October 24, 2007

Site Clearing- Day 3


Click to enlarge.

It is day 3 of the site clearing. Everything that needed to go has gone and the site is being leveled with a swale running along one side of the house closest to the neighbor. The house corners have been pegged (not yet officially) and it seems massive but then when we picture the