shelterblog

Free tour of passivhaus projects this weekend

As part of iPHA's International Passive House Days, there will be seven completed projects open to tour around Portland this Friday and Saturday. Passive House Northwest has all the details about times and locations.

We are very fortunate to live in a region where so many folks are building ambitious projects — simply put, passivhaus projects are among the most energy efficient buildings on the planet. But even if you live outside of Portland, there are great PH projects around the world available to tour this weekend. iPHA has a Google map to find a project near you.

Watch a passivhaus documentary, via 475

If you've run into me lately then I probably started going on about the high performance building standard known as Passivhaus (Passive House). I've just finished up the training to become a Certified Passive House Consultant, so I'm excited for the opportunity to bring this knowledge to my projects.

What the heck is a Passivhaus? Luckily, Charlie Hoxie has made a  beautiful documentary film to answer that question, now available for free viewing via Brooklyn's 475 High Performance Building Supply. The 21-minute film is an inspiriing introduction for anyone interested in a better way to make buildings.

Watch it here.

progress on gorge house

Just a quick post to share some photos of a house under construction in the beautiful Columbia River Gorge. Thanks to the homeowners for these shots.

Here's the approach from the road & driveway. A steel canopy over the front door will be coming soon. The portion on the left (with siding) is the mud room and side entrance:

Looking back uphill at the house from the gorge side. Looks a bit naked without the patio that will get built in spring:

It's especially nice to see this 16-foot wide by 8-foot tall Weiland Liftslide door, installed and operational. Despite the incredible size, all it takes is a soft pull or push to glide this baby open in either direction:

The vertical-board siding is a tight-knot cedar, prefinished with a whitewash. We'll add one more coat before we're done, but I don't mind the knottiness at all:

Visit the JBA website for some images of the design for this house.

Finishing up on Alameda addition

Just checked in on an addition I designed a few months back. It's a 1-1/2 story house built in 1929 in Portland's Alameda neighborhood.

Contractors Riggs & Martin have taken a lot of care with the project, and somehow managed to dodge the weather despite needing to open up the roof during our rainy season.

The old house looked lovely from the street, but the bedroom in the front gable was tiny, dark, and accessible only by going through another bedroom. The plan proportions were like a bowling lane, and the low sidewalls made it difficult to furnish.

 I proposed to raise the roof 3 feet higher in the front portion, which also created an opportunity to improve the front porch — the old porch seemed to suit the house visually, but functionally it was too small for more than one or two people to wait comfortably. Plus, the homeowners really wanted to have a more open-feeling porch. On this walkable street, it will be a great place to sit and greet neighbors. Here's the schematic 3D model:

 

And the nearly finished addition, ready for a fresh coat of paint:

 

Closer view of the new entry porch:

 

Interior of new front bedroom, with a side dormer to gain added windows and to extend the new 8-foot ceilings:

 

Often the ideal place for a dormer just happens to conflict with the chimney location. No one wants to look out the window at the chimney, so we usually avoid it and find another spot to add space. But after looking at other old houses around Portland, I noticed that chimneys are sometimes integrated into the dormer. So we decided to literally embrace the brick chimney with our new addition. It greatly improves the bedroom space, and I like how it turned out from the exterior too:

 

Keep an eye on the website for finished photos soon!

 

currently watching

A glimpse of things I've been watching this past week:

First, a trailer for Charlie Hoxie's film about the Passive House building standard, found via the well-made and oddly-named txchnologist blog, which has a few more excerpts if you are interested in knowing more about Passive House.

Passive Passion trailer from Charlie Hoxie on Vimeo.

 

 

Next up, a time-lapse of the 2-day site assembly of a prefab shell for the New Norris House, recently built and designed by UT students, and aiming for LEED Platinum certification. Also be sure to check out Ken McCown's lovely flickr set with photos of the finished house.

 

 

Last but not least, I stayed on Hoxie's site and really enjoyed this gem about the Homeless Garden Project in Santa Cruz. Looking forward to the related book, Breaking Through Concrete.

Homeless Garden Project: Robert from Charlie Hoxie on Vimeo.

 

 

 

green principles

(Image courtesy of TerraHaus blog)

The new year provides agreat opportunity for me to look forward and think about how to improve my practice going forward. I'll be trying to spend more time on this blog in 2012 and plan to focus on green building/sustainable design. Sustainable architecture has always been of great interest to me, but I'd really like to make it a bigger part of my practice this year and beyond. There are plenty of blogs out there for building science geeks (I include myself in that group), but I'd like to make these principles more accessible and understandable for the layperson too.

So what does green building mean for me? Like most architects, I was excited to see so-called "green" products become widely available over the last decade. Carpet tiles made from recycled fibers, reclaimed and sustainably-harvested wood flooring, recycled glass countertops... It's fun stuff for architects and clients too, and always looks great in the pages of design magazines. But these things alone won't solve our energy problems or lessen the impact of buildings in a meaningful way. So in the last few years I've started to step back a bit and ask myself: What really makes a building green and sustainable? Here's a brief summary of the things I'm thinking of when I think of green buildings, basically my short list of sustainable building principles:

