lust for lights

We've been doing a lot of shopping for light fixtures over the last two days, with a series of unsuccessful hunts for simple cord sets (literally a cord and socket with which to make a pendant lamp) leading to interesting discoveries of LED exterior lights and other things we'd had trouble finding. One of today's trips netted four lights for our bathroom vanities, sort of. We found a 20" long LED fixture by George Kovacs (left) that will be perfect in three of the bathrooms. However, the factory has a backlog of 6,000 orders to fill before we'll get our lights (we were promised mid-June) which we read as an exciting indication that energy-efficient lighting has come of age as a first choice for homeowners. This is a very good sign, not least because it suggests the economy is rebounding, but especially because companies are making, and customers are choosing, energy-efficient options. We found a similar dilemma with dual-flush toilets. A very promising sign indeed.

accidental misprision

After weeks of staring at our structural steel and drywall, it occurred to me that I’ve seen this relationship between gray structure and smooth, light walls before.

Michelangelo’s magnificent vestibule at the Laurentian library – one of the most amazing rooms in the world – is one of a number of spaces in Florence where dark pietra serena stone is carved into the Classical orders, in contrast to the creamy plaster of the surrounding wall surfaces.

imagining a garden

We spent a lot of time this week thinking about the landscape/gardens/habitat around and inside tin box this week. We laid out some of our coral rock (the bounty from our septic tank installation) to give us an idea of the broad outlines of the raised planters we want to build on the south side of the house. Holly started sketching the front in perspective to help visualize the relationship between plantings, stone and ground. We visited a neighbor with a terrific vegetable and fruit garden, and started to fantasize about what we could grow with our abundant sunshine and rainfall. We thought about what kinds of plants we can grow above a septic drainage field, and which ones we can't. And then Faichild Tropical Botanic Garden hosted their annual flowering tree sale...

buried

Last week's septic tank and drainage field excavations also gave us a chance to bury electrical power and data lines running to the house from the nearest utility pole. These conduits need to be buried 30" below the surface to protect them from inadvertent damage, whereas (strangely) the main water supply line only needs to be 12" below grade. The water line, which was laid weeks ago, is the white PVC pipe hanging in the air in this photo. It will be packed in clean (rock-free) fill to protect it from punctures after the electrical conduits are backfilled.

Why four conduits? Two are for power lines, one is for a telephone line and the fourth is for cable/internet service. Most likely, we won't use the telephone line, but it will be good to have the conduit in place, just in case. What else is buried outside tin box?

progress and gardening

Our septic tank and drainage field were installed last week. This required removing the construction fence in front of the house, which gives us our first broad views of, and from, it.

no new house smell

Our painter primed the interior partitions today (the exterior walls are prefinished, and won't be painted), which leads to two thoughts: one, the house is wonderfully bright in all types of sunlight, and two, sustainable paints have no odor.

Regarding the light, the weather changed rapidly and repeatedly today, with intense showers interspersed with strong sunlight. The white primer on the interior walls reflects the light - which is mostly indirect light from the north or from our well-shaded east- and west- facing windows and doors - throughout the house. The result is a diffuse light which reflects off the galvanized surfaces of the roof decking and the light gray concrete floor. The mood of the house changes quickly with the quality of the light outside.

But it was the complete lack of odor today that really impressed us.

on staying dry

The rain has been falling fairly steadily for a few hours in Miami, which made for a good day to check the interior of tin box for leaks. So far, it looks reassuringly dry inside. In fact, there's no sign of water inside the house, which means the roof, walls, windows, doors and vents are all working as intended. The strategies we've taken to ensure weather-tightness should help us avoid the considerable costs of repairs related to leaky roofs. These include:

Arbor Day

Happy Arbor Day!

wet construction

The tile work in the bathrooms is nearly complete. Our tiler, Sergio, has been patiently and meticulously setting the various wall and floor tiles in place. In the guest and master baths, he has had to work with a pitched floor that slopes to a drain to allow the rooms to be used as big showers. The work looks pretty excellent so far:

epiphyte club

Still recovering from our post-Earth Day hangovers, dreaming about the landscape at tin box. The house was always intended to be a pavilion at the juncture of several gardens, but our ideas regarding those gardens were always fluid, as we waited to see just what kind of spaces the house would produce. We're eager to start laying out the raised planting beds for the vegetables and fruit, position the new trees, arrange the native species that provide habitat for our local wildlife, and begin filling in the ground with interesting alternatives to the conventional lawn.

