makes sense, steven. everything is made cheaper now.
mass manufactured doors are not up to standards here as well. to meet minimum expectations of our clients (and us) we usually make custom doors, but they are still hollow for budget reasons. usually they look pretty good and have a nice weight to them (as long as we spec them that way). it does seem odd to have to do it that way.
will, standard door specification gives you all kinds of options. From feel to look to performance. Nothing magical about the door design process. Vagueness gives you a default (crappy) door.
orthan. not to take away from eternal struggle of academic decisions, but this forum has become extremely unfriendly towards casual 'older' visitors. Filtering out academia questions would make this forum an actual resource. In the meantime DOES ANYONE HAVE A 3D MODEL OF ATLANTIS?
elinor! I would love to meet you (and your equally awesome husband) for a happy hour drink. This forum (still) does not allow contact between members. Donna, you know everyone. Can you get elinor and I in touch? yaaay!
Hi everyone, thanks for all your sympathy. (Especially Erin - I know you know how it goes!) It's $140 later and Linda is once again in beautiful riding shape. My favorite bike shop guy was working that weekend and he did a fantastic job with her - even fixed a few other minor issues while he was at it (for free!). I picked up a second bike lock that I will now have to carry around everywhere I go to lock the rear wheel to the frame. Yay. So far week 1 has gone by and she's still been sitting pretty in front of my building every morning, so, so far so good.
In other news I am working on a drawing for the invitations for my upcoming nuptials. I'm not sure yet if it's going to land on the cheesy side of home-made or on the sweet/touching side... I love to draw & am fairly decent at it in the way that most architects are, but drawing oneself and one's cherished partner is turning out to be another level of drawing difficulty entirely. I'm aiming for sweet/touching, but right now it looks like I'm hitting somewhere around cartoonish/1970s garage sale art.
For me sometimes the hardest part of drawing (like the hardest part of architecture) is stopping while I'm ahead. I usually scan a drawing at multiple stages, so if I end up adding too much I can go back to an earlier version, but didn't do that this time... and it's already looking a bit heavy-handed for my taste. Oh well! Wedding is imminent so what I see is probably going to be what I get!
rusty, i agree must be good doors out there from standard factory. we haven't found any yet that don't feel dead. it's a fetish maybe. so we make our own. pity you aren't in tokyo, you could point us in the right direction for the good stuff...
am sure the picture is great manta. cool to hear the wedding day is near!
you CAN still email folks from their profile page - if they've provided the email - can't you? it looks like i can email will if i want: just click on his name, 'contact', and click on the envelope clicky thing.
so kentucky won last night and my car didn't get set on fire, so today can already be considered a good day. some folks in lexington won't be able to say the same.
steven is correct you can email but only to users who have a profile and you have to do it from their profile page. not exactly the old way but works for some.....
the discussion re: hollow core doors while not totally surprising given general trend of cheapness/mass manufacturing, is still interesting to hear the perspective of the ones on ground who actually deal with it on a "daily" basis.
Mantaray, i have long carried a u lock and a longer covered chain type lock so i can lock by tire as well. it also makes for convenient carrying of the u lock.
Rusty, you can filter discussions by category you know?
oh and i don't suppose i will have much time for exploring but i will be up in Madison/Verona Wisconsin this week for work, anyone have suggestions on places to see/visit if I have time?
Rusty, elinor is one of the few members here that I really respect but haven't had personal contact with. I just checked citizen off that list as I had a lovely email exchange with him.
Man I just feel like going onto every one of those "which school?" threads and screaming in all caps that unemployment in architecture is still at 20% what the hell are you thinking?!". But I had someone say that to me and 1. I thought he was a bitter old man and 2. it's worked out fair enough for me so why crush the kids' dreams.
Actually, Donna, a 1-in-5 chance at being unemployed isn't that bad if you reframe it as 4-out-of-5 people in architecture are currently employed.
What you should point out, though, is that those who don't develop enough skills to be offered gainful employment during or after school will only have a 1-in-25 chance of landing an internship that pays more than minimum wage.
