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Ferdinand

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  1. Ferdinand

    Sydney Street Furniture I

    By Ferdinand,

    This is the first in a series of postings I will be making whilst on holiday in Sydney and Melbourne, mainly about architectural details which may be of interest to Buildub readers.
     
    My favourite way to meet a new city is to do what I call a random walk, followed by a random journey back to my starting point on public transport.
     
    I will be posting photos and descriptions of anything I find of interest, whether internal or external.
     
    Cycle Locking Point
     
    This first is ... If I am right ... a place to lock your bicycle.
     

     
     

     

     
    Zebra Crossings are as clear as in the UK. Cars stop, pedestrians keep going. But the Sydney version of a Belisha Beacon is joyous in its bluntness.
     
    You can also see that the Fun Police have reached Australia. I will have a bit more to say about the Sydney police force, and priorities of pedestrians and motor vehicles later.
     

     
     

     
    Textured Paving.
     
    In the UK we have moulded concrete pavers with grids of bumps to place next to, for example, pedestrian crossings, such that visually impaired people can tell by touch where to cross the road with the help of signals, or where they are approaching the edge of a kerb.
     
    This is the strangest item of street furniture I have met here. The Sydney version is grids of metal studs, which could almost have been designed as a slip risk in humidity or rain, especially for visually impaired or blind people 
     
    in places there are even signs warning that the studs are a slip hazard. Quite how these are supposed to keep blind people safe is an explanation I would love to hear. Or perhaps I have misunderstood?
     

     

     
     

     
    Comments are, as ever, welcome below.
     
  2. Ferdinand
    Having seen and debated Calvinmiddle's 120 square metre 2 bedroom bungalow, I was musing on how large a dwelling actually needs to be in floor area - intending no particular critique of Calvin's decisions here.

    In these days of £1500 per square meter build costs and soaring energy prices, should we take Occam's Razor to all those (possibly) extra bits we are adding to our self-builds? Rather than learning creating larger rooms and learning to do that one extra building trade ourselves, to save budget, is it possible to make different decisions and simply build less house instead?

    Let me bring some personal experience to open a conversation about efficient use of space, as I think I have a good example of a well-designed and well laid out 2 bed bungalow, on quite a difficult site. Here is an aerial view and site plan, which is fairly tight, and built to the boundary on the North and West sides, preventing insertion of windows in those walls.

     

    The history is that in 1960 this was a cowshed. In 1970 it became an architect's studio. By the 1990s the architect had moved out, and it was extended and became a 2 bed studio (literally) bungalow.

    I don't, unfortunately, have a formal floor plan to hand, short of scanning in an architect's drawing, but the total floor area is 70 sqm, or 750 square feet, measured by adding up the floor areas of each room. So here is a very rough sketch plan from my log book:

     

    Now 70 sqm is not very much area to most of us; but the place is surprisingly spacious, and everyone who has lived there loves it. This is the accommodation in detail, with brief notes:
    Entrance Hall: 3'11 x 11'11 (1.18m x 3.62m) Kitchen: 11'11 x 10'6 (3.64m x 3.19m). Space for dining table. Lounge: 14'8 x 14'9 (4.46m x 4.48m). Velux roof lights. Master Bedroom 1: 14'6 x 11'4 (4.42m x 3.45m). Bedroom 2: 10'4 x 11'9 (3.16m x 3.59m). Inner Hall: 3'10 x 7'6 (1.16m x 2.29m). Boiler/washer cupboard. Cloak cupboard. Shower Room: 6'7 x 6'9 (2.00m x 2.05m) plus 4'0 x 3'0 (1.23m x 0.92m). Velux roof light. Walk-in shower. If I compare that with the "London Space Standard", which is the document about suggested reasonable minimum house sizes that politicians are currently rabbiting on about, we are quite close to the recommended minimum areas for 2 bed single storey homes:
    Space required for 2 bed 2 person single storey dwelling = 61 sqm. Space required for 2 bed 3 person single storey dwelling = 70 sqm. Space required for 2 bed 4 person single storey dwelling = 74 sqm. The document, which is based on mapping out what furniture is needed for the number of people in each room, is well worth a read for self-builders wanting to explore how layouts can be organised.

    Where then can self-builders save on space, and budget?

    I'd suggest the design of my bungalow is efficient in these areas, and that two ideas to use are double use of space, and illusion to make spaces feel larger than is the case:
    Saving on circulation space - ie corridors and hallways. The Inner Hall and Entrance Hall total around 4.6 sqm, which is under 6% of total floor space. Since there is no wall between the entrance hall and the kitchen, part of that is also perceived to be part of a larger kitchen/dining area. The space budget is spent where most time is spent - the lounge, at 20sqm, is generous and square, with what amounts to a glass wall non the south side, and no dark corners due to Velux roof windows at the north side. A perception of space is helped by middling high cathedral ceilings (13ft) in the principal rooms. There are mistakes as well - in this case the lounge is a little to open to view by passers by on the pavement if they look in a particular direction.

