Aunt Jeanne's House, aka Heaven

We found the cow whilst antique shopping. Let's just say antique shopping was not my favorite activity when I was a child and stuffed in the back seat of the 1988 Volvo wagon with my big sister in the middle of summer days. Yet, as a grown up? Extremely relaxing and fun. I got many things during this same trip.

Dee Oh En Ee

Final Presentation Board

It's done! My thesis project of my twelfth and final semester in college. I called it the Leaf Shadow House due to the conceptual experience of the space. When you look up at a bunch of trees, perhaps in the forest, or walking through campus, what do you see? Layers of light. Layers of green. Shadows. The canopy effect of the trees is one that always soothes me and is quite frankly, one of my favorite little things in life. If it's a nice sunny day, I guarantee I'll be happy to see the bright green and yellow of the trees.

I used this as inspiration to create a house which could live among the trees and use their leaves as sustainable features.  In the warmer months, the leaves shade the house, and the lack of leaves in the colder months allows for more sunlight to get into the space.

My personal favorite time of daylight is sunset. Truth be told, any sort of light between the hours of 11-4 for me are entirely too bright and hurt my delicate scandinavian eyes (yeah, I went there). I'm one of those people that can be brought to tears (not really) by a good sunset--the colors, the clouds, the atmosphere. For this reason, I made the west side of the house almost entirely glass facade. While dinner is on the table, the sun is setting and you get to view every part of it. It's the little things, folks.

A small part of me also did this as a thesis because of my small obsession with English country cottages that are entirely abundant in greenery. My parents watch a lot of British crime dramas...

The pattern on the glass facades? Abstracted leaf patterns to contrast the real-life leaves right next to them.  The combination of both of their shadows creates awesome moving art on the blank walls throughout the day, with the sun as the artist.

That just got deep.

In a nutshell, I love this project. I'm glad it was my last here at design school, and I hope it will also help me get a job... *fingers crossed*

C2C Final Renderings

DINING

2ND FLOOR LOOKING TO COURTYARD

LIVING

MASTER BED

Floor plans to come soon! Wrapping this project up and then... Say it with me. The Sixth Year GRADUATION! :)

C2C Base Renderings

C2C Furnishings

Starting to think about furnishings for the C2C house. Some thoughts:

Dining: Louis Ghost Chairs. Contemporary Turned Leg Table. Light fixtures which cast interesting shadows.

Living: Simple modern furniture. Coffee/side tables with intriguing shadows. Simple pendant light.

Pause: Let's Go Back to the Start.

Making progress on the Cradle to Cradle house.  When I get to this stage, usually I start to freak out a little bit and lose track of my normal design process.  Where am I going with this? What was my original intention?  Why am I making this way more complicated than they need to be?  Exactly.

Here's a few notable images from my original "inspiration & concept" folder made the first day we got this project, approximately a month ago.

Open, industrial, and yet still connected with nature.

Shadows were an original conceptual idea.  I'm still working with how they play off each other and create graphics on walls.

Same idea here: the shadows of the structure can, depending on the time of day, create patterns and graphics throughout the space.

Nice cubby type sitting area, perfect for my courtyard.

Indoor green wall, illuminated with skylights. Umm, hellooo?

Just... Beautiful. I think this is in Japan...

Was going to work with this pattern and make screens out of it, allowing the light and shadows to play off each other to create the graphics on the interior.

This is just a summation of all the materials I want to use, basically.

So what have we learned from revisiting these images?  I want trees.  I want shadows.  I want shadow and light interactions.  I want the outdoors to not feel almost like the indoors.  And I especially want/wish we had a street tree tunnel of white trees like Japan.

All-in-all, it's coming together.  More updates in a few days, when I can manage to get some interior views together.  Sneak preview:

(end terrible, straight SketchUp style view)

Project due in: 5 weeks.

Cradle To Canopy?

Cradle to Cradle is a movement which says, "Hey, designers. Instead of being "less bad" and working against the environment (sustainable/green) so that we can get our cool designs built, how's about we just work with the environment?"  The book by William McDonough and Michael Braungart of Charlottesville, Virginia aims to get this point across to designers (myself included) that don't usually start off the design process by taking the environment into account.  It opens your mind to a world that you had grown to know as typical, usual, and ordinary.  Go get the book.

I had always avoided C2C as I had never fully grasped the concept, and I also knew it took a lot a lot a lot of research.  I just wanted to design cool things.  But, since this is essentially my thesis project and last before I graduate, I figured I'd give myself a grand challenge.

The competition is to design a C2C house on a site in Roanoke, Virginia, about 30 minutes from our campus.  The lot is roughly 45'x150' (give or take) and it resides on a street corner.  The house itself is around 30'x60' at this point... and has a grid module of 15'x20' (6 modules).

My vision for the house is one which can exist with nature and not against nature.  It acts as nature does, using trees for shade in the spring and summer, allowing the interior temperatures to lower.  In the winter, when the trees have shed all of their leaves, the house gains more sunlight for heat consumption and retention on the interior.  Sunlight is harvested in the winter to keep up with heat needs.

A feature wall of translucent glass panels with some sort of pattern will cast shadows onto the interior walls and floors in a graphic manner, and change with season.

The slope of the ceiling is supposed to aid in plumbing and rain collection, which I'm still working on--but the idea is to have the main plumbing in the middle of the building for both floors.

Lofted spaces on the second floor have sloped ceilings (see the roofline) just like I always kind of loved them.  For some reason, I have a memory of a beach house my family stayed in at Kennebunkport, Maine when I was little and the ceilings were slanted.  Maybe it's just my imagination completely making things up. Always a possibility.

Goals for this week: get a floor plan for both levels and at least determine which spaces go where.  Competition requirements are as follows: foyer, living, dining, and kitchen, along with 3 bedrooms, 2 baths.

I'm excited for this first residential space that I've ever designed--I aim to design it the way I would want a home. It's not about winning the competition, but more about being satisfied with the end product and achieving a true Cradle-to-Cradle house.