Career chance or not, those who don't make the first draft will have to find a way to sustain themselves for 1 to 3 years while working an unpaid job.
Between cycling this past month and my recent hobby of Olympic weightlifting, my shoulder is beginning to kill me.
Instantly reminded of how much it sucks to be self-employed when an MRI costs like $3000— and it's not even possible to diagnose a shoulder injury without one.
the world is going wrong when even the optimists are turning to the dark side. the profession still seems worthwhile to me. it is a hard slog even in the best of times, but i expect that is true for all professions in the end.
Hi Orhan - got too wrapped up in my prose on your series post - that last sentence was unfortunate, and I feel bad about it.
actually - Boston is a pretty interesting microcosm of a politically active populous in terms of development - some neighborhoods where you have large transient populations you get institutions that run roughshod over large swaths of land. Whereas others, you get people all worked up over perhaps the tiniest Whole Foods ever, enough to disrupt and get arrested at a neighborhood meeting. Mostly it's somewhere in between, but I think what makes this city great is that things move veerrrry slowly, and people are very protective of their neighborhoods. I know there's a certain dean at a certain architecture program who would disagree with me, but this really crazy process where everything needs to go before the most nutty neighborhood committee (and this one guy who keeps the torch of the old west end alive) keeps crap from getting built. It turns our job into actually listening to people and being very persuasive, instead of designing crazy shit we (and the developers) think people need.
yes - people did actually protest a Whole Foods moving in. I'm not sure if this would happen anywhere else in the US.
Phillip yeah i forgot about that one. Saw it when drove past on way to hotel. will try and get time to investigate later. Lots of very nice old post-industrial type architecture...
ADA is a federal law. if your jurisdiction does not require adaag, it's because they don't understand what it is.
ansi is a model code spec'd in the ibc, which is a model code created by the icc, which creates model codes. that means jurisdictions (your city our county or whatever) can chose whether to adopt it or not. also, many jurisdictions only adopt portions of the ibc, so they could adopt all of the ibc except chapter 36 or something like that.
everything has been ada for like 25 years or whatever it's been.
up until about 2 weeks ago ansi was more restrictive than ada. on march 15, a new ada went into effect, so ada and ansi are pretty close now.
i tried to do capitals, but then felt elitist and dirty.
ANSI IS VALUNTARY, ADA IS INVOLUNTARY. I AM NOT YELLING JUST DOING THIS FOR DONNA. PRICE OF GALLON OF CAPITAL LETTERS IS REACHING RECORD HIGHS EVERYONE PANIC!
So the new ADA calls for single occupant restrooms to be about 15 by 25 feet in plan, right?
I had a stress dream last night about showing up to teach totally unprepared. Guess what, I teach tomorrow, and I am TOTALLY unprepared! Better get to it if I want to get any sleep tonight.
@will: the world is going wrong when even the optimists are turning to the dark side. the profession still seems worthwhile to me. it is a hard slog even in the best of times, but i expect that is true for all professions in the end.
it's tough staying optimistic when you're stressed out all the time. I also really dislike being around defeatist and negative people - it brings me down and If I'm around these people for too long I find myself repeating the same mantras of doom and gloom and it's hard to break free. It doesn't help anyone to be cynical, you can be skeptical and critical and passionate without resorting to cynicism. Pervasive cynicism really means you hate people in general, and once you go there as an architect you end up doing more harm than good (both to yourself and the built environment). people are awesome - they're weird, creative, imperfect beings who just want to be happy.
I went to Ikea other day, there was a lady freaking out at the register about being lost in the store and unable to find her way out for hours. I had to agree with her. Ikea stores are a horrible trap, very unnecessary.
probably true donna. i don't believe its exactly a zero sum game but there are definitely costs for others that come from the choices of the better off...
Purpurina, that story is sad and hilarious at the same time. Poor woman...
And can you really get hit by a tornado? It's usually the debris that hits you, right? Either way, I'm good. There was a house on the news, however, that had the entire upper story removed, just the carpet and tile remained. Even the wall base-plates were gone! And another house had about 4 or 5 various sized boards, 2x4s and what looked like 1x8s, stabbed through the half-wall banister in the house's entry way. Honestly, that looked pretty cool. If it were my house, and I could, I'd keep them. They were nicely pickled, and stabbed so artistically.
