• Work-Research binder for the Loft Full of Curves (PDF, 3 mb)
• Final CAD drawings of the loft (AutoCAD 2004 DWG file, 254 kb)
• Client booklet and renderings on Flickr:

The loft full of curves is the result of our Design Project I course. The goal was a from-the-bare-concrete renovation for a Westboro loft apartment. The client was John Spencer, a senior designer at William McDonough + Partners. As a single man in his 40s, he needed space to live, work, and entertain, but wanted to avoid walls. He insisted on at least 30% sustainable materials, enjoyed transparent materials, and hoped for minimal use of colour, and space to display his art collection.

We began by researching the history of the loft and the client’s favourite designers, brainstorming three different possible layouts that satisfied the program, and selected one to develop further. The design development and selection process is recorded in the preliminary work file for the project. To arrive at the final design, I took elements from several of the preliminary designs and added some new ones. Because the mezzanine, stairs, and other elements are curves and spirals, I started calling the project “loft full of curves”.

Mezzanine and main floor plans.

Now that the floorplan was finalized, we selected and specified materials. I wanted the loft to have a timeless, natural feel that was beautiful without relying on opulent materials. I didn’t want it to belong strongly to a specific era or culture, but to be subtly global, to make a reference or two to the Industrial Revolution, and to complement Norval Morrisseau’s Artist and Shaman Between Two Worlds, on loan to the client. To me that meant wooden furniture with simple but not excessively modern lines, and minimal use of metal. Floors are generally red oak or cork, walls covered in rice paper or paint. As many materials as I could find were vintage, reused, recycled, salvaged, low-VOC, and local.¹ Closet doors are shoji doors, since those are translucent, simple, traditional, modern, and global all at once, and they went nicely with the window grids without overwhelming the space.

Vignette of entry and pixellated glass wall above

I did want to use plenty of glass, but not in the typical modern slab. Instead I used sintered glass (like a sheet of crushed and fused jewels) and glass mosaic tile, both recycled. The bathroom is clad inside and out in glass. Inside, it is entirely covered in clear and aqua glass mosaic tile, and all the surfaces curved where they join, so that the bathroom is a single continuous surface except for its chrome, glass, and white porcelain fixtures, and curved glass shower surround. The solid wall comes only to six feet. Above that, translucent aqua sintered glass sheet attached to the exterior side of the wall is both a window and privacy barrier. The view from the outside shows the aqua glass gradually pixellating out into white plaster through a transition of glass mosaic tile, and continuing over the half-wall to the stairs. This art wall is visible from the living and dining space below, and forms part of their palette — a soft but pleasant contrast with the warm woods, unbleached rice paper, and opal glass lights below.

There are also murals by a local artist, Mark Seabrook, in the same style as Artist and Shaman Between Two Worlds, but in cafe-au-lait and cream to co-ordinate without upstaging. The pillar murals are visible from everywhere in the first floor, and another group surrounds the built-in buffet under the serving counter.

Finally, there are the quarter-circle stairs of red oak and black iron. Red oak stringers and balusters, with black iron openwork steps and railings, so as not to block the light streaming in from the window. Black iron is a strong and beautiful material with so much history, recalling both Victorian cogwheels and curlicues, the plenty and ruin industry can give us.

Our final submissions for the project were the final plans and sections, and the client booklet with rendered vignettes, plans, sections, and digital sample boards.

For this assignment, our Building Materials and Construction class split into small groups and built structures large enough to hold an 8″ x 8″ x 14″ box, out of any materials, joined any way except welding or soldering, with no member thicker than half an inch. They also had to have flat tops, because on the due date, we stress-tested them by loading them down with bricks — or people — until they collapsed under the load. They were scored according to how much weight they carried versus how much they weighed, with the most efficient structure winning.

The "box of crosses" structure is clearer when seen from above

Adriana Garcia and I went through several designs until we settled on our competitor, which as seen above was a set of crosses lashed into a box shape. The interesting thing about this design is the way that it adapts to the load put on it. Though the dowels transfer some load to the ground as compression, the remaining force becomes a moment of rotation, spreading the arms of the cross. When the arms spread enough to tighten the lashing, the tension of the cable counteracts the rotation, and the structure stops changing shape. It was built of 1/2″ hardwood dowel, 1/16″ steel cable, screws, washers, and epoxy. Lots of epoxy. Steel cable is extremely slippery and treacherous, and unlike the fishing line we’d built the concept model with, would not stay wrapped tightly to the wood if left to its own devices.

