The Cabin

Three months ago, on the day the previous post of the case study was posted, I sat down with the other 12 people of my studio group and began discussion on the final project of the semester. This project is the most detailed I have ever gone into a project. Never before have I spent so much time thinking so deeply about the concept, the space between a table and a window, the height of a sink and the direction of wooden floor.

On the surface the project seems simple to those not familiar with architecture, a small cabin for one person to use located along the Fox River in Northern Illinois.
However, it has been the closest to 'real' architecture that I have reached thus far. Five weeks, countless hours on AutoCad, many late nights of working, several revisions, frustrating meetings, and to top it off at the end around 40 straight hours of working nonstop.
It was difficult, trying and at times seemed never ending. I entered it feeling great about how the case study project went, but that soon left. This is related to why I have not posted in such a while. I was fed up with architecture and did not want to think about it let alone write about it.
Looking back this project was one designed to truly weed out the weaker people from this major. As anyone who knows about architecture school they'll tell you that part of the professor's job is to weed out those not strong enough to handle this hard, demanding and unique major and profession.

You truly must possess a strong, deep-rooted passion for architecture to conquer the major. The road to completely architecture school is paved with trials, anger, sleepless nights and frustrating days, however it will also offer you success and abilities that you never thought you were ever capable of achieving.

Like many projects, our professor asked for three, basic proposals to work off of. We had already worked with designing the smallest possible space in which one person could live in. The three I presented to her were these.

All three were very simple and had many weak components to them. However, the second proposal seemed to catch my professor's eye. She liked the idea behind it, the seasons. It can be seen that there are two separate thicknesses, this is to allow different areas to be used at different parts of the year. That was the start of a concept that truly drove this entire project.

As the days followed I started the long process of revising the cabin, each time focusing on different concerns that needed to be fixed or changed.

Revision 1.

Revision 2.

Revision 3.

Midreview Drawings.

Final.

The design worked with the seasons. Each area had is assumed to be used more during one of the four seasons. The bedroom, which it's lower ceiling and thicker walls is for winter, the kitchen with its taller ceilings and large windows to be is for the fall, the covered porch is for spring with its opened walls and exposure to the elements and finally the open deck, the summer, the most opened to the nature that is around the cabin. 

Designing and drawing the cabin was enjoyable, but with all great projects comes a model that will need countless hours to be finished.

During this time my desk was filled with scaled lumber and modeling tools.

The hardest part came in the 7 hour long process of applying the rain screen cladding. 

 

 

Case Study

It has been another four weeks since my last post. Since then time has been filled with countless late nights and long days of model making in Crown Hall as well as the shop. 

Following the Bricks, which was our first project, we quickly jumped into heavy timber framing.

From there, we went right into designing a Bird Hide/Blind located along the Burnham Bird Sanctuary. The Hide was to be designed with properly using a heavy timber framing system. After we had completed this we moved into light timber framing, the system that is used in homes and smaller, lighter structures. To help learn this we had to complete a workshop assignment that required us to build a model of a light timber frame house, cut down the middle, with one side using balloon framing, and the other using the newer, current system, platform framing. 

I will not be writing an entire post on the workshop model, above are the photos that I currently have of the workshop model, the top photo shows the balloon half in the glueing process, the middle shows it completed, as does the bottom one. (The middle photo also shows that it looks similar to all the others, seeing as it was just a workshop)

Once that, surprisingly time consuming model was completed came time for one of the biggest projects of second year, the Case Study Project. I can recall being a first year and seeing the large models that the then second years were producing for the Case Study and being nervous to have to do that myself in a year. That year has now past as well as the Case Study, it is the largest model for studio, to date, that I have worked on.

The Projected started the Monday that the photos above were taken. We, all very tired, were handed a list of five different buildings in the world that contained a light timber framing system. From the list, my two partners and myself picked Plywood House by Herzog and DeMeuron. The assignment called for us to, with limited resources, figure out the structure of the building and produce a 1/2"=1' section cut model of the building, along with a site model and a parti diagram.

We spent that first week looking at elevations, plans, photographs, and articles about the house. We were able to work out how the structure worked, which was half the battle of the project.

From our understanding, the structure is a long rectangle that rest upon ten post that run into the ground. The building does not have a foundation due to the fact that it would ruin the roots of the rather large tree that sits on the site, right next to the building. Resting within, and around this rectangle are a group of flat, vertical boxes made from lighter timber framing that are offset relative to each other forming a dent in what is otherwise a rectangular building. 

The cladding and interior of the building, is as its name says, plywood, which made it easier for us to produce.

The largest problem came with the roof, a very large cantilevered body that is almost a completely separate part from the general building. There was just one small section of the roof that we were able to locate, but it provided almost no useful information. To solve this headache of a problem(which it caused many) we had to use the best logic we could and construct how we thought it worked(which is the purpose of this project, to produce the structure with limited information and the knowledge we learned on light timber framing) I feel that we have it almost completely correct, and during our review our professor agreed with us. 

It was a long two weeks of stress, headaches, anger, frustration and confusion. 

However, it was also an amazing two weeks of working with an incredible team, figuring out solutions with nothing more then our know how and knowledge and producing one of the best models thus far for myself. 

Here are the photos of those two weeks, of the construction process, a time-consuming period of measuring, checking, glueing, placing and, at times, yawning.

We are thrilled with the result, a model that I am truly proud of, and proud to be apart of.