Studio Render Inc.

Sustainable design brainstorm

adamD — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:10:32 +0000

The following is a brainstorm for designing a ZERO ENERGY residential structure in Detroit, Michigan that I used several years ago.

Standard electric resistance 52 gallon storage tank
Collector rated at an energy production of 45,600 Btu/day at the low temperature (95°)

WHITE ROOFS:
o    Altering residences to white roofs may reduce cooling energy needs.
o    Average 19% reduction
o    White tile provides the best cooling related performance post WWII nearly all roofs were white

Super Efficient Refrigerator (Kenmore 55792)

PHOTOVOLTIC MODULES:
o Single crystalline modules have a maximum power rating of 75W
o BYPASS diodes are installed in each module to minimize loss due partial shading

Interior mounted duct system (R-5 flex ducts)

WIND POWER:
o    One of the most promising new energy sources that can serve as an alternative to fossil fuel-generated electricity
o    Wind Power COULD be our main source of electricity
§    20% of supply with only 1% of the US land
o    Large numbers of wind generators are required to produce useful amounts of heat or electricity

SOLAR POWER:
o    The sun provides enough energy in 1 MINUTE to supply the world’s energy needs for 1 YEAR
o    Used in 2 forms: thermal & photovoltaic
§    To warm building, heat water & generate electricity
§    Cell-module-panel-array-array field
o    Non-polluting, no moving parts that could break down, requires little maintenance and has a life of 20-30 years with low running costs
o    An average home has more than enough roof area to produce enough solar energy to supply all of it’s power needs
o    The solar equipment will eventually pay for itself in 2-5 years depending on the amount of sun the location receives

REQUIREMENTS:
o    KITCHEN-20 amp small appliance circuit
o    APPLIANCES-separate circuits for built-in’s
o    LAUNDRY-20 amp circuit with a 240-volt circuit
o    OUTLETS-1 circuit for every 575 SF; any point must be within 65 feet for an outlet; maximum height for an outlet is 5.5 feet; any wall 2’ wide must have an outlet; hallway requires 10 foot/outlet
o    BATHROOM-separate 20amp circuit

Structuralism (1917-1968)

adamD — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 03:42:36 +0000

Structuralism (1917-1968), brought on a language based theory which was based in binary oppositions. Ferdinand de Saussure began this journey with the introduction of linguistic meaning as a function of differential relations between signs. The object to be viewed and the object viewed from. This signifier and signified theory was controlled by the fact that “A” means “A”. Words connect to objects and that is where understanding and meaning are controlled; everything is interconnected. In the same thought process the individual is part of the whole and the structure is the center of reality. The question then changes from “Is it good” to “How does it work”.

Adam A. Dailide - Studio Render Inc.

Phenomenology in Architecture

adamD — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 03:04:44 +0000

Phenomenology was based on place space character (noun preposition adjective), which dealt with the human experience and involved all 5 senses in the moment. This Humanist based theory, where the human is the center, is a visual experience. An experience at one moment compared to another can be completely different depending on local and global factors. The place affects the quality of space and the Site helps create the moment of the space. Due to these factors a moment in space is different from the exact same space at a different moment. Items do not exist on their own and their sense of identity is based on that fact. The functional uses of space are based in a quantitative nature that must approach space and identity.

Adam A. Dailide - Studio Render Inc.

Post Structuralism

adamD — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 03:55:30 +0000

Post Structuralism (1968-1999), was a set of theories that were a reaction to Structuralist thought. With the influence of Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze a language based system was born from these philosophical stances. In opposition to Structuralism, thought changed to it is the texture not just the text; anything can mean anything. “A” no longer just means “A”, it can also mean “B”, “C”, “D”, etc. Henri Lefebvre states that “a specific or indefinite multiplicity of meanings, a shifted hierarchy in which now one, now another meanings comes momentarily to the fore, by means of – and for the sake of – a particular action”. In the theory of language we see that text is an element of how we understand meanings. The meaning of text depends directly upon the texture. As Fredric Jameson points out, we can not remove ourselves from the fabric of society so we can not fully understand the “truth” of an object. This non-objective understanding of space points out a power struggle between the dominance of history and the present. Since there is no truth in the object, the space becomes powerful in defining what the object means. This approach depends highly on society and how space is perceived.