Adriana loading it with bricks

We also had to analyze how our structure would fail. I had expected the cable or glue to snap, but was wrong. Adriana accurately predicted that uneven loading or sheer strain would snap the wood around the screws where it was weak, and that then the structure would rotate and collapse. Our structure was middle of the pack for both the weight it took — about 480 lb — and for its effiency rating. The winning structures were all boxes built out of lots of simple X frame trusses. We had considered such a design, but decided against it. As well as being less original, it would have been expensive and difficult to build: we did not have a table saw, so instead of slicing a sheet of plywood into strips, we would have had to use expensive but weak softwood square dowel; neither did we have an accurate means of making angled cuts, so our trusses might not have fitted together accurately and thus not transferred force well.¹

It smashes to flinders!

Maybe this coming spring I’ll build another iteration, one that lacks the flaws of the old — I’m sure it’ll have exciting new flaws of its own — out of dowel or pipe and rope. Definitely not from steel cable. You see, the concept model showed a lot of promise. It weighed at most half an ounce and held up almost 50 lb of bricks, a ratio of over 1000 versus one of 400-ish for the competition model. I’d like to see what it can do if I do a better job of building it.

This essay for Design Project I is a response to Martin Heidegger’s “Building Dwelling Thinking“. In writing it, I drew on my previous reading of Robert A. Heinlein, for his idea of universe as art, and Buckminster Fuller, for his founding his faith in cosmic order on modern scientific knowledge.

Read Building, Dwelling, and the Cosmic Order (PDF, 60KB).

Sometimes it’s useful to be a packrat. First semester, I wrote a paper on Bucky and had made a spreadsheet of fully cited quotations for it.  Since I didn’t throw away that research, I had the necessary notes to add the paragraph on Bucky to this paper complete with quotations and citations. This saved me having to think of a new paragraph to add.

This was a group project with Chantelle Hamilton and Maryam Aghajani. The point was to design a structure with 7m or more clear span, based on a natural structure. We chose lilypads, specifically the Victoria Amazonica, which is strong enough to hold up small children. We called our structure Lilivoltaiq because it is a solar collector in addition to being a floating pavilion that can be used for picnics or enjoying views over the water.

The model was made with plastic transparencies, two gauges of wire, a flexible plumbing connector, and glue. The materials were chosen as much as possible to scale with the real-life materials that would have been used: molded 1/8″ polycarbonate, 1″ and 2″ stainless steel pipe, thin-film solar cells, glue, electrical wire, and likely a battery pack.

The model from underneath, with supporting ribs

Lilivoltaiq would have had an electrical core of some kind to take the power coming in from the solar cells, and send it down the cable anchoring it to shore and the electrical grid. The ribbed underside imitates the structure of the actual lilies, and provides structural strength. The peaks are inspired by the crinkliness of the unfurling leaves, and increase the solar collection surface and the possible angles it can catch sun at.

The promotional poster

To promote the project, we created this poster that diagrams the physical forces that support the structure, and explains its purpose. Chantelle and Maryam built the model while I drew the diagrams and designed the poster. Given how fiddly the model was to build, I think they had the lion’s share of the work on the deliverables.

Fun with Physics

Of course, none of this would be any good if Lilivoltaiq couldn’t float, so before building our model, we researched materials and calculated weight, buoyancy, and load. Since 1/8″ polycarbonate has a tensile yield strength of 8990 psi (versus a load of perhaps 9 psi), we could have eliminated the steel ribbing entirely. We kept it because our professor and we were enchanted with making such heavy material float, and it related Lilivoltaiq to the lilypad. The steel pipe likewise is much stronger than required. ¹

Overview of the model

Now that we knew it wouldn’t crack under the load, the question was whether it would float. Buoyancy is the tendency of water and other fluids to press upwards against objects (partially) immersed in them. In our case, if Lilivoltaiq displaces at least as many kilograms of water as it itself weighs, then it will float.

