Architecture

[SasaS]

On 02/02/2021 at 15:39, neko said:

When I was about 7 or 8 and we had to do an illustrated report on what we wanted to be when we grew up, I didn't say 'architect'. I drew the Seagram Building in plan and elevation and said I wanted to be MVDR.

 

I grew up reading old RIBA journals.

 

Anyways, very simple logical grid (4' / 8' / 16'), open plan, floating roof on post/beam structure, simple palette of materials...lots of glass. Rectilinear design made by man, but in harmony with nature. That sort of thing.

 

Gut, jah ?

The final design should also strive to be in harmony with all those rocks around the house. Maybe use them to elevate it.

[cochyn]

3 hours ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

Are there any municipal buildings from the 70s or 80s that aren't fucking horrible?

There's plenty. Sadly, not in this country though. That's the Tories for ya!

[AngryOfTuebrook]

On 02/02/2021 at 14:48, neko said:

As Chairman Meow knows, I only give out MVDR projects to my students

Mies>Meis

[Jarvinja Ilnow]

Has anybody on here worked with modular kit houses? Are they anathema to self-respecting architects, or just another component? Asking for a friend.

[cochyn]

28 minutes ago, Jarvinja Ilnow said:

Has anybody on here worked with modular kit houses? Are they anathema to self-respecting architects, or just another component? Asking for a friend.

I've worked on volumetric/ system-built houses for years. Are you thinking Huf-haus?

 

I think they're great. The genius behind them that many people wealthy enough to buy one wants to make it bespoke to their needs = £££££.

 

If you want a 'standard' one they're just as good and get lashed up in no time. 

 

[Rico1304]

7 hours ago, cochyn said:

I've worked on volumetric/ system-built houses for years. Are you thinking Huf-haus?

 

I think they're great. The genius behind them that many people wealthy enough to buy one wants to make it bespoke to their needs = £££££.

 

If you want a 'standard' one they're just as good and get lashed up in no time. 

 

I’d love a Huf Haus. There’s one near us that I covet every time I go passed.  I remember one of the early ‘Grand Designs’ was an old couple who bought one and I fell in love with theirs.  

[Jarvinja Ilnow]

8 hours ago, cochyn said:

I've worked on volumetric/ system-built houses for years. Are you thinking Huf-haus?

 

I think they're great. The genius behind them that many people wealthy enough to buy one wants to make it bespoke to their needs = £££££.

 

If you want a 'standard' one they're just as good and get lashed up in no time. 

 

Well back in the late 90s (maybe very early 2000s) I wanted to build one of the Bach House designs from New Zealand (though I couldn't find any trace of them a few years back). They took their name from traditionalKiwi  beach houses, but the scaling-up potential was immense, with the modular process; and they could be added to later, to include extra bedrooms or guest flats. Unfortunately, they didn't have any distributors in the UK. 

 

I carried on just rennovating houses back in Liverpool, and sometimes on the SE coast, to build up the capital to buy land and be able to build on it. I was doing this on my weekends off and A/L, coming up from London, so progress was slow and the appeal of a system that could be chucked up in no time was compelling. What Bach House did do was ignite my interest in that type of building, and I started to go on to research Huf-haus and their cheaper imitators. 

 

It's something that has continued over the years. Like Rico, I watched that GD episode and couldn't help but be impressed by the professionalism of the German builders (and the debt of thanks German construction owes to Timothy Spall, Jimmy Nail et al). Hauf-haus is a little out of our affordable price range now, as I can't work at the moment and don't know if/ when I can.

 

The dream is to purchase a small plot of land in Australia (but not rural living), and go with one of their companies. We want somewhere coastal but near a city (probably Perth or Adelaide), as we are used to being near cafes, restaurants and bars and my mobility is a factor. Obviously, these considerations immediately raise the cost of the land, so the idea of a turn-key, fast build process is appealing. 

 

I think Achiblox has closed down or has just stopped trading temporarily, which is a shame, as they had some remarkable carbon zero plans, and even one that claimed to be carbon positive. 

 

 

https://www.archiblox.com.au/project/carbon-positive-house/

 

https://www.habitechsystems.com.au/new-houses#/the-warrandyte-outlook/

 

https://ecohabit.com.au/project/ecohabit-modular-house/

 

https://plans.imaginekithomes.com.au/?v=6cc98ba2045f

 

My wife has become very interested in all this over the last couple of years, and is now a bit of a 'Good Life' self-sustaining suburbanite. The only luxury she wants in Australia is a lap pool, and she's not too fussed about the design of the house, just the function. I can't accept that we have to have something uninspiring, as once orientation and scale is taken into account for thermal, air-flow, and insulation properties then there must be some scope left to make something distinctive and beautiful. It's one thing to be guided by the existing restraints of a conversion, but this would be the first complete free-build either of us have ever been involved in. 

 

It's a couple of years away right now, but I'm trying to soak up all the knowledge and expertise on this thread. It's been said before but the GF is super smashing great!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[cochyn]

It's encouraging to see such appetite for system built/ modular housing in Aus. And you do absolutely right in insisting that all your hard work can yield a house you can tailor to your own needs and be something you are rightly proud of. In my experience there's no magic trick to modular housing - if done 'right'. The limitations are often transport and cranage of the modules. This is mainly due to the insistence by some firms that the houses are designed and built as finished boxes to be trucked to site. Whereas a panelised system (where individual panels are trucked to site to be assembled - such as Huf haus) offers greater design freedom and less cumbersome transport issues. 