The thing Ikea wants you to do is keep moving forward....so they can have you trapped for at least four hours. Once you have entered their is no going back....and their are always the Swedish Meat Balls to look forward to.....ya Meat Balls.. I still hate the Ikea Buggers for tearing down the Perrilli Tower in New Haven....just because they could.
Hope your enjoying your time in the desert....Donna...
I'll never forget the section on Tornadoes in my Structures test prep book. After chapter after chapter discussing the various ways in which you can design resistance to earthquake and hurricane damage through an understanding of lateral forces and shear and bending moment and all that, I finally got to a section titled "Tornado Resistance." The section was about 2 paragraphs long. It essentially said: "In a tornado, wind speeds can reach over 400 miles an hour. Due to the fact that the winds are constantly shifting direction, and reach such incredible extremes of speed, there's actually no real way to design a tornado-proof structure. Therefore you won't be tested on it." AKA, if you see a tornado coming, FREAK OUT because your building will not save you. Terrifying!
Since reading that I like to cite it whenever people asked me how anyone "could live in California, with all those earthquakes all the time!" Give me an earthquake over a tornado ANY day. Plus tornados seem to be all over most of the middle of the US. You can't escape those suckers!
"In a tornado, wind speeds can reach over 400 miles an hour. Due to the fact that the winds are constantly shifting direction, and reach such incredible extremes of speed, there's actually no real way to design a tornado-proof structure. Therefore you won't be tested on it.
I happen to agree with the above statement. Especially since you can find pictures of buildings where a room was ripped off and the only things left standing are the base plate and the one stud that was attached to a tie down. Yea that worked. Or when you see pictures of semi's flying thru the air like they are made of paper.
However, perhaps someone ought to let the court system know that there is no way to design tornado proof structure. Because designers do loose lawsuits because of it. I will never forget the Elementary school disaster in Valley Central NY in the 1980's. I was freshly out of school and doing my apprenticeship in the area. That school sustained a direct hit on a 1.5 story glass curtain wall from a severe down burst during an F1 tornado. The personnel at the scene claimed it was a natural disaster and no one could have prevented it. Yet, everybody, even the deceased architect, was sued, and lost, and paid for that one. There was a huge hubub for Tornado proof designs throughout the state, especially in school buildings. It was a crazy time.
No mention of schedule on that house, toaster, so maybe he's building it a few hours at a time. Which would, on a project like this with basically one guy, help keep the cost low, but how many people can wait that long?
I'm also curious what the interior finish will be - is it just the brick? Which is cool but will lead to humidity issues that may or may not be acceptable for today's lifestyles (and electronics).
I'm totally supportive of the idea though - the grace of using a material simply and according to its strengths can't be beat - just feel like there's a lot more complexity to this story. In every case it's infinitely better than the EIFS fail I posted above!
More like $80/sq.ft./month to heat/cool. Project is in Georgia, so heating is not a huge concern, but cooling man.... Half of the south would die off without air conditioning. Anyways...
To go to 19th century technologies, we would also need to go back to 19th century comforts. Which in winter means keeping one 'warm' room, and just parishing in the summer.
that's how my inlaws still live, rusty. 19th c. wooden house built traditional style. beautiful, but hot in summer and cold in winter. the traditional answer to weather in japan is to let it into the house and dress to accommodate the heat and cold. interesting experience, but not so comfortable.
that article has raised eyebrows in quite a few quarters. i will say this: the production builders i know down here could do a house for $70 a sf right now. so, $80 isn't unheard of. not totally believable to me (and difficult to explain to potential clients who want to know why our designs can't be built to that), but...
a decent modern house can be had for as low as $125/sf right now, so the spread isn't that big. 'decent' means stock stuff and cheaper finishes, but doable.
donna - it says the interior will be tongue and groove siding. which, again, could be cheap if you're re-using and re-milling the trees you're taking down from the site. not as cheap as gwb by any means, but cheap enough (depending on the sourcing).
now, those 4' granite headers for $50 each? seriously doubting that's the delivered cost unless they found some leftovers from some other project. otherwise, i'll take about 30 for myself...
