Touring A Couple Oregon Prefab Factories

Several mods mocked up before shipping at the Blazer Industries Factory

In recent times I've noticed an uptick in people shopping custom home services in parallel with a modular solution. In an effort to address this burgeoning market, I decided to go up to Oregon to take a look at a few prefabrication plants.  At first blush the prefabrication industry seems fairly opaque and many traditional building contractors and designers are predictably suspicious of how the proverbial "sausage" gets made in a prefabrication facility.  It is not uncommon to hear stories about the less skilled labor associated with building in a factory and it is difficult to say how much of this is fact and how much is fiction.  Certainly, the less conspicuous manner in which a prefab building is executed away from the watchful eye of a client or a designer doesn't help this perception.  After this visit, I'm relieved to report this appears to not be the culture of the operations I visited.  Both outfits have established reputations delivering quality products to Bay Area clients the fabrication I witnessed was executed in an efficient manner.

The online prefabrication presence, on the other hand, can make it difficult to know if an outfit is designing the product or making the product. Equally unclear is the nature of the product. Is it something for which plans already exist or is a designer marketing an idea they are willing to put into working drawing form once there is a client?  Many people are speculating in this realm.  There is a lot of interesting conceptual stuff and not-so-interesting "fluffy" stuff to wade through.

Fidelity Builder's factory. Two modules of a three module residence. 

In an effort to demystify this subject, I decided to visit Kevin Allen, of Fidelity Builders. While I was there I also visited the more established Blazer Industries company that Kevin worked for before starting Fidelity Builders. Both visits were very interesting. Kevin has a lot of experience building noteworthy homes for people in the bay area.  This  includes several Michelle Kaufmann homes while Kevin was at Blazer Industries. He is just starting his business so there wasn't a lot to see at his location. But for the same reason, people interested in doing new prefab homes would get great service if they used him. His overhead is low and he is passionate about what he's doing. This is always a great combination and people in the prefab design industry who have worked with him in the past have nothing but good things to say.

Some basic rules of thumb for would-be designers and installers:

1. Keep it to 14' wide modules and you will be trapping all the efficiencies of the modular approach.
2. If the house is coming into California you'll want to keep the overall height under 15'-7". This works out to be about a 12'-10" maximum modular height if one accounts for the trailer height. If you plan on the building being taller than this, plan on stacking things. 
3. Once a modular building gets delivered it tends to be about half the cost of the project. The foundation and the utility hookups make up the lions share of the other half. 
4. A price of $180 to $190 a square foot is a fairly common range for the modular component of a prefabricated structure.  
5. Make sure you invest in a good foundation. Imprecisions in the foundation work can be costly to rectify.  Remember, the foundation and the infrastructure cost are the other significant piece of the price puzzle and can often work out to be as much as the mod itself.  The nature of modular construction requires a foundation that is, in all likelihood a bit more costly than a standard foundation because of the lower tolerances.

It is important to keep in mind that modular construction is not the same thing as conventional construction. There are built in inefficiencies and efficiencies. If you are building modularly keep the following in mind: The fewer seams the better. Everywhere there is a joint, there is site cost for two reasons:

1. It is very easy to design something that will require the entire interior to be repainted after it is installed. This is especially true if the wall finishes are close to what one might expect in a nice residence. If you like a level V drywall finish I'm not sure I would bother having the factory do more than prime it. There will likely be substantial patching required after delivery. Compromising on wall finish quality is probably one of the biggest hurdles for the would-be prefab customer to overcome if they want to capture any efficiencies.
2. Everywhere two modules meet there are typically two structural elements not one. For example, if two modules are side by side, there will likely be two walls up against each other. Equally, if you install a second floor module, there will likely be a separate floor and ceiling system

Building with masonry at Blazer Industries 

All in all I was very impressed with what I saw and heard. Blazer Industries, which handles more commercial projects, was clearly very capable.  If a project has an economy of scale that justifies a certain degree of complexity or is just very straightforward, they would be a great resource. I walked away from my visits feeling like there are reasons to go prefab that are compelling.  These have to do with quality control, managing expectations, shortening the construction period and minimizing waste. In the strictest sense, cost does not presently appear to be one of the explicit reasons to go modular in the custom home market. If you are willing to compromise sufficiently to produce a paradigm of efficiency, one could make a modular home that exploits these efficiencies. I'm skeptical, at this point, people are willing to do these things instinctively.  There are many historical examples that chronicle the typically-slow response of a society to exploit the efficiencies of a new way of building.  