 

The economies in system build lie in getting the walls up the and roof on quick; then you have a dry 'box' to fit and finish. Someone with your experience will buzz off it: form your slab (with pool!) have a company erect the frame and sheath it (can happen in a week - or less). Then you're free to fit it out as you see fit. Some of the links you posted are fascinating - definitely worth following up with one or two of them now and see what flexibilities they have in their system/ approach. Go for it! 

[rb14]

14 hours ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

Are there any municipal buildings from the 70s or 80s that aren't fucking horrible?

Where do I start? Apart from some I posted a couple of pages back there are myriad. Here are just a few more...

 

Flintshire County Hall

 

Preston Bus Station 

 

...Needs no introduction

 

And again. 

 

[rb14]

In a previous post, I mentioned the presumably unintentional artistry of the weathering on the concrete surfaces at the Barbican. I took a couple of pics on Friday. Just check out those balconies. 

 

 

 

[Rocky Sullivan]

Brutalist architecture just puzzles the fuck out of me. It's fucking horrible inhuman, dystopian looking awfulness. Maybe like Angry it's because I grew up in Runcorn new town around the likes of Castlefields, Southgate and the Shopping City - which still turns up in the odd nightmare. 

[rb14]

1 hour ago, Rocky Sullivan said:

Brutalist architecture just puzzles the fuck out of me. It's fucking horrible inhuman, dystopian looking awfulness. Maybe like Angry it's because I grew up in Runcorn new town around the likes of Castlefields, Southgate and the Shopping City - which still turns up in the odd nightmare. 

Beauty is sooooooo in the eye. We systematically destroy works of art like these fireplaces, thinking they are a load of old 50's bollocks. Rather like we did victorian cast iron fireplaces. They too were decimated. Now people pay thousands for originals.

 

 

[AngryOfTuebrook]

1 hour ago, Rocky Sullivan said:

Brutalist architecture just puzzles the fuck out of me. It's fucking horrible inhuman, dystopian looking awfulness. Maybe like Angry it's because I grew up in Runcorn new town around the likes of Castlefields, Southgate and the Shopping City - which still turns up in the odd nightmare. 

All those flat roofs in Southgate, Castlefields and Halton Brook might allow the architect to wax lyrical on his North African influences, but they won't keep the rain out of people's homes.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

2 hours ago, rb14 said:

 

Preston Bus Station 

In fairness, I do like that.

[Chairman Meow]

On 02/02/2021 at 14:48, neko said:

As Chairman Meow knows, I only give out MVDR projects to my students

And also that the detail of your responses is inversely proportional to the amount of cats sitting on your lap. 

[rb14]

So then, in homage to both brutalism and @neko...

 

 

[cloggypop]

5 hours ago, AngryofTuebrook said:

In fairness, I do like that.

It's too early though, 1968/9.

[VladimirIlyich]

23 minutes ago, Colonel Kurtz said:

You see some fantastic Victorian architecture in India. Get a real sense of the original British architects being freed from the constraints on cost and planning they faced at home and just indulging their visions. The railway station in Mumbai is just amazing; Italian gothic at its very best;

This might have been because they had subjugated Indian people to build it for little cost?

[Rocky Sullivan]

48 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

This might have been because they had subjugated Indian people to build it for little cost?

There's always one - spoiling it for the rest of us. 

[cochyn]

52 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

This might have been because they had subjugated Indian people to build it for little cost?

More likely they could get hold of a veritable army of the mid-caste master craftsmen needed to build it, for a fraction of the cost of a mason back in dear old Blighty. 

[neko]

20 hours ago, rb14 said:

So then, in homage to both brutalism and @neko...

 

 

The Architectural word of the day is "Brise soleil"  

[neko]

wanted to do something like that in Mexico, if we had bought the neighbours property...

 

[Jarvinja Ilnow]

This thread is so much more enjoyable than talking about the other subject on the other forum. 

 

It has certainly got me energised after a shitty 2 years of illness and shielding, and going ever more dull in the brain. Rather than just reading and wasting time on RTS games, I wanted to try to exercise my brain's creative side.

 

So, can anybody recommend a good CAD package for house design that can help a beginner learn to view building design in basic, then greater, complexity? I was thinking of visualising the basic shape, then looking at the skeleton - eg the structural differences between steel and CLT etc. Though an ideal software package might be one to make me consider structural engineering aspects, I guess that it might be taking on too much for a rank amateur. Basically an easy to use but expansive type of software package. 

 

This came to mind just thinking back to an earlier post about people pissing off architects by asking them for a basic draughtsmanship service, I thought 'why not piss about with draughtmanship software during lockdown', and then have something to show an architect at a later date? I think I'd like to play about with pretty designs, and totally plagiarise Neutra and Le Corbusier until I get some original ideas.

 

I was discussing it with my wife and she is really keen to have a go at this, and see if we each can come up with competing designs of our own for a future Australian home. Her's would probably consist of a big lap pool and a shitty shack next to it, but I might be underestimating her.

 

I might pick us a random building plot from these people:

 

https://www.realestate.com.au/new-land-estates/wa/

 

Then work around he constraints that come with the plot. Some plots are huge, but most are 200-300m2, and nearly all are narrow strips. It should be relatively easy to look at state zoning/ building codes that determine height restrictions and go from there.

 

Anyway, there are lots of packages out there but any help in pointing me in the right direction would be most appreciated. Obviously not  'Chief Architect Premier', I saw that and shat my pants.

[Rico1304]

Have you just invented Minecraft? 
 

(I’ve never played it, this may be the shittest joke ever) 

[Jarvinja Ilnow]

2 minutes ago, Rico1304 said:

Have you just invented Minecraft? 
 

(I’ve never played it, this may be the shittest joke ever) 

Yes, but I'm trying to move on from the boxy build, Rico!