Adam A. Dailide - Studio Render Inc.

Historical Environmental Review - Jacobs’ House I

adamD — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 04:26:07 +0000

Project: Jacobs’ House I

Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright

Location: Madison, Wisconsin

Client: Herbert and Katherine Jacobs

Year Built: 1936
Historically speaking, in this case pre-1940’s, building took into account many factors that the technology of today has let us overlook. Factors such as building orientation, using local materials and designing to minimize expensive excess, to name a few. Architects specify tile that comes from Italy, steel that must be expensively procured, shipped and attached, and designing HVAC to overcome bad design so that everyone is comfortable. The question is why we have gone away from responsible designing and building techniques; because we are used to taking technology and what we are able to get for granted. Architects like Frank Lloyd Wright were known for using site materials for construction and being “Organic Architecture”. That doesn’t mean they are sustainable structures, but many are very good examples of what could be done easily in today’s society to maintain environmental sensitivity.

An example of one of these structures is the Jacobs House by Frank Lloyd Wright which is dated 1936. The house was commissioned by Herbert and Katherine Jacobs in the hopes that they could get a Wright home at minimal cost. Wright called this design a Usonian house, which stood for United States of North America or “a dwelling “of and for” the United States.” This type of design was based on the promise of an affordable, beautiful home for a Democratic America. These homes were designed in a way that space was not wasted and the spaces were placed to maximize efficiency. The “core” consisted of the kitchen, laundry and utilities, which in turn when grouped together, piping was reduced. Spaces then built off of the core and usually spread out in an “L” configuration. Other notable aspects of these homes were typically a concrete floor slab with gravity heating and sandwich partitions to reduce on cost. With that said, this “economical” home was to be efficient in all manners.

The Jacobs House was specifically and purposely designed to keep costs low while retaining an artistic feel. The following is a breakdown of the successful environmental issues that are addressed by the design.

· This dwelling is broken into a private and public facade. The public face is on the Northern side and only has small clerestory windows as means of fenestration. These windows allow natural light to bleed into the Northern spaces; people gravitate to spaces that have natural light coming from more than one direction. The private face of the home is on the Southern side and maximizes natural light with ample windows and glass doors. This area is covered by a large overhang that in the summertime will shade and resist the summer sun from overheating the spaces while the winter sun amply heats the spaces comfortably.

· Wright achieves a public and private breakdown in the floor plan as well. The public wing, located on the west side, contains the living room, which is about 1/3 of the square footage, as well as the core of the home. Having the living room orientated to the southwest allows the room to become bright and cheery which is the prime location for a space that will be used the majority of the time. The east wing contains the private areas of the bedrooms, study and shop. Sleeping to the east allows the morning sun to make its way into the spaces and becomes pleasant spaces in the morning hours.

· The home has 2 entries off of the East facade and both are sheltered entries which aids in the ability to keep exterior conditions from affecting the interior. One entry actually has a thermal break, 2 sets of doors to entry a main space, which gives a chance for the outdoor conditions to be “trapped” in a space before entering the actual living spaces.

· In an attempt to minimize piping in the home, Wright grouped the bath, kitchen and laundry in a central location.

· The “L-shaped” home has benefits beyond the floor plan. A long narrow structure will allow sunlight to reach father into an interior and therefore making artificial lighting less needed. This shape also allows for more privacy due to the fact that rooms are not clustered together.

· The home was built on a concrete slab that contained gravity heating, which means hot water pipes are run in the floors and by means of gravity the heat rises out of the floor and aids in conditioning the spaces. Since heat rises this is an optimum location to heat.

· The home has an interior fireplace which helps in heating the spaces by means of thermal storage inside the masonry walls. It is located in the largest room, living room, which would be the hardest space to condition.

· The walls, besides the Northern Masonry walls near the entry, are constructed of a sandwich type process. Storrer (1993) “The dry wall uses horizontal recessed 3-inch redwood battens with 9-inch pine boards screwed on to a core of vertical pine boards.”

· It has been said that Wright used bricks on the home that were deemed “substandard” from the Johnson Wax Building in order to lower the costs of the masonry walls.

