Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Big Day!

Today was personally a really big day for me, Competition Submission day! All of my hard work through my last semester culminated today as I entered my project to the Sustainable Home Competition for Habitat for Humanity. Check er out!


My abstract:






FLEX House |





Sustainability is about changing trajectories and contesting the conventional way of living (Subasinghe, 2011). Compartmentalization of the conventional single family detached house is so overused in residential design today that society has become narrow minded about the amount of space they actually need to live. Contemporary lifestyles and seasonal remodeling are based on the principles of continuous discarding/storing of old furniture and buying new as replacements. The FLEX House provides a unique solution by addressing these two unsustainable practices and provides flexibility of spaces and an integration of furniture and spatial design. The basis of the design is using flexibility as a means of use and reuse of program from space to space.  Within a 24-Hour period the FLEX House will be free of all “dead”, unsustainable space.  The FLEX House has provided a minimal square footage home that doubles and triples its program and function through movable partitions. Occupants are able to pull beds, couches, tables, and benches out and slide them back so the spaces can double as bedrooms, living rooms, dining areas and recreational spaces. The FLEX House was designed with static areas including the bathrooms and kitchen, whereas all bedrooms, living and dining areas are flexible. The movable partitions enclose storage, murphy beds that fold down, and sofas and desks as a multi-functional unit.  With this system and layout the home will accommodate families of varying sizes and allow these family sizes to change easily with no change necessary to the design. The exterior of the FLEX House has movable screens that mimic the partitions in the interior.  These screens will help with reduced heating and cooling costs of the home throughout the year because of their ability to swing up and shade the southern façade of the home in the summer, then swing down and slide apart allowing sunlight to enter the home’s southern-facing windows. The home will be oriented to maximize the south-sun exposure, which will enhance our use of day-lighting through many windows that will also enrich air-flow in the home. This home also includes radiant-heat flooring, eco-friendly and rapidly renewable building materials and finishes, dual-flush toilets and low-flow shower heads. The FLEX House is replicable because it is able to be oriented on individual sites to gain as much day-lighting as possible. This home is a complete solution to a problem that, up to this point, has not been successfully addressed and resolved by other designs. The FLEX House challenges society to think about the necessary amount of square footage needed and presents them with a solution that delivers an innovative building solution. The FLEX House will help Habitat for Humanity to stay on the forefront of residential design and construction while promoting sustainable ways of living. 




My presentation boards:






Friday, April 27, 2012

Hybrid Diagram

I love doing these things






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Kiss My Rear-endering

Well, another dazed late night/early morning day for me!

Today is my final review, of my final semester, of my final year in college. Wow. Today is just one of those days I look back in pride of all I have accomplished, all I have become, and what true, rare, and amazing experiences I have been fortunate enough to have while enrolled at Iowa State University.

Boom, now look at this.

Mad props go out to my partner Britt (and her man Chris), and my ol ball and chain Abby for making this rendering amazing.








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Monday, April 23, 2012

YangYang

My good friend Darian (YangYang) Lu  recently entertained the College of Design with her final project in the atrium. Her independent study this semester was researching the connection between food and architecture and she decided to design an environment in which a person can eat and react to food in a space, think about what it is they are eating deeply and being served by a (what I would call) a representative of this idea. Forms of nature and animals surrounded this experience and environment and the moment(s) within and throughout it. I thought it was a very interesting project and thought I would share it.






















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Friday, April 13, 2012

Project Funny

Every now and then when I am thinking about my house project and its concept, my mind keeps running back to this clip from Step Brothers, hilarious -- so much room for activities!









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Monday, April 9, 2012

Previous Review

Well, I had a review last Wednesday, though it did not go so well. We did not present his project the way we should have. Too many 'I's' and not enough 'We's'. Also got the jury way off track with our ideas and they never seemed to recover to talk about the things I wanted them to. I am also not very happy with the way our graphic layout of our boards look at this point, We need to figure out how to propose our non-traditional idea in a more non-traditional way. It seems to run-of-the-mill in terms of graphics thus far...


