We are also just about ready to start building screens of epiphytes, or air plants, to shield the master bath from view. South Florida's bounty of air plants, like the bromeliad pictured here, force the transplanted gardner to redefine the verb to plant, with its assumption of a soil base for vegetation. We've planned to build a light armature to cover with air plants around the back corner of the house, so that we won't need curtains in the bathroom. We'll include bromeliads and orchids for their colorful flowers, and dense mats of Spanish moss for visual privacy.

detroit

Detroit has become a metonym for “urban decay,” a pejorative term that misleadingly implies that cities are primarily responsible for their own decline. As Detroit’s manufacturing economy has relocated (first to other states, then overseas) and its population has shrunk by half, the city fabric has suffered from neglect, abandonment, arson and poor redevelopment decisions. Meadows and parking lots have replaced too many buildings, leaving the city fabric as a patchwork quilt with pockets of vitality isolated by vast swaths of open space. So why is Detroit such a wonderful city?

day job, ultra grateful edition

I just got back from the annual meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians in Detroit, where I had the extraordinarily great fortune to receive the society's Founders' Award. The award recognizes an article published in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, which, in this case, was the essay I wrote on Italian colonial urban planning in Ethiopia. It was really humbling to listen to Marta Gutman, the jury chair, read the citation and realize that so many of the people in the room had taken the time to mentor, guide or nudge me in some important way over the last fifteen years. For someone who still sees himself as an architect learning how to write, and to think like a historian, the society's recognition means a lot.

The collegiality of the community of scholars is amazing, and also bears mentioning. Discourse, collaboration, mentorship and service are all essential parts of what drives the production of knowledge. It's a privilege to be a part of this world.

utilities and services

Earlier this week, our photovoltaic (solar-electric) installer connected the wires for the p/v panels through the holes we'd carefully drilled through the steel trim at the top of the upper roof. These wires will be concealed beneath, and protected by, the final piece of trim that gets installed as a cap over the top edges of the roof's standing seams. Once the cap trim is in place, the roof will be finished.

habitat

We have to admit that when we first started talking about making the house a habitat for wildlife, we were thinking roof gardens and native plants. We did not plan on steel walls making a home for critters. Apparently, the local creatures are pretty resilient, and they've adapted quickly to the house. In fact, we've started re-looking at the house with an eye toward eliminating areas that could become wasps' nests or other unwanted habitats.

cabinetry

On Wednesday, our cabinet maker installed the first run of cabinets in the kitchen. These are the base cabinets under the big window facing the courtyard. After the drywall and other heavy work in the house is done, we'll install the drawers, doors, appliances and countertops. For now, the carcasses of the base cabinets give us a better idea of the scale of the room and the relationship between the kitchen and the courtyard. We also get our first hint of the warm wood tones that will contrast against the prevailing cool grays of the steel, concrete, drywall and glass.

dry construction

Gypsum drywall must be one of the most under-appreciated inventions of the modern world. First developed in the 1890s at the New York Coal Tar Chemical Company by Augustine Sackett and Fred Kane, drywall replaced the more labor-intensive process of carefully placing several layers of plaster over lath. Lath and plaster construction is not just laborious, it's wet, heavy and time consuming. By comparison, gypsum drywall is lightweight, installs quickly and requires less specialized labor.

The first installation of drywall at tin box today spurred this meditation on its myriad benefits...

David drilling holes

David has been drilling holes at the top of the roof this weekend so that the wiring for the solar panels can be hidden under a piece of trim.

We also sprayed in more insulation in the mechanical lofts. It's our weekend to be monkeys.

flashing

Like any house, tin box has a number of holes in the roof to allow plumbing and mechanical vents to draw noxious, humid or lint-filled air out of the building. Each of these penetrations provides an opportunity for rainwater and critters to come inside, and so we need to use flashing to provide water-tight seals around the vents. All but one of the vents (the plumbing vent shown here) are protected by the overhang of the upper roof, which provides a comforting redundancy. The vent pipes are flashed with Dektite pipe boots, which adjust to fit a wide range of pipes, and which have a flexible base to accommodate different roof types. The pipe boots are held in place by mechanical fasteners and made watertight with a bead of sealant.