FLOOR PLAN
When looking at the dwelling as a whole one may not notice those aspects and that is what makes this home such a success. There are ways to design a home so that the owner does not know what makes it work, just as long as it does. That is what creates a market for Architecture and when you do it well, clients come back for more. About ten years after moving into the home the Jacobs asked Wright to design them a new home on account of wanting more space. Wright responded with yet another and more efficient design for them. The question then asks, if Frank Lloyd Wright was able to improve on a good design for the same client back during the depression era, why can’t the designers of today do at least as much as Wright did? The house was made for minimal price but was able to offer so much in good design and environmental responsibility. The technology of today seems to be more of a burden than an advantage; Architects of today must realize these opportunities and get back to good design, instead of building the most decorated box.

CREDITS
Alexander, Christopher. A Pattern Language: Towns Buildings Construction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Great Buildings Online. Retrieved October, 2004. Website
www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Jacobs_House-Madison.html

Wright in Wisconsin. Retrieved October, 2004, from BedZED. Website: www.dgunning.org/architecture/Wisc/jacobsI.htm

Storrer, William Allin. The Frank Llyod Wright Companion. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Villa Savoye

adamD — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 05:37:25 +0000

Villa Savoye, dubbed as Le Corbusier’s masterpiece was constructed in 1929 in Poissy, France. This structure sits on an open site and gives the feeling that the building is floating. This open site has been said to be the reason for its stature. The site gave Corbusier a chance to apply his 5 points of architecture without the constraints of an urban site. The main section of this residence is a box that sits atop slender pilotis or stilts that are offset from the edge of the structure above. The building which was designed out of concrete and plaster unit masonry shows the purist Modern design of Corbusier. This modern structure designed to be “machine a habiter”, a machine for living, uses a flat roof and strip “ribbon” windows to give this freestanding building a distinct modern look. In addition, the design is simplified with the pure white color and lack of ornamentation as well as the curvilinear forms on both the roof and lower level to further support the machine imagery.

The modern design continues into the interior of Villa Savoye. Corbusier uses non-traditional conveying systems, an open plan, an integral ground floor garage, built-in furniture and a roof garden to give this machine a habitable and efficient feel. The interior flows well from one space to another with the use of ramps and spiral staircases, while creating a modular feel and keeping movement from one space to overlapping spaces available. The use of the “ribbon” windows provides this interior with ample sunlight and giving the framed look to the exterior.

The theory behind this structure is based on a Modernist view and directly affected by World War II. The use of industrial materials associates this residence with the Modern Movement. These facts teamed with Corbusier’s preference to a square plan and pure, natural form come together to express his theory in Villa Savoye.

3d computer rendering

adamD — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:22:50 +0000

Rendering is the process of generating an image from a model, by means of computer programs. The model is a description of three dimensional objects in a strictly defined language or data structure. It would contain geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading information. The image is a digital image or raster graphics image. The term may be by analogy with an “artist’s rendering” of a scene. ‘Rendering’ is also used to describe the process of calculating effects in a video editing file to produce final video output.

It is one of the major sub-topics of 3D computer graphics, and in practice always connected to the others. In the graphics pipeline, it is the last major step, giving the final appearance to the models and animation. With the increasing sophistication of computer graphics since the 1970s onward, it has become a more distinct subject.

Rendering has uses in architecture, video games, simulators, movie or TV special effects, and design visualization, each employing a different balance of features and techniques. As a product, a wide variety of renderers are available. Some are integrated into larger modeling and animation packages, some are stand-alone, some are free open-source projects. On the inside, a renderer is a carefully engineered program, based on a selective mixture of disciplines related to: light physics, visual perception, mathematics, and software development.

excerpt taken from wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendering_%28computer_graphics%29

SIPs?

adamD — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 03:53:12 +0000

As architects we have great control over what products and processes are used in the construction of our environment. It is our responsibility to keep up to date with the latest innovations of the building industry and be receptive to change. It shouldn’t take a disaster like the Chicago fires to realize that a process may not be the best way of doing things. One of these “newer” innovations are structurally insulated panels or “SIPs” which is a more environmentally sound process than that of the stick & batt construction.