My brother and sister-in-law stopped heating their house a few years back due to finances. The house is so old and so NOT air tight that is would cost them over $500 a month to heat. They now have a wood burning stove and just dress appropriately. It can suck on really cold days, but it beats the high heating bills.
Greg, when you say a decent modern house can be had nowadays for $125/sf, you mean a stick-framed box, right? Vinyl siding & no frills interior?
As for that article about the school wall failing during a tornado & the architect (and everyone else) being sued, that is terrifying from an E & O perspective. The article seems to suggest that the school was built to code, but that the code was found to be not appropriately stringent. I would like to dig up more info about this case. How can you be held liable for building something to code? I could certainly see an architect/engineer being sued for building failure during a tornado if the design wasn't up to acceptable standards of practice for resisting lateral forces. But if it's just that "oh my goodness, 7 children died, SOMEBODY MUST PAY" then that is terrifying.
Thread Central
makes sense, steven. everything is made cheaper now.
mass manufactured doors are not up to standards here as well. to meet minimum expectations of our clients (and us) we usually make custom doors, but they are still hollow for budget reasons. usually they look pretty good and have a nice weight to them (as long as we spec them that way). it does seem odd to have to do it that way.
will, standard door specification gives you all kinds of options. From feel to look to performance. Nothing magical about the door design process. Vagueness gives you a default (crappy) door.
orthan. not to take away from eternal struggle of academic decisions, but this forum has become extremely unfriendly towards casual 'older' visitors. Filtering out academia questions would make this forum an actual resource. In the meantime DOES ANYONE HAVE A 3D MODEL OF ATLANTIS?
elinor! I would love to meet you (and your equally awesome husband) for a happy hour drink. This forum (still) does not allow contact between members. Donna, you know everyone. Can you get elinor and I in touch? yaaay!
ps. Sarah: I'm familiar with that website. I would like to think I'm not that much of an asshole. Silver medal!
Hi everyone, thanks for all your sympathy. (Especially Erin - I know you know how it goes!) It's $140 later and Linda is once again in beautiful riding shape. My favorite bike shop guy was working that weekend and he did a fantastic job with her - even fixed a few other minor issues while he was at it (for free!). I picked up a second bike lock that I will now have to carry around everywhere I go to lock the rear wheel to the frame. Yay. So far week 1 has gone by and she's still been sitting pretty in front of my building every morning, so, so far so good.
In other news I am working on a drawing for the invitations for my upcoming nuptials. I'm not sure yet if it's going to land on the cheesy side of home-made or on the sweet/touching side... I love to draw & am fairly decent at it in the way that most architects are, but drawing oneself and one's cherished partner is turning out to be another level of drawing difficulty entirely. I'm aiming for sweet/touching, but right now it looks like I'm hitting somewhere around cartoonish/1970s garage sale art.
For me sometimes the hardest part of drawing (like the hardest part of architecture) is stopping while I'm ahead. I usually scan a drawing at multiple stages, so if I end up adding too much I can go back to an earlier version, but didn't do that this time... and it's already looking a bit heavy-handed for my taste. Oh well! Wedding is imminent so what I see is probably going to be what I get!
Yes I truly wish we had our email buttons back. Argh.
ditto with the e-mailing ease of yore.
rusty, i agree must be good doors out there from standard factory. we haven't found any yet that don't feel dead. it's a fetish maybe. so we make our own. pity you aren't in tokyo, you could point us in the right direction for the good stuff...
am sure the picture is great manta. cool to hear the wedding day is near!
you CAN still email folks from their profile page - if they've provided the email - can't you? it looks like i can email will if i want: just click on his name, 'contact', and click on the envelope clicky thing.
so kentucky won last night and my car didn't get set on fire, so today can already be considered a good day. some folks in lexington won't be able to say the same.
good morning all,
steven is correct you can email but only to users who have a profile and you have to do it from their profile page. not exactly the old way but works for some.....
the discussion re: hollow core doors while not totally surprising given general trend of cheapness/mass manufacturing, is still interesting to hear the perspective of the ones on ground who actually deal with it on a "daily" basis.