trim

Our steel erectors, Mike and John, have finished installing most of the steel trim on the outside of the house. The trim provides a clean finish at places where the building materials have been cut roughly and where we've used expanding foam insulation to fill the gaps between the walls and roof. Trim is generally a decorative element, whereas flashing is used to keep water from infiltrating the house. At tin box, both the trim and the flashing are made from sheet metal which has been finished in the same Kynar coating as the wall panels.

batt insulation

We've had most of the interior walls filled with batt insulation. We're using the insulation to help reduce sound transmission from room to room. We're expecting a 5 point increase in the STC rating (of sound transmission) due to the additional mass in the walls. The Johns Mansville fiberglas batts are made without formaldehyde, which is important for maintaining our health, and are made with glass that is at least 25% recycled.

The insulation has also produced some nice spatial effects...

foam insulation, continued

Spent some quality time Sunday with the family at the site, trimming back the expanding foam insulation that we've use to seal the gap between the wall panels and the roof panels. The foam cuts fairly easily, and the ladders help give us better leverage for peeling off the remaining plastic protective layer on the wall panels.

garage door

Our garage door installer completed the installation of the garage door this afternoon. The house is now fully secure, so we can move ahead with a lot of work inside this week. We're expecting the air conditioning system to be complete (through the rough inspection) and the remaining parts of the interior partition framing should be complete this week, too. If all goes well, we should have drywall going up by the end of the week.

international style

Eytan Fichman, my undergraduate thesis advisor - and the very model of a mentor whose example as an educator is never far from my mind - sends this photo of "the Vietnamese precedent for tin box" in Haiphong. It's nice to see so many of our formal gestures, like shed roofs and deep overhangs, appearing in a building that seems to be designed around functional concerns and the simple modular dimensions of available materials.

Boy do I wish we could have ducks, too.

fenestration, entomology, ornithology

Yesterday, our window installer (Astor Windows) came by to install the last window, which had to be re-fabricated. The fenestration is now complete, except for the garage door, which is due to be installed this week. Once it goes in, we should be able to move quickly with completing the air conditioning system, then get our framing inspection, and then our gypsum wall board, trim and interior doors.

plumbing, continued

The city's plumbing inspector signed off on our rough plumbing this morning. Everything looks good - our plumber, Ross Terrano, has tested all the lines to make sure they connections are good, and we can now proceed with installing drywall, cabinetry, tile and all the plumbing fixtures. The PEX supply lines are working, and the inspector seemed pretty happy with the graywater and rainwater lines.

At left, Ross and one of his crew installing the supply lines for the kitchen sink.

foam insulation

We spent much of Thursday and today spraying foam insulation into the gap between the wall panels and the roof decking. Normally, the insulated steel panel system completes the weather seal (and insulated envelope) with a boxed-out soffit detail at the roof, but we thought this configuration would make the roof look too thick and clunky, so we decided to use expanding foam  insulation to provide the moisture and thermal barrier between the wall and roof. So what is this stuff made of?

plumbing

Our plumber has been completing the rough plumbing this week. He installed two bathtubs, which involved using a fairly dry mix of cement to level and support the tubs. The photo at left shows one of the tubs filled with water. The tubs are connected to the graywater system, which will eventually provide the flush water for the toilets.

The white box in front of the tub is where the washing machine will connect to the water supply and the sanitary drain (the septic system). The light blue plastic conduit carries electrical lines, including the power for the laundry equipment. The red and (dark) blue supply lines are cross-linked polyethylene (PEX) tubing supplying hot and cold water.

the sincerest form of flattery, continued

Why yes, that does appear to be our photo of steel reinforcement bars showing up as stock photography in web sites across the Middle East. Don't these people realize Google is a two-way street?

Boston

Flying home from a few days in Boston for the centennial ACSA Annual Meeting offers a chance to reflect on architecture and education. Boston is where Holly and I started studying architecture (at the Boston Architectural Center) and it’s clear that the city itself remains one of the most influential components of our intellectual formation. How so?

Dreamliner

Purely at random, sitting in Logan Airport, just saw the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Its composite fuselage makes it lighter and more aerodynamic than conventional aluminum-skinned planes, and since composites don’t corrode, the air conditioning system can introduce more moisture into the cabin air, reducing the dessicating effect of long-haul flights. The cabin’s ambient lighting uses LEDs which are programmed to mimic the change in light throughout a normal day-night cycle, in order to reduce the effects of jet lag. Cannot wait to see this plane from the inside. Some day.