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Friday, March 30, 2012

Habitat For Humanity

Wow - haven't updated this in awhile! Well, school is coming along, studio is starting to take shape. My partner Britt and I are designing a sustainable home for Habitat for Humanity, for a national design competition. Thought I had posted pics from some of our review stuff, we have critiques almost every week so i have a few presentation boards, I'll show you all the updated ones soon. All I have for you now Is some perspective shots that I made tonight.

Our design concept for our house came from the idea of flexible and economic spaces, using the home constantly in a 24 hour period, not leaving any space 'dead'. The design guidelines for the competition ask for a house that is 1,070 square foot home with 3 bedrooms and 1 1/2 bath. Our home, with our flexible economic space strategy is only 648 square feet. The thought is that during the night you can pull your beds and bedrooms out to sleep in, in the morning the beds and bedrooms slide out of the way and that floor space that was the bedrooms now becomes the living and dining areas. In my head it works, and it adds up to that 1,070 square feet, even though it isn't. I believe that if you can use a 300 square foot space in two different functions, that makes it like a 600 square foot space. This is how our home came to be so small.

Soon enough I will post some floor plans to show how this idea works on the interior, but right now you just get exterior views, sorry suckers. To give you some sort of proportion, the home is 18' x 36'

Working with a flexible facade system that can slide and flip up and transform spaces outside of the home. Check er out. Still not all finalized, but the ideas are there.








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Friday, March 23, 2012

Flickr

Found out today my old and favorite architecture professor Samantha Krukowski posted some of my work from my semester with her on flickr, thought I would share -- also included on this link are other student projects from that same semester.



http://www.flickr.com/photos/isu-collegeofdesign/4423303108/in/set-72157623594204248/

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

More Bailey Pics















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Chicago pt 3

The last day of our trip was spent checking out more Frank Lloyd Wright projects in Oak Park. Amazing homes still standing beautiful and strong, what a great architect.



This one is definitely my favorite of the Oak Park homes, the amazing brickwork and continuity of horizontal lines, without repetition, is just amazing





This lady playing with dogs in front of Frank's house --- found out later it wasn't her house! hilarious!






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Chicago pt 2

Sky Deck day


Tessia (classmate of mine) and I went up to the sky deck one day while in Chicago, the observation deck at the  top of the Willis Tower (previously Sears Tower). Crazy fun!



This was a glass ledge that hung off the side of the building, with a glass floor cantilevering  1,300 feet in the air. Nutso! I didn't think it would be so nerve-racking to stand on, but turns out it did make a me a little uneasy.


















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Chicago pt 1

Our studio class got a chance to take a second field trip this semester! This is a first for one of my studios, so I am really excited to visit another city.




Got a chance to see Mies Van Der Rohe's Farnsworth House on the way to Chicago, but unfortunately the house was closed for the season so we had to look at it from the road


Gehry's amphitheater design -- last time I saw it the sun was out, this sets the mood a lot differently. Still would love to thrash a face melting solo on this stage though.


Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie house - what s considered his culmination of his famous 'prairie house' style. However, I always feel really uncomfortable in his designs because Frank was only 5'-2" and liked to design his homes to that scale, so I always feel so big inside of them


Tour guide


Pretty fun Irish band that we caught out one night.


The 'stance' --- apparently the way Chicago-ans eat their hot dogs? I'd say that I mastered it.





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Wood Project continued...

Continuing work on my wood project, though of course I cannot show you final pics of it all finished and together --- just use your brilliant imaginations!











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Been awhile (again)

Apologies for the lack of postings lately, but in classic fashion, here are a bunch right in a row.

A few weeks ago Kwon and I stopped by at home to see the new puppy! Bailey, we miss u!












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Monday, February 20, 2012

Sustainable Furniture

There was an exhibition in our college of some student-designed/fabricated sustainable furniture. This project was specifically looking at paper tubing, neat stuff!















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