Perhaps the most provocative reason to go prefab is a psychological one.  How often does a client want to change something midway through construction? These changes are often good ideas in theory but they are notoriously expensive in the middle of a project. In the traditional construction method, a good architect should make it clear to the client ahead of time how critical it is to avoid late changes.  But it can be difficult to persuade a client of this. "The customer is always right"is the credo that often governs and if there is additional income to be had by addressing this request, the architect will often capitulate to a client's request to modify the design against all better judgement.  Knowing when to capitulate on this sort of thing, is perhaps one of the bigger quandaries of a residential practice.  Prefabrication imposes a kind of "saving-you-from-yourself" discipline on a project that separates the pros from the amateurs because there is just more likelihood with a prefab solution that some site specific design element will get missed.  All parties need to thoroughly review the design before triggering fabrication.  This being said, if the architect is thorough and does a rigorous design, the economic pay off of avoiding design discovery on site is very promising.  

Demystifying Prefabrication

There is a lot to be confused about with prefabricated housing in California. Let's start with the terminology itself. If you talk with Codes and Standards Administrator, Kevin Cimini at the California Department of Housing and Community Development, you'll get a good explanation. There are basically two kinds of prefabrication.

1. Manufactured Housing.  This what you find in mobile home parks here in California.  They are very standardized, regulated by federal HUD standards and designed very explicitly for affordability.  These units tend to depreciate in value reliably over time.
2. Factory-Built Homes.  These buildings are regulated by the same California Building Code as any site built structure.  They are further subdivided into two distinct categories:

• Orange Insignia Building Components.  In the custom home market, these components are usually individual rooms, combinations of rooms or entire dwelling units.
• Red Insignia Building Components.  In the custom home market, these components are usually wall, floor and room panels.  Previous Agriboard and SIP panel projects done by Studio Ecesis were done using this delivery method.

A good way to remember the difference between these two color standards is that the "red" color appropriately alerts you to more required assembly on site.

When one reads about prefabrication in many popular design publications these days, it is important to realize the article is usually discussing orange insignia factory-built homes.  Produced by few, and promoted by many, these buildings are increasingly being conjured by architects and advertised on their websites.  The building itself is usually NOT produced by the architect but instead is reliant on a solid partnership between them and a handful of trustworthy factories that tend to aggregate - understandably - in areas that are more severely impacted by weather and its effects on the construction season.

Capilano Treetop Suspension Bridges

Another interesting destination in Vancouver is the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park.  Attaching tree houses successfully to trees is an age old endeavor fraught with challenges.  This park is visited by hundreds of thousands of guests every year and these tree houses are constructed without driving any fasteners into the  Douglas-fir trees!  If one reviews the myriad number of tree house books that exist out there one can appreciate how this is no small feat.  It is accomplished with a series of well placed adjustable girdles that also serve as attachment points for the suspension bridges.

There is also a really long suspension bridge across a river and a gravity defying cliff walk similar to the new one at the grand canyon.  Based on the photos I've seen of the one at the grand canyon, one might argue this cliff walk is better.  If you find yourself in North Vancouver, check it out.

An Imaginative Solution to a Common Grading Challenge.

The Vancouver Convention Center has a number of interesting design features along its waterfront.  None of them catches the eye as much as this stabilized planting situation.  It was a wonderful way to deal with a grading condition that could have easily been a solved in a less inspired way using a concrete retaining wall.

Site Milling at Four Springs

Shawn working the portable sawmill

Shawn Gavin recently visited the Four Springs Property to mill a few trees (Douglas Fir and Pine) that were harvested from the site. My boys and I were able to visit him that day and had fun checking out his operation. 

Shawn fixing the bandsaw blade

  

Shawn has taken over the business from Merle Rueser. Merle did the Maidman Residence milling. As part of this new operation Shawn has a longer milling machine and can handle longer pieces of wood. This is always an issue with site milling since it is hard to have a portable sawmill that can rival the capacity of wood that is milled at a plant. According to Shawn this new mill also has a thinner blade than one often finds on mills and therefore is able to waste less wood in the cutting process. The new lodge is slated to have three debarked tree trunks as part of its entry experience. We were able to set aside three logs for this purpose while we were out there that day. 

