a slightly different view point. For any given surface that we see one eye sees a little bit more or a little bit less of it. While the difference is very slight it is sufficient for us to judge distances in 3d space. This is something we have not really been able to capture when we do drawings. While we have gotten pretty good at depicting 3d space the images don't create the sense of relative depth that our two eyes provide.
There have been many attempts to provide this vision to flat images, and we are pretty familiar with them I'm sure. With the advent of photography early on there were efforts to make 3d images with special viewers and cameras that took two images with the required offset. We have probably used a "View Master" image viewer which worked on the same principal. I'm sure that you have tried a blue/red filter glasses to view images or movies in 3d. These rely on the filters to deliver the proper image to each eye. More recently this has been done more effectively with polarizing filters on the projectors and viewers glasses. Sometimes the effect can be achieved by simply staring into the distance with the respective images directly in front of each eye.
The two images below are such stereo images, each slightly offset from the other.
Another way to put the images together into a 3d view does not require you to feed the right and left images discreetly to each eye. Its been found that if the right and left images are presented sequentially, alternating in the same space that your mind will read the spatial depth in a similar manner. If you click on the images above such a sequencing will load. The depth of field in this image will exaggerate the effect - it will look a bit like an earthquake but nothing that will make you nauseous!
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Continue reading "stereoscopic viewing"and then drag
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Continue reading "click"The Steel Case House Metal Edition has been posted. This all metal modification to the Steel Case House stock plan has been posted to its own web page in our online catalog and officially titled the Steel Case House Metal Edition. All of the renderings have been generated and the web page follows the same structure as the original design's . Right now this page is not linked from the catalog directory - you can not navigate to the page unless you know the url, or if you have come through this blog's link. We want to gauge the interest in this all metal design among the people who interested in modern houses, who have been watching the design process and reading livemodern in general. Send us an email if you are hesitant to post, let us know what you think of this.
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Continue reading "Steel Case House mods - Design Posted"A view of the more or less complete modifications.
There are just a few items that I need to revise and the model will be complete for generating the renderings. But more or less, there it is - the Steel Case House in its new all metal clothes! I have decided to show the overhang braces in this version as they will be required almost anywhere that has any snow load. I am quite pleased with the transformation and what light it sheds on the design. One of the goals of my own design brief for these stock plans is to create house designs that can stand up to personalization, execution in a variety of materials without losing their integrity. I think this redressing speaks to that. The original for comparison.
I am not going to be showing too much more now till it appears on the lamidesign site in the plan catalog. If this metal version connects with you let us know about it. I am trying to gauge how people feel about it while we work on making it available. Shoot us an email at plans@lamidesign.com
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Continue reading "Steel Case House mods - another preview"I thought I would offer this low res draft image as a good preview of how the changes to the house appear on the interior.
This is a direct comparison for the corresponding image from the original design . There is more work to do, but almost everything in this view is complete.
previous comments:
Posted by Rous at 05-03-2004 05:55 PM As a big fan of CSH8, when I first saw the Steel Case house I loved it, but wondered if I would like it more if there was more steel in it. Now I have seen it both ways and must say I prefer the original version with CMU and wood floors. Maybe it is the Sketch-up images, but the steel that replaced the CMU seems a bit too heavy and industrial for the rest of the house. One of the great things, IMO about the Eames house is how it looks so light and airy. As strange as it may seem, I think the CMU version gets at that more than the steel version.
Posted by lavardera at 05-03-2004 06:29 PM All good observations Jeff. The original version's wood floors mediate the hardness of the cmu wall and the steel frame. The metal version's steel panel wall and concrete slab floors leaves it without much warmth. I leave it to you to decide which version appeals to you - the extreme that each represents is a useful sounding board for sizing up your own preferences. Here in the north east I would tend towards the original (probably the upcoming SIPs version which will trade out the CMU wall for an 8" wall of insulated panels.) Its telling that there have been serious inquiries about the metal version for areas of CA subject to wild fires.
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Continue reading "Steel Case House mods - early preview"