What is a SIP? According to the Structural Insulated Panel Association, “SIPs are high-performance building panels for floors, walls and roofs in residential and commercial buildings. Each panel is typically made using expanded polystyrene (EPS), or polyisocyanurate rigid foam insulation sandwiched between two structural skins of oriented strand board (OSB), but other surfaces are also available to meet your needs. The result is a building system that is very strong, predictable, energy efficient, and cost effective.” Some advantages of the products used in this process are that EPS will not shrink, decompose, or disintegrate; in addition the R-value will not decrease with age. The result is a solid insulator that is dependable and sustainable over the life of the structure. The process creates a very air tight construction that will not rot, is highly resistant to mildew and allows much less air infiltration than stick & batt structures. The foam core of the system allows for less air leaks, less noise and results in lower energy bills. This is due in part to the fact that unlike fiberglass insulation, the rigid core does not allow air to easily flow through it.

Frank Llyod Wright’s Robie House

adamD — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 03:02:12 +0000

American architecture and Frank Lloyd Wright[1] is a synonymous pair. It may even be said that Frank Lloyd Wright was the founder of American architecture; the true innovator and visionary of the principals of the American way of life and its landscape. In the time of modern architecture and the Bauhaus[2] movement, Frank Lloyd Wright was not spoken of in virtuous terms. Wright’s attempts to create architecture that was unique to the American frontier did not comply with the movement that brought influence to America from Germany, Holland and France. This influence created an architecture pieced together from other nations rather than one true to its environment. What could be Wright’s Masterpiece of residential design came in the early 1900’s when he was commissioned to design a residence for Frederick C. Robie in Chicago, IL. This Prairie style residence integrated the American Prairie, refuted the white box of the International style and formed a language that was true to American soil without foreign influences.

[1] Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), American architect, built some 140 structures in residential, commercial and civic design. He became a major influence of 20^th century architecture in America.

[2] Bauhaus, School first opened in Weimar, Germany by architect Walter Gropius. Young architects would live, study and learn the theory of “starting from zero”, the key overriding principal of the modern movement in architecture. A style that was marked for its glass corners, flat roofs, honest materials and expressed structure.

Thoughts on the City of Detroit

adamD — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 21:10:21 +0000

Detroit today is a city bound by what built it: the car. With advances in technology, commuting to work has become the rule rather than the exception. Commuting is unbearable – to our time, our money, the environment and our childcare. The fact is, people love their cars and the suburbs offer a desirable lifestyle. The result is that Detroit has become a place of decay with a stereotype to match it. The current residents of Detroit have a median household income of $18,742 and 37% are without a high school diploma (census information). On the other hand, one of the suburbs close to Detroit (Redford Township) has a household income of $51,840 with only 21% of residents without a high school diploma. The scale follows this trend the further you travel from Detroit. So, how can Detroit attract these middle to upper class suburbanites to live downtown?

Money needs to be spent within city limits. This increase in affordable technology (computers, cell phones, etc.) has made being your own boss no longer just a dream. Live/work housing combines living and working into one piece of property, making the employees full-time residents of the city and keeping money in the area and local retailers. The book, “Loft’s: Living in space” states loft living began in the United States when artists began occupying entire floors of industrial factories in New York’s SoHo during the 1940’s. It was the fashionable residence of the day; a symbol of millennial cool. The concept adapted over time from the store owner living above his store, the lawyer whose office in front conceals his residence in the rear and the artist who can work at any time of the day. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 21 million people work from their home.

Cities need people in them to make them a thriving, inviting and exciting area. Detroit has sections of the city where land is abundant and in need of revival. For a live/work development to work, it must be based on the city center. If there are no supporting amenities for the residents, there will be no appeal. The Fox Town/Sports District offers residents access to theatres, sports venues, night clubs, casinos and restaurants. This area would be able to attract young professionals, dot-comers, entrepreneurs, young and empty-nesters to name a few. By offering some of the suburban amenities in the city as a viable alternative to conventional housing, live/work units will help provide the draw needed to bring people back into the city.

Isolation, sense of place and separation. Architect Thomas Dolan, AIA of the live/work institute claims, “The greatest drawback of working at home is isolation”. He suggests that a sense of community will arise with opportunities of spontaneous socializing due to a greater caring for the space and for others who share it because of the 24-7 lifestyle. Conversely, separation of living and working spaces may become the fine line of success or failure. “One Space Living” by Cynthia Inions stresses degrees of separation in the units. Public and private areas must be distinguished to ensure the appeal and mental health of its occupants.