Mantaray, i have long carried a u lock and a longer covered chain type lock so i can lock by tire as well. it also makes for convenient carrying of the u lock.
Rusty, you can filter discussions by category you know?
oh and i don't suppose i will have much time for exploring but i will be up in Madison/Verona Wisconsin this week for work, anyone have suggestions on places to see/visit if I have time?
Rusty, elinor is one of the few members here that I really respect but haven't had personal contact with. I just checked citizen off that list as I had a lovely email exchange with him.
Man I just feel like going onto every one of those "which school?" threads and screaming in all caps that unemployment in architecture is still at 20% what the hell are you thinking?!". But I had someone say that to me and 1. I thought he was a bitter old man and 2. it's worked out fair enough for me so why crush the kids' dreams.
Nam, the one thing that came to mind immediately is FLW's Monona Terrace, which was designed in 1938, but not built until the 1990s.
*Donna, look, capitalization! :)
Actually, Donna, a 1-in-5 chance at being unemployed isn't that bad if you reframe it as 4-out-of-5 people in architecture are currently employed.
What you should point out, though, is that those who don't develop enough skills to be offered gainful employment during or after school will only have a 1-in-25 chance of landing an internship that pays more than minimum wage.
Career chance or not, those who don't make the first draft will have to find a way to sustain themselves for 1 to 3 years while working an unpaid job.
Between cycling this past month and my recent hobby of Olympic weightlifting, my shoulder is beginning to kill me.
Instantly reminded of how much it sucks to be self-employed when an MRI costs like $3000— and it's not even possible to diagnose a shoulder injury without one.
the world is going wrong when even the optimists are turning to the dark side. the profession still seems worthwhile to me. it is a hard slog even in the best of times, but i expect that is true for all professions in the end.
Hi Orhan - got too wrapped up in my prose on your series post - that last sentence was unfortunate, and I feel bad about it.
actually - Boston is a pretty interesting microcosm of a politically active populous in terms of development - some neighborhoods where you have large transient populations you get institutions that run roughshod over large swaths of land. Whereas others, you get people all worked up over perhaps the tiniest Whole Foods ever, enough to disrupt and get arrested at a neighborhood meeting. Mostly it's somewhere in between, but I think what makes this city great is that things move veerrrry slowly, and people are very protective of their neighborhoods. I know there's a certain dean at a certain architecture program who would disagree with me, but this really crazy process where everything needs to go before the most nutty neighborhood committee (and this one guy who keeps the torch of the old west end alive) keeps crap from getting built. It turns our job into actually listening to people and being very persuasive, instead of designing crazy shit we (and the developers) think people need.
yes - people did actually protest a Whole Foods moving in. I'm not sure if this would happen anywhere else in the US.
Phillip yeah i forgot about that one. Saw it when drove past on way to hotel. will try and get time to investigate later. Lots of very nice old post-industrial type architecture...
no worries toaster. i think it is better understood now. thanks for your overall thoughts which are great.
So I guess everything is now ADA? I'm wondering if any state still uses ANSI...
I'm all for using Chicago Manual of Style as my building code.
as far as i know the IBC still references ANSI, toaster. and IBC is still our (KY) model code. ??
ADA is a federal law. if your jurisdiction does not require adaag, it's because they don't understand what it is.
ansi is a model code spec'd in the ibc, which is a model code created by the icc, which creates model codes. that means jurisdictions (your city our county or whatever) can chose whether to adopt it or not. also, many jurisdictions only adopt portions of the ibc, so they could adopt all of the ibc except chapter 36 or something like that.
everything has been ada for like 25 years or whatever it's been.
up until about 2 weeks ago ansi was more restrictive than ada. on march 15, a new ada went into effect, so ada and ansi are pretty close now.
i tried to do capitals, but then felt elitist and dirty.