• First Priority is Energy Efficiency: The main goal has to be a reduction of our dependence on non-renewable energy. Buildings currently account for over a third of our U.S. energy use, and some estimates put this number closer to 50% – significantly more than we use for transportation. We've at least started to hold automakers accountable for offering inefficient cars, but how about building makers? How about building users and owners? For me, a green building is one that starts by drastically reducing energy use on site. Lots of energy also goes into the making of our buildings, which leads to durability...
• Durability: How long should a building last? Some of us are still living in houses built more than 100 years ago, so I think that is a good target for building lifespan, at a minimum. Lots of resources and energy went into those buildings, so the longer we can keep them around, the better. Of course we'll need to upgrade these structures to be more efficient and to meet our current needs. And let's design our new buildings to outlast our grandkids, at least. I like Ruskin's quote: "When we build, let us think that we build forever."
• Social & Health Concerns: When we build or remodel, what are the impacts on the workers at the construction site? What about the people manufacturing vinyl windows, or the town downstream from the vinyl factory? The methods and materials we specify all play a role here. Equally important is the health of the occupants, i.e. the people living in our buildings: Building materials have a major impact on indoor air quality, and must be considered in the design process. Providing fresh air & ventilation is also key — sounds obvious, but is often overlooked by architects and builders.
• Economic Sustainability: Sustainability has become a catchphrase associated with the environment, but we also have to consider economics. Let's make our buildings future proof so that we can afford to live in them for years to come — Energy is only going to get more expensive, so it makes sense to design for low- or zero-energy use going forward.

So how do we get there? With thoughtful building design, we can make drastic reductions in energy use with only moderate increases in cost. A lot of these design choices will also make for homes and buildings that are more durable, healthy, and affordable to operate. I'm especially interested in designing and building to the Passive House standard to meet these goals. The image at the top of this post is from one of my favorite 2011 Passive House projects, a small dormitory building at Unity College in Maine. I'll delve into the Passive House standard in an upcoming blog post.

house raising

 We have a fun project just getting underway in SE Portland: Raising an 1910 house off of the old foundation to create a new basement tall enough for a living space.

It is fascinating to watch the house raising process, especially when it comes to something as delicate as a brick chimney. I was skeptical that the chimney could be jacked up and still remain intact – but so far, so good. A pair of steel beams have been set on cribbing, and then extend out to carry the weight of the chimney.

 

In these photos, the house has been lifted up about three feet from the previous elevation. The condition at the side door illustrates this nicely:

Once the basement wallls are replaced, the house will be lowered back down to a final height of two feet above the original location. This will create enough room for a finished basement with a ceiling height of 8'-2", whereas the old basement had only 6'-2" of head room. A new driveway will also be cut in, creating access to a one-car garage underneath the house (currently the property has no parking available on site).

From a design perspective, the big challenge is to make the house look like it was meant to sit at that height all along. It can be tempting to max out the basement ceiling heights, but care needs to be taken to ensure that there will still be a managable and attractive approach to the front entry. I've seen several projects like this turn out poorly because someone wanted ten foot ceilings in the basement, and no one considered the impact on the front stairs until it was too late. I think we've found a happy medium here, and I'm looking forward to seeing it come together.

Progress on Eastmoreland Addition

It's been a busy summer getting projects designed and ready for construction. But that means that there will be some new work to feature here as construction finishes up during the fall.

One addition that is underway is in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood. Here I have combined a couple of photos to give an idea of the 'before' condition:

It was built in the late 1940's as a one-story house, with a small room or two in the attic. Eventually the attic (second floor) was expanded to the rear – but these spaces were still quite small, with low ceilings throughout. A few years ago we worked together to improve the main floor layout, but the top floor remained untouched. So I was excited when these clients asked me back to design an addition to add a bedroom, a bathroom and make the current rooms more comfortable by increasing ceiling height and closet space.

The approach we took: Raise the roof, and make a dramatic change in the roof pitch. This creates the much-needed ceiling height, but also gives the house more presence from the street. The change in scale will make the remodeled house fit nicely with the surrounding steep-roofed tudors. Here's a concept model with the new massing:

 

And a front elevation view:

 

Finally a shot showing the recent progress as the house takes shape:

 

Note that the stair out front is just for construction access (a nice move by the contractor to keep workers out of the main floor). Soon I'll put together a more comprehensive post covering the process of adding a second floor to an existing house – it can be quite a challenge, especially when the finished spaces below are going to remain intact, as in this project. But it is also a great opportunity to improve the overall look and feel of an older house. Because of this potential for dramatic change, second floor additions are a favorite project type for me and I'm looking forward to sharing a few more.

Rope.

Earlier this spring, Jack and I had the pleasure of staying at the Commodore Hotel in Astoria, Oregon.

 

(top photo by me, bottom from their site)

We liked the use of rope in their streamlined nautical decor.

Some other clever uses:

Rope mirror and door stop from Haus Interiors (love the navy in particular).

Hanging rope light at Wisteria. You could adapt this look with your own jute rope and barn light.

 

Rope banisters from UK company Stair Ropes (via Remodelista).

Coiled rope deck mat. And Martha shows you how to make your own. I'm going to give this a try.

cage lights

Not a great photo, but here's our cage fixture in the pantry. We paired our salvage find with a porcelain mount and black cloth cord from Rejuvenation.

We considered the Wiley fixture with its cool wood handle also from Rejuvenation. (Or buy the shade alone).

Rejuvenation also offers old stock cages with new porcelain fittings with cloth cords.

Anthropologie also offers a range of cage fixtures.

Not hard to find a cage shade on eBay to pair with your own pendant.

An assortment of cage fixtures at the super-charming Moomah in NYC (via Design Sponge)