    What have you done well or badly in your own project? How much dedicated circulation space did you create?

    And there's a whole conversation to have about changes in circulation space from early times (no corridors) to 20C (corridors to avoid draughts) to 21C (no corridors since doors are now draught proof). I'll start a conversation about that another time.
  3. Ferdinand
    I think that the pleasure of living in a house is at least as important as its design and performance. The ability to get that right in advance from mere conversations with a client seems to me to me to be the core skill of a good architect.

    This ebuild blog is a conversation around this theme, named for a famous quote from Ludwig (really) Mies van der Rohe.

    My conversation starters will be details of buildings, but also details of how things are built, that I find interesting or attractive. My hope that others will respond with their agreements and disagreements.

    I have started the blog after a pointer from an article "Whither Fashion" by Caliwag from July 2013 to a book "A Garden and Three Houses" by Jane Brown and Richard Bryant. The book is about a small scheme called Turn End by an architect - Peter Aldington - who was unknown to me. Peter and his wife Margaret built their house themselves in 1963, and have lived there for half a century.

    My own project is to find out how to build an energy efficient 2 or 3 bedroom studio bungalow as a viable build-to-let, which is also a home prospective tenants want to live in. I have one that works well already, which I will write about in the future, but can one be built for a reasonable budget in 2014, and how? 

    This is also a process of finding the right details and setting them in the right context.

    To add some meat to the first post, here's Peter Aldington himself talking about the house he and his wife built in 1963 and have lived in for half a century.

    Watch out for the discussion about sun and light, but also their perspective on sleeping in your living room for 50 years. And that hanging staircase goes to a storage loft.

    Here's a frame from the video. Yes - those are bifold doors 1963-style. Ecclesiastes was right, there is nothing new under the sun.

    (Note: I will embed the video if I subdue the technology, but for now please follow this link).
  4. Ferdinand
    I've just run across the concept of the "Solar Loft", as proposed for a new 'Eco' development at Bickleigh Village in Plymouth, by Bill Dunster's ZEDProjects operation and Social Investment Company Cornerstone.

    This is a space outside the superinsulated perimeter on the top storey of a house, with insulation in the floor, and polysolar panels for the roof. These are less efficient than traditional solar panels, but also let a proportion of the light through, and have been suggested elsewhere as a way of mitigating the roast-freeze cycle which occurs in many conservatories.



    The development is a high density development on the majority of a somewhat larger site - 91 houses in 3.06Ha, with 0.63Ha of woodland left untouched. Most of the houses are 4 or 5 bedrooms. The 5 beds currently advertised are £350,000.

    I like that strategy, though it leaves teeny-tiny back gardens. The Planning Reference is Plymouth Council 12/01504/FUL and 14/00135/FUL. The latter is currently under consideration, and would increase the proportion of larger homes in response to market demand.

    There are also live-work units and a building to provide employment for local people as a mini assembly plant for the buildings on the site, which will hopefully roll over into some sort of eco-construction hub for the future. They have done quite well in negotiating a good reduction in the various Section 106 obligations while leaving a notional 20% profit margin.

    I have not tracked down whether Community Infrastructure Levy will apply, though in most of Plymouth that is only £30 per square meter for residential anyway.

    I have attached detail of the solar loft for one house type, as included in the Planning Application. As shown, this drawing is copyright the ZEDfactory, and is excerpted here for critique and review.

    A Solar Loft is a way of using the "low" part of an asymmetric (for South Facing Solar reasons) roof for a benefit without having to add the extra height required to give a fully recognised useable room. The brochure for the development describes it in marketing-ese:

    At the top of the house a semi-transparent PV roof creates a stunning ‘solar loft’, allowing atmospheric dappled sunlight to flood into the highest room with the best view. The room is designed with good levels of cross-ventilation to avoid overheating and provides an ideal growing space for keen gardeners, or a relaxing sunspace for those more inclined to putting their feet up with a cup of coffee.

    (Ed: From that, you'd expect it to come with a built-in elf riding a unicorn through the velvety green fields of Arcadia.)

    It's also an ideal growing environment for your own heat demanding, high humidity requiring crop for quiet sale on the local market. I wonder how many of the people will insulate the roof to stop the heat showing, use the power on tap from the panels, and put something else in there to grow that is not tomatoes?

    At least that would reduce the number noisy helicopters circling overhead with thermal cameras, since the technology will no longer work.

    I like the idea, but I think that in the circumstances, I might be more inclined to hoick the whole part of the roof up by about 600-900mm to be level with the ridgeline, and gain a semi-sun-sheltered roof terrance, with the solar panels divided into two sections.

    If there were privacy concerns for neighbours, then I'd perhaps put a vertical piece of polysolar "window" down the top 1-2m of the wall too.

    It could be like a balcony in a seraglio; more complex to build than a solar loft, but perhaps more attractive as a foil to the small garden.

    What do you think?



    (Photo quoted from Bickleigh Eco Village brochure.)
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