ANSI IS VALUNTARY, ADA IS INVOLUNTARY. I AM NOT YELLING JUST DOING THIS FOR DONNA. PRICE OF GALLON OF CAPITAL LETTERS IS REACHING RECORD HIGHS EVERYONE PANIC!
curt - oops - I meant to ask if more states are adopting ADA as their base code instead of ANSI.
ADA is a federal anti-discrimination law. Can't really not adopt it.
So the new ADA calls for single occupant restrooms to be about 15 by 25 feet in plan, right?
I had a stress dream last night about showing up to teach totally unprepared. Guess what, I teach tomorrow, and I am TOTALLY unprepared! Better get to it if I want to get any sleep tonight.
HI RUSTY!!!! GOOD TO HEAR FROM YOU!
what is wrong with me? of course I know ADA trumps everything else. Never mind what I posted earlier. I'm an idiot.
@will: the world is going wrong when even the optimists are turning to the dark side. the profession still seems worthwhile to me. it is a hard slog even in the best of times, but i expect that is true for all professions in the end.
it's tough staying optimistic when you're stressed out all the time. I also really dislike being around defeatist and negative people - it brings me down and If I'm around these people for too long I find myself repeating the same mantras of doom and gloom and it's hard to break free. It doesn't help anyone to be cynical, you can be skeptical and critical and passionate without resorting to cynicism. Pervasive cynicism really means you hate people in general, and once you go there as an architect you end up doing more harm than good (both to yourself and the built environment). people are awesome - they're weird, creative, imperfect beings who just want to be happy.
Wondering when ANSI will catch up with Electric Wheelchairs?
people are awesome - they're weird, creative, imperfect beings who just want to be happy.
Mostly true. But to many many many people their own happiness only comes at the expense of someone else's. And they are fine with that.
Maybe that describes all of us.
Sarah I can't remember where you are but I hope you didn't get hit by a tornado!
I went to Ikea other day, there was a lady freaking out at the register about being lost in the store and unable to find her way out for hours. I had to agree with her. Ikea stores are a horrible trap, very unnecessary.
probably true donna. i don't believe its exactly a zero sum game but there are definitely costs for others that come from the choices of the better off...
Purpurina, that story is sad and hilarious at the same time. Poor woman...
And can you really get hit by a tornado? It's usually the debris that hits you, right? Either way, I'm good. There was a house on the news, however, that had the entire upper story removed, just the carpet and tile remained. Even the wall base-plates were gone! And another house had about 4 or 5 various sized boards, 2x4s and what looked like 1x8s, stabbed through the half-wall banister in the house's entry way. Honestly, that looked pretty cool. If it were my house, and I could, I'd keep them. They were nicely pickled, and stabbed so artistically.
Here's what I was talking about...
Lets try that again
That's scary. I also saw this picture, which I find hilarious. EIFS fail!
The thing Ikea wants you to do is keep moving forward....so they can have you trapped for at least four hours. Once you have entered their is no going back....and their are always the Swedish Meat Balls to look forward to.....ya Meat Balls.. I still hate the Ikea Buggers for tearing down the Perrilli Tower in New Haven....just because they could.
Hope your enjoying your time in the desert....Donna...
I'll never forget the section on Tornadoes in my Structures test prep book. After chapter after chapter discussing the various ways in which you can design resistance to earthquake and hurricane damage through an understanding of lateral forces and shear and bending moment and all that, I finally got to a section titled "Tornado Resistance." The section was about 2 paragraphs long. It essentially said: "In a tornado, wind speeds can reach over 400 miles an hour. Due to the fact that the winds are constantly shifting direction, and reach such incredible extremes of speed, there's actually no real way to design a tornado-proof structure. Therefore you won't be tested on it." AKA, if you see a tornado coming, FREAK OUT because your building will not save you. Terrifying!
Since reading that I like to cite it whenever people asked me how anyone "could live in California, with all those earthquakes all the time!" Give me an earthquake over a tornado ANY day. Plus tornados seem to be all over most of the middle of the US. You can't escape those suckers!