The three entry porch columns

  

I heard one helper say "I don't think I've ever touched a board before that was so recently a tree." 

Cutting stickers for storing wood on site

 

It is wonderful when things get comprehensible like this. It reminds me of what organic food people appreciate about unprocessed food. I can't help but feel this is what is missing from the contemporary "green" building as it is popularly understood. A building that is good for the environment should be appreciated for more than an aggregation of "points." Preserving the causal connection between natural resources and a building's structural integrity is, to my mind, a symbolic and esthetic gesture that is worthy of preserving on many levels and does as much for the environment in a collective unconscious way as any excess of LEED points.

The Nature of Hillside Building in California

When I first left California to visit the midwest as a kid I missed the striking terrain and the interesting building forms this dynamic landscape generates.  Since a single level building is certainly one of the most efficient and/or practical building types, buildings made here are often, by practical necessity, outgrowths of our undulating terrain.

Several months ago we started designing the main lodge at the Four Springs Retreat Center.  The retreat is located on approximately 200 acres outside of Middletown in Lake County and most visitors stay in tiny cabins that have aggregated organically over the years on the sloping hillsides of this property.  The main lodge had burned down and they are rebuilding it.  When faced with the option of excavation or elevation, one finds that most of the cabins are elevated on wood stilts out over the hillside.  It is an esthetic born of practicality and simplicity that one finds all over this region.  One will find it in the Fitch Mountain cabins of Healdsburg, to the redwood cabins in the Monte Rio and Guerneville area along the lower Russian River Basin.

For economy, these structures often are built without a "skirt" because enclosing the area below the heated space is more costly than simply letting this understory area express the building's support system.  Conversely, in places like the Oakland hills, you tend to see this same zone enclosed.  Less costly solutions see this lower volume used for unheated storage while fully developed solutions use it for additional living space (particularly on small lots).

But at the Four Springs Retreat, where the land is wonderfully expansive, these inexpensive elevated buildings have a wonderful spindly charm that felt worthy of celebrating.    Single person sleeping quarters are vaguely nest-like.  Views from the windows of these cabins don't feature the root "flair" that exists at the base of tree trunks but instead present the tree canopies and pure cylindrical tree trunks.  The presence of a calm and still forest is everywhere.

In creating an architecture of place, what is worthy of celebrating and what is deserving of the waste bin?  In a more airy discussion the relative merits of pluralism, "boom and bust" economics, beautiful nature, diverse religiosity and many other characteristics making up an abiding California character are worthy of scrutiny.  But the idea of elevated buildings and their relationship to the function of sleeping quarters was a subject seemingly broached by the site itself and gave flight to a building that ultimately had to reconcile two very different uses: assembly and sleeping.

Diaz Farm Family Unit Article

There was an article today by Meg McConahey in the Press Democrat that gives a great project summary of the Diaz Farm Family Unit.   Thank you Meg.

"Z" Chair

A recent side project at Studio Ecesis has been experimenting with connecting 2x framing lumber with large tongue and groove connections to sustain rigid folded joints.  The small piece featured here can work as an end table or a stool.

Douglas Fir is to the California building industry what rice is to Chinese cuisine.  Framing lumber, for example, can be used as a beam, a stud or a piece of blocking (see previous article for more on this).   If one is looking for a good wood window, one would be well served to dispense with the national norm of pine and go with a more local window company that uses our locally available Douglas Fir.  It is a stronger material and has a local chain of custody. Framing lumber is, of course, the main use for Doug Fir in California and, if you want an affordable building material, it is hard to beat.  This stool project was part of an ongoing attempt to come up with alternative uses for Douglas Fir as it is commonly provided us by the construction industry.

The pleasure of discovering these auxiliary applications to common building materials has a way of reverberating.  If you go to a residential job site these days and look at the scrap pile with a consciousness of reuse, your mouth will start to water.  In this way, the resource conservation problem, as it is popularly understood, is poorly framed.

The advertisements and articles in design magazines are interesting and the ferment in many ways is a positive thing but the complexity of the proposed solutions is often reminiscent of Heidegger's thoughts on windmills and hydro-electric power plants.  Simple is still good on many levels.