Lilivoltaiq weighs 553 kg. Happily for us, water is heavy. With only its ribbing submerged, Lilivoltaiq displaces 745 kg of water, and will float like, well, a lilypad. And thanks to its 30cm rim (also borrowed from the original), it can safely support an extra 9773 kg on top of its own weight, and still have 5cm of clearance to avoid swamping.

In our art history course focused on furniture, we each did a presentation on a particular style or maker. I chose Charles Rennie Mackintosh because I had often heard of him but never learned much about his work.

We’d had a number of these presentations by the time I started work on mine, so I knew that I ought to spend minimal time on biographical details and focus instead on the themes in his work. I looked at huge quantities of photos, with a few sentences from the textbook to point me in the right direction, and from that developed an understanding of how Mackintosh’s furniture was filled with contrasts — light and dark, feminine and masculine, straight and curved — and how spare and Japanese it was by contrast with Victorian style.

For second semester CAD we were asked to build a Google Sketchup model of a room in our homes. I chose my living room. The professor’s goals were for us to learn to use the basic tools, groups, layers, textures, views, and the 3D Warehouse.

Download the Sketchup model (zipped, 5.7mb).

Whoever it was that said “it takes twice as long as you think it will” was an optimist. Sometimes it takes three times — as this project did. The silver lining for you is that it taught me how not to manage my time, and how to recognize when I need advice in order to stop banging my head on the wall.

We were asked to design, draw and model a 650 sq. ft. house for two people anywhere in the world but North America. Outdoor spaces were encouraged since they didn’t count towards our square footage, but no major functions could be left outdoors. I asked my friend Allison if she and her husband Paul would be my clients, and we promptly had a brainstorming session over tea. She wanted the house to be on New Zealand’s North Island, but didn’t have a specific town in mind. I located it in the Coromandel Peninsula, between Tararu and Whakatete Bay. Allison is a witch, Paul is a shaman and energy healer, and they are both tall, so they both wanted the house to be in harmony with nature, have high ceilings, and have quiet space to meditate in. There were many other desiderata, but these were the most important.

Our initial sketches were of earthships and cliffside houses. Our favourites were the many-storey cliff house, and the two-storey house built around a fireplace circled by the main stair, but I didn’t have enough experience to design these within the square footage requirements and the massing I wanted. So in critique, I was advised to concentrate on one or two key ideas, because I was being pulled in too many directions, and because I had some difficulty explaining how the place should feel — or rather, what I was going to do to produce that effect. The feel I knew: this was the good witch’s house, so I wanted it to be hidden away in a forest or other natural setting, and I wanted it to surprise and delight, to be a place that you hadn’t expected to exist but were glad did, like a secret grotto. That was when I got the idea of making it a treehouse. That surprised and delighted both me and everyone who heard the idea, but I knew it was feasible since I had heard of books about them.

Public block, first version

My first intention was to split the house into one or two-room chunks, and put them on individual platforms, all connected to a roofed outdoor stair wrapped around the trunk of a massive kauri tree, like a necklace. This is perfectly workable in a climate that stays between 5-25°C all the time. Compare that to my home in Ottawa, which goes from -40°C in the winter wind to +40°C in the summer sun.

Public block, second version

The first version of the public block saved space and was efficiently heated by the central fireplace, but didn’t respond much to the tree. The second version wrapped better around the trunk, and kept the compact but livable kitchen and dining room arrangements. It also snuck in a half-bath and laundry room (on the right) to cut down on the plumbing labour.

Private block with angled join between bedroom and bathroom

The blocks wrapped around the trunk. At this point, I still had to figure out how much height I needed between the platforms, and how many turns of stairs, since the roofs had not been figured out. I particularly liked the angled joining of the bedroom and bathroom.

Arranging the blocks around the tree

The drawings of the house were due soon, which was how I learned why traditional houses are simple rectangular boxes: they are vastly easier to roof. I sweated over how to cap those angled blocks until my head spun, and admitted that I would have to simplify them in order to meet deadline. That brought about the second version, which was a two-storey house and deck perched in a large, spreading totara tree.

I didn’t like this version so much. The whole composition was awkward. The deck was enormous yet boring, and while that peaked second floor roof worked, it felt like a 1950s or 60s bungalow, not a traditional cottage. Worst, the meditation perch felt like an afterthought. This mattered to me because the key idea I had been able to retain from the cliffside house was the ascension from public, social space through private space to a place to be alone with yourself. That last was the meditation perch, and I could barely cram in a ship’s ladder in the bedroom to the roof, and if I added a balcony or sitting area up there, it would look like an afterthought. Not acceptable.