"In a tornado, wind speeds can reach over 400 miles an hour. Due to the fact that the winds are constantly shifting direction, and reach such incredible extremes of speed, there's actually no real way to design a tornado-proof structure. Therefore you won't be tested on it.
I happen to agree with the above statement. Especially since you can find pictures of buildings where a room was ripped off and the only things left standing are the base plate and the one stud that was attached to a tie down. Yea that worked. Or when you see pictures of semi's flying thru the air like they are made of paper.
However, perhaps someone ought to let the court system know that there is no way to design tornado proof structure. Because designers do loose lawsuits because of it. I will never forget the Elementary school disaster in Valley Central NY in the 1980's. I was freshly out of school and doing my apprenticeship in the area. That school sustained a direct hit on a 1.5 story glass curtain wall from a severe down burst during an F1 tornado. The personnel at the scene claimed it was a natural disaster and no one could have prevented it. Yet, everybody, even the deceased architect, was sued, and lost, and paid for that one. There was a huge hubub for Tornado proof designs throughout the state, especially in school buildings. It was a crazy time.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1994_Dec_20/ai_15942207/
$80 a square foot?
hmmm... structural masonry? dumb box? granite lintels?
No mention of schedule on that house, toaster, so maybe he's building it a few hours at a time. Which would, on a project like this with basically one guy, help keep the cost low, but how many people can wait that long?
I'm also curious what the interior finish will be - is it just the brick? Which is cool but will lead to humidity issues that may or may not be acceptable for today's lifestyles (and electronics).
I'm totally supportive of the idea though - the grace of using a material simply and according to its strengths can't be beat - just feel like there's a lot more complexity to this story. In every case it's infinitely better than the EIFS fail I posted above!
"$80 a square foot?"
More like $80/sq.ft./month to heat/cool. Project is in Georgia, so heating is not a huge concern, but cooling man.... Half of the south would die off without air conditioning. Anyways...
To go to 19th century technologies, we would also need to go back to 19th century comforts. Which in winter means keeping one 'warm' room, and just parishing in the summer.
more than cooling - it's humidity control that is essential for the longevity of buildings and the health of the occupants.
that's how my inlaws still live, rusty. 19th c. wooden house built traditional style. beautiful, but hot in summer and cold in winter. the traditional answer to weather in japan is to let it into the house and dress to accommodate the heat and cold. interesting experience, but not so comfortable.
I remember this article form the NYT about people who voluntarily opt out of heating. Interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/garden/21cold.html?_r=1
that article has raised eyebrows in quite a few quarters. i will say this: the production builders i know down here could do a house for $70 a sf right now. so, $80 isn't unheard of. not totally believable to me (and difficult to explain to potential clients who want to know why our designs can't be built to that), but...
a decent modern house can be had for as low as $125/sf right now, so the spread isn't that big. 'decent' means stock stuff and cheaper finishes, but doable.
donna - it says the interior will be tongue and groove siding. which, again, could be cheap if you're re-using and re-milling the trees you're taking down from the site. not as cheap as gwb by any means, but cheap enough (depending on the sourcing).
now, those 4' granite headers for $50 each? seriously doubting that's the delivered cost unless they found some leftovers from some other project. otherwise, i'll take about 30 for myself...
My brother and sister-in-law stopped heating their house a few years back due to finances. The house is so old and so NOT air tight that is would cost them over $500 a month to heat. They now have a wood burning stove and just dress appropriately. It can suck on really cold days, but it beats the high heating bills.
Morning all. And yes... I'm still alive.
Greg, when you say a decent modern house can be had nowadays for $125/sf, you mean a stick-framed box, right? Vinyl siding & no frills interior?
As for that article about the school wall failing during a tornado & the architect (and everyone else) being sued, that is terrifying from an E & O perspective. The article seems to suggest that the school was built to code, but that the code was found to be not appropriately stringent. I would like to dig up more info about this case. How can you be held liable for building something to code? I could certainly see an architect/engineer being sued for building failure during a tornado if the design wasn't up to acceptable standards of practice for resisting lateral forces. But if it's just that "oh my goodness, 7 children died, SOMEBODY MUST PAY" then that is terrifying.
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