Certainly here in the far west we solve things with technology and there is no way technology will not be part of our solution.  Its just important to remember that obsolete technology is often ironically part of the problem.

To the side of this technological endeavor with all its plusses and minuses exists another way of looking at resource conservation.  Resource conservation can also be improved with simple imagination and a willingness to attempt beauty around the celebration of those resources we already possess.  This also needs to be part of any attempt to improve our environment.

Environmental Design and Construction

A big thank you to the Environmental Design and Construction Blog for giving the Maidman Residence some coverage.  The write up is here.

Visit to an Oakland Food Pantry

I recently had the opportunity to visit a Food Pantry that is doing a significant amount of good in West Oakland. It was compelling to see exactly what went into the successful distribution of food to the disadvantaged.  Greg Harland, the owner of the food pantry, is edifying an old building with the dual purpose of providing affordable housing and free food to the local community.  Stemming the intrusion of graffiti, stocking the food pantry with good affordable staples like potatoes and working toward upstairs functional apartments seem to be the ritual of building ownership for Greg.  Everything is done on a shoe string.    Surprisingly, one of the biggest challenges is to get a big enough truck to keep the pantry stocked.  Safeway and others are capable of providing a lot of food for the pantry.  But there is apparently only so much that can fit in a pickup truck.  It seems ironic that transportation and not the food itself would be the challenge.  It feels like an american problem.  

When I met Greg a few days back to check out his operation, the food pantry wasn't going to be open for an hour or so, but people were already lining up.  In the old days, this historic building had a covered walk way over the sidewalk.  This is something a modern day planning department would likely frown upon, but it is worth noting that for the lines that will be forming outside this building, the concept might be worthy of reintroducing.

Maidman Residence Nearing Completion

The client on this project needed to cut down a few large douglas fir trees to make room for a better septic system and to insure uphill trees did not one day fall on another residence.  It was an opportunity to make a strong project about resource conservation and the meaning and beauty manifest by natural resources repurposed on a single property.  These days, so many “green projects” are the opposite of this.  We are often told a material is “green” but the process of its creation is often highly engineered and complicated beyond any layman’s understanding (e.g. trex decking). 

Working with a hyper-local material seemed like a refreshing respite from the “mystery meat” of eco-materials on the market today. 

Every project has a narrative that gets told by the occupants. It can be a story of recycling, pure beauty or, like on this project, it can be a story of how the site gave to the house.  

The idea was simple:  First, we designed a building that highlighted the grandeur of the site's wood in the main space with large beams that could not be obtained affordably through more traditional lumberyard channels.  Anything over a 12" member tends to be special order at lumberyards and, after reviewing the size of the trees that were slated to be harvested, we went ahead and designed the space to work with 6x14 beams. Secondly, we planned for a consistent interior board finish that could be a convenient biproduct of the beam production and therefore minimize waste.  With this dual pronged approach, it was our intention to outfit the interior of this building with both a structural narrative and a visual majesty.   It felt meaningful to tell a story about the strength of this site both before and after the advent of this building.

It is a common american custom for a job to define an individual.  To know someone well we often ask them what they do. This holds quite true for objects as well despite the fact "doing" and "being" are a conflation of meanings.  What something is and what it does are different things.  Be that as it may, if one points at a log cabin and asks what it is, the proper response could be "wood" or "a house." In philosophy this is an ontological issue. The question speaks to the being, reality or existence of the thing.

These days, objects can be so highly processed we make very little connection between the object's materiality and the natural world. In the absence of knowing what something is made from, we have a natural tendency to fasten on the story of its making.  What was it made for?  What engineering process created it?  In the absence of a greater knowledge and interest in the material origins of things, we instead lay emphasis on the human project of its design and function.  One could even say we talk about the materiality of things now through the lens of our own ingenuity.  How much is the story of composite wood decking about wood and how much is it about the act of compositing and recycling materials or the advanced world of science that lies therein?

With the steady parade of contemporary green buildings our portrayal of the natural environment, and how we can go about protecting and honoring it, becomes quite skewed.  Exactly what constitutes a green material is often measured by how much highly processed salvaged work is involved in bringing an architectural product to the marketplace.  Countertops with recycled glass aggregate, insulation from old jeans or wood chips in composite decking are just a few of the products that fit this bill.   Few of us, when confronted with these products, could speak articulately about what they truly materially are.  

