![]() I left the sheathing off one of my sketches and nobody mentioned it, but the fact that I didn’t show the correct amount of concrete coverage for the embedded j-bolt and people jumped up out of their seats! (you can entertain yourself at my expense here) People get in the weeds at a level that boggles my mind without really knowing what the objective is – like I am producing a detail for construction. I should know better but I know it’s coming for me. I don’t know if people want to help, or if they’re proving just how smart they are compared to how stupid I am, or what. ![]() Since I don’t prepare content for the specific goal of populating my social media feed – I just show what I am actually doing – I thought I would share some foundation sketches I prepared for our conversations … and I was absolutely destroyed. In between our pin-ups, we will have some technical chats, and in my attempts to help support a robust conversation, I prepared a series of sketches to use as conversational starter pieces. Of course, with pricing being as crazy as it is, the conversations are focused on how things scale relative to another (slab on grade foundation versus a pier and beam foundation, how they work, why you would choose one over another, is there a financial premium to that decision, etc.). As part of this exercise, we spend part of our time discussing different parts of a residential project and how they can impact not only your design but the cost ramifications. ![]() I will admit that I don’t have this all figured out – I am making it up as I go along. In addition to pinning up drawings and sketches, I will have everyone learn how to use the 3D printer to go through massing studies, and on and on. We will continue to meet every two weeks and check in on everyone’s process and progress, focusing on all sorts of different considerations as appropriate for each person, while pinning our work up for group evaluation and discussion. After programming, we will then move into Schematic Design, and through design development, stopping just short of preparing construction drawings. So just like a regular project, we are starting in the programming phase, making determinations on the size and types of rooms that will be required, lot discussions and how we place the house on the site, etc. Within Design MOR, we typically take on 1 or 2 design competitions each year and I recently decided that we are going to do a modern house challenge ( the word “competition” sets the wrong tone for this exercise) and we are going to use the house-design sequence to work through our own individual design process. I run the Design MOR group and we meet every two weeks and cover all sorts of topics. There are several of these MOR groups – Community Service MOR, Sustainability MOR, PD MOR, Operations MOR, etc. While that original challenge was ultimately unsuccessful, the experience has stuck with me for years, and I felt like maybe the time has come once again to dust it off and go through the exercise again.Īt BOKA Powell, we have these cultural and task-focused groups called MOR groups and they are basically special interest clubs that allow people to participate in activities that might be outside their scope of daily activities. I found myself explaining why modern design costs so much and what looked to them like a reduced amount of construction, was actually an extremely high level of execution. Most of the people who reached out to really wanted to know where they could find this “golden unicorn” because they wanted something like what they saw in various shelter magazines and a) couldn’t find it in the market, and b) wanted to spend $100/square foot to get it … which they felt was reasonable. But before we unbox all that, I need to address the interest that the original Modern House challenge generated … probably because I called it a “low cost” modern house challenge – emphasis on the low cost. Today we are going to talk about something that I am doing up at my office that is a voluntary sort of side hustle – meaning, it’s not officially “work” (meaning it has no obligations associated with it and participation is not a requirement) but it still has some value and is a sanctioned activity for all that do decide to participate. Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Stitcher | TuneIn Fast forward 12 years and I am going to give it another go with some slightly modified parameters. It was August 10 th, 2010 when I first conceived of the “Low-Cost Modern Home Challenge” with the intent to go through a design process that would help us understand how to design a modern house that people could afford and would actually want to live in … and what I learned was that this is almost impossible to achieve.
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