Final floorplans, private block above, public block below. Link to CAD file below.

Since I wasn’t happy with the second iteration, I changed the plan again before building the model, which was the final submission for the project. Some features from the previous stage remained, such as the material choices: wood siding, a shingled roof, a brick chimney. But the concessions I made to simplify constructing it were exactly what made it feel charming and cottagelike again. All the rooms were simple boxes joined orthagonally except the angled bath, because I could cut 90° and 45° angles accurately in foamcore without a fancy mat cutting setup. Suddenly the blocks looked traditional and nestled into the tree better. I changed almost all the roofs to simple gables, which again, I could see how to make even though I needed to represent 18″ thick material with 6″ thick foamcore.¹ That meant the interiors would have vaulted ceilings with rafters — perfect! I solved the joining of the bedroom and bathroom roofs by not having them join — instead I made the bathroom enough taller that it could have its own roof, and just let it be square instead of trying to cut off a corner.  Since it was going to be so prominent anyway, I made the roof look like a witch’s hat, which Allison loved.

Get the CAD drawings for the plans and elevations (AutoCAD 2004 .dwg file, 170 kb)

But honestly, the house was the easy part of the model. The hard parts were the ground and the tree. Especially the tree. The ground is kitty litter molded into shape with water and glue, dry-brushed with several shades of acrylic paint, and set with twigs to represent smaller trees. It looks satisfyingly groundlike, and permitted me to stick dowels and skewers into it, which turned out to be very important.

Detail of tree and ground

The tree is made out of broomstick handle and coat-hanger wire. To make the tree actually look like a tree, I wrapped the bare wood and wire with gauze-mâché.² Once that was dry, I painted it with a basecoat of brown acrylic and dry-brushed another shade or two on it. This gave me a firm trunk, bendable branches, and a nice barklike finish, all good. The problem was that it also gave me branches that tended to rotate, even when unloaded. Perhaps that could have been solved by gluing them into the sockets, but I didn’t have time for epoxy or Weldbond to set, my cyanoacrylate had glued itself shut, and the hot glue didn’t work when I tried it. I saved the tree by adding reinforcing braces out of bamboo skewer and dowel, which would stick with hot glue to the outer layer of the tree.³ If I ever build another model tree, I’m going to buy a nice thick cable twisted out of medium gauge copper wire, which I can gently fray apart and bend to my will, and gauze-mâché it into life-likeness. I’m sure that method will have its own new and exciting dilemmas, but at least the branches won’t twirl in their sockets.

I admit this isn’t the best model I could have made — another iteration, and it would have been much better. But, given the difficulties I overcame in making it, and how impressed most people have been when they see it, I’m still pleased with it. At least half the class were startled to find out that it wasn’t a real tree. Allison is making room in her apartment (after downsizing from a house) to keep it permanently, even though it is large and somewhat fragile. Another friend who saw it stopped in his tracks and said, “Could I have that?”. Now, if I can just get that kind of reaction to all my projects, I should be set!

For this project, we were asked to visit a place with a strong character and then make a moodbox (a sort of three-dimensional display) to convey what it was like. Maryam, Candace, and I visited the Bytowne Cinema, which has some interesting Modern details, especially on the facade and lobby. It also has a very recognizable mural.

We considered what elements from the Bytowne ought to be used in the moodbox, and decided on the mural, the sign, and red velvet (for the silver screen’s curtain). We also used film and a copy of the schedule in our composition. The curls of film made our entry unique.

A colour rendering of a library that apparently is not unpacked yet. While I understand the system for two-point perspective, I find light and shadow trickier. Unfortunately the scanner did horrid things to the shadows in the bookcases. I’ll try to get a better scan sometime.

In this assignment from our second hand drafting course, we measured our classroom and then drew a floorplan, reflected ceiling plan, and elevations. Measuring a space is more difficult and tedious than I would have expected it to be — even a simple room has so many edges and corners and objects, all of which must be carefully located, and many dimensioned. Also, thanks to rounding and small errors, one side of a room might not add up to the other side when it is supposed to. In my 1910s apartment, I would conclude the room was no longer square, but not in a modern concrete classroom.