It begs the question:  If, on a gut level, we don't perceive our homes coming from any specific plants, trees or earth, how can we expect to truly care about the natural environment in the essential and visceral way that would insure their well being.  With the absence of this consciousness, don’t we have that much less perceived skin in the game?

As an American phenomenon, the green building movement has  parallels to the organic food movement.  Many scholars cite a major shift in the organic food movements when it "went industrial."   The word organic became more trivialized.  It often meant the simple practice of ingredient substitution.  If honey, for example, replaces corn syrup we consider the label of organic to be viable.  Deeper practices of making are neglected.

Similarly, on a typical green project the idea of substituting one classically unpopular material for a laudable green one is the popular device for achieving a credibly green project (e.g. a recycled green product might replace the use of wood).  

But it’s worth noting that reliable building materials that have been thoroughly vetted over time still endure.  This project is hopefully an example of this.  If it becomes necessary to remove trees for other reasons, the idea that one could use these same trees on site is a strategy worthy of examination.  The practice can contribute to the esthetics, the ecology and the economy of the project in a holistic and powerful way.  

Piper Street Residence: A Case for Fast-Tracking

After

Before

A speedy small project is going up on Piper Street in downtown Healdsburg. This client visited Studio Ecesis in September and wanted to put a second story on their small, newly acquired, home before the rains came.  I was hesitant to take the job.  In addition to this difficult timeline there was the challenge of  making a diminutive Healdsburg bungalow into a successful two story structure.  So often when you try to expand a simple monumental gabled structure like these bungalows you wind up compromising the scale and significance of the front facade and entry.  

The headroom under the existing roof really precluded placing any kind of master bedroom in the attic without violating code requirements.  It was going to be necessary to raise the roof.

Cupola Framing Prior to Window Installation

To incorporate useful attic ventilation and bring light into the attic addition, a cupola "cooling chimney" was proposed for the center of the residence.  This also neutralized the dominant height of the new crossing gable since both gables were reduced to tributary elements to this central form.  

The client worked very quickly and we now have the framing in place.  Any storms now should be "tarp-able"and the crew can work throughout the winter.  It is important to realize this project was executed as a "shell package" for an experienced builder-client who understood the coordination issues that are still outstanding in the absence of a more complete set of documents.  Interior elevations prior to the commencement of construction are the usual norm and we elected to deal with these interior issues later due to the time crunch.

Jamb extensions, outlet locations, lighting, transition strips, finish build ups and a myriad of other interior work will be coordinated in situ.  Despite the ensuing delays on the interior work that will be associated with this lack of initial coordination, the client was able to get a roof on the project.  In this manner, they are able to work through the winter.  For anyone familiar with moving between homes, this "jump on the weather" can be an invaluable money saver despite the inefficiencies associated with this lack of initial document coordination.  

Many times a client will ask me to if they can start construction prior to the interior documents being complete.  My customary advice is to avoid this practice.  It is most often a penny wise and pound foolish approach where the client minimizes their initial design expenditure and winds up doing things twice or paying several subs to do head scratching in the field.  These are expensive solutions to something that could have been deliberately resolved on the drawing board before it ever became a "problem" in the field.  All of this to say that every project is different.  Here is an example of a project that deserved a fast-track approach because the carrying cost of another living circumstance outweighed the inefficiencies of a mere shell package at the outset.

The Sea Ranch Chapel - A Successful Use of Curves

A visit out to the coast this weekend found me, my youngest son and a couple friends stopping by the Sea Ranch Chapel.  Over the years it has been fun to stop in at this place to marvel at the craftsmanship and see how the place is holding up.  All things considered it remains in remarkably good shape for such a unique structure, situated as it is only a few hundred yards off of highway 1 and a few hundred yards from the bluff.  Sculptor James Hubbell's design is commonly considered a successful collaboration between himself and craftsman Thamby Kumaran.  

One of the things that is most remarkable about this building is the way in which the organic curves of the building are accomplished so successfully and so smoothly.  So often, when architecture attempts to create an organic curve it is a lonely solo amongst a chorus of otherwise straight geometry.  This is usually all the budget can stomach.  Also, there is inevitably a "kink" or a "wobble" in the solitary geometry that calls the grace of the building (and its organic underpinnings) into question.  Curves are just hard to do convincingly and this building jumps in head first and reminds us that the flaws of a unified and riotous scheme are more easily obscured than when things are done in a timid or tentative manner.  A real place of beauty.

Revisiting The Hidden Acres Residence

A recent visit to the Hidden Acres Residence found a lot of the drought-tolerant vegetation around the building thriving.  It was also good to see the exterior drop down shades in use on the west facade. 

The Healdsburg Elementary School Garden

Healdsburg Elementary School boasts one of the longest standing gardens of any elementary public school in the Healdsburg Area (not to mention high schools and junior highs).   At the present time the school's parents are doing the least expensive (yet very effective) thing that can be done to improve a community garden: Weeding.  As a designer I want to believe there are planning ideas that can be introduced here that would significantly improve the garden for the children.  It is easy to imagine there are ideas that "crack the code" of the garden's challenges.  

There is no code to weeding except perhaps Teacher Vikki's cautionary: "Don't puncture the irrigation line with the spade fork."  

The reality of a successful contribution, however modest, is just as often the simple act of documenting any productive idea in a way that allows people to work shoulder to shoulder on a shared cause.  This is probably not why many go into architecture but it is one worthy undertaking of the profession that is under-represented.  Samuel Mockabee's work is certainly a testament to tapping a collective need that can travel under the popular radar.  

It is true that when you illustrate a new idea in a way that people find provocative there is a kind of alchemy that comes from the raw materials and people's labor that borders on miraculous.   But just as often architect's are capable of introducing ideas that, however interesting, are out of step with the milieu for which they are being proposed.  This can result in a lot of waste and it is probably one reason why the peace corp makes it a motto to not introduce new technologies to the cultures in which they work.  In this sense good architectural ideas are conjured equally from pure creativity and the simple habituation of the architect to the community's needs. 

 Comparing Samuel Mockabee's approach to development in California, makes it painfully clear it is possible to go a whole lifetime here without ever working on an authentic need-based project.  This effort is something that requires intention apart from the effort involved in simply designing things.  Teacher Vikki's Garden at HES feels like the kind of work Samuel Mockabee would be proud of.

Bike Shed

Here is a design for a bike shed that I recently built to liberate our garage from six bicycles. To borrow a term from modern manufacturing, bicycles aren't good at "nesting" with the orthogonal geometry that is so prevalent in a garage.  Common spatial conflicts arise between bikes and shelving, washer and dryers and boxes etc.

Also, as a transportation vehicle, the bicycle wants to be easily deployed and, in our case, moving the location of bike storage closer to the front of the property (our garage is in the backyard) made a lot of sense.  There is nothing more frustrating than moving stuff out of the way when you want to get to a transportation vehicle.   The thing should be able to move immediately.  It's accessibility is part of its function.

Roughly 14 feet long, this bike shed has two bays, one per each rolling door.  You can also just as easily use one bay for your yardwaste, trash and recycling trifecta.

It turns out Metal Sales (the corrugated metal supplier) can ship its panels in 1/8" lengths so to keep my own labor down and to avoid making the backyard a complete DMZ I shipped it this way.  The shed wasn't a big rush so I went ahead and framed it first to make doubly sure the lengths would be right on.  It was great to not have to hover over each panel with an abrasive blade.  I think my dog Blue appreciated that too.  I can't imagine NOT paying this minor premium.  It saved hours of time.

The roof is a very shallow 1/4:12 slope with a rubberized asphalt substrate that should be sufficient to keep things waterproof.  It will be interesting to see how it holds up.  A bike shed seemed like a good place to try it out and I wanted a slope that wouldn't rise up and disturb the neighbors with its height.  I also wanted something that shared the directionality and movement of the the horizontal corrugated siding.

After witnessing the sheet metal work done by roofing subs on a couple of our recent residential projects, this sheet metal work was the first chance I had to try our some of their techniques.  I think the biggest take away from watching how the pros do it is that you can really clean up the look of sheet metal if you understand how and when to use pop rivets.  There is really no better exposed fastener solution for corner flashing and trim than an exposed pop rivets.  It virtually disappears and, if you aren't fastening a big panel to the plywood substrate, there is usually no reason you can't use a rivet in lieu of a screw with a neoprene washer.

Last but not least, a big thank you to Dennis Furia of Furia Heating and Air Conditioning for supplying all the break metal on the job.  They did very accurate work.

Using Wood Milled On Site

Figure A

With all the talk about alternatives to wood in the construction world, it is worth noting that wood has several redeeming virtues.

1. It can be harvested locally.
2. It requires relatively little energy to transform the raw material into a building material.
3. It has an established track record with the building code.
4. Douglas Fir, the primary structural wood grown in California, grows relatively fast.
5. If push comes to shove, it can be used in virtually any capacity in a residential project (floor, wall, roof, cabinetry etc.).

Drew Maneuvering the Lumber

In these respects, wood is more readily available and, once obtained, more "adaptively reusable" than most other materials.  Because scrap wood often gets used for blocking, furring or any number of other miscellaneous secondary uses, its efficacy often goes unnoticed and under-appreciated by laypeople.  Most of the time the wood is hidden in the wall and out of sight.

A while back a client removed a couple trees on her property for construction and life-safety reasons.  We were working on a design for her residence at the time and it was a golden opportunity to get some great beams.  Merle Rueser is one of the last remaining sawyers in Sonoma County with a portable sawmill aand we had him come out to her site and convert the felled trees into lumber.

Merle Managing the Milling

It's important to keep in mind that there are many sizes of lumber that are not readily available through a lumberyard.  If you have the opportunity to have lumber milled on site, its a great opportunity to get some big beams that would be costly through a lumberyard.   We had the extra wood cut into wall boards for the residence's public spaces.

In the last couple weeks Chapman Construction attached the interior wall boards to the Agriboard panels and we can start to see how the site-milled Douglas Fir is doing (See figure A).  The 6x14 overhead beams were stamped by a lumber inspector prior to incorporation into the structural design.  This is the one hurdle that is required of site-milled lumber and one should anticipate an inspection to start at a few hundred dollars.  For a residence, most of this cost is manifest in the transportation time of the inspector and you can usually get a fair amount of wood inspected for close to the starting price.

Curves and Mythology

When asked to speak to our exit from the universe of faith into the age of enlightenment I once heard the California Poet, Gary Snyder say, "Who among us can explain how a telephone works?  We take that on faith right?"

In this way it can be said that mythology is alive and well...even in an age of "reason."

Similarly, when I find myself at work doing CADD drafting and I reach for the B Spline tool (the one that makes all the pretty smooth curves) I have often wondered exactly what it is I'm doing.  This tool, and the math associated with it, is the backbone of virtually every graphic application that does curves today.

What math is transpiring here?  It is interesting to note that you can't really make a circle with the B Spline tool without a lot of massaging.  Clearly, there are limitations that, as users of CADD software, we are confined by willingly the same way Frank Lloyd Wright frequently used multiples of a 30 degree angle because this was what his triangle possessed.  It is worth being conscious of this if one is a citizen of this CADD craft and for this reason I would recommend interested parties check out this link or this one.

Particularly the last link has a wonderfully intuitive illustration of how a B Spline is generated.

Doors and Walls

It is possible to imagine an architectural element that is both a door by virtue of its operability, and a wall by virtue of its scale.   When doors are enlarged to approach the scale of a wall we find spatial uses that, in the absence of this "Door/Wall", would have simply required more rooms.

Between the inside and the outside, large openings are a luxury most california homes may indulge in at minimal cost and great enhancement to  interior spaces.  They improve indoor air quality, natural light and views.  Used in conjunction with sun visors,  large openings are easily waterproofed and provide a mechanism for extending the living space into hospitable environs.

On Openings

Studio 711

In contemporary architectural design there is typically much attention given to the exterior massing of a buildings and this is a fundamental aspect of a building's experience.  But if one considers the inner life of a building, one realizes that the openings in a wall are frequently the most legible physical feature of the building itself and as I have continued to practice architecture, the significance of openings has become more pronounced.  Walls may be hung with art and obscured by furniture.  Floors way have similar occlusions.  Ceilings tend to be above the natural human field of view. But the opening, be it a window or a door, is implicitly a right of way for people, light, fresh air etc.  This attribute preserves an openings' visual clarity and as such, openings are deserving of esthetic attention.  By dint of their role, they will rarely be obscured by the "life" of the building.

Studio 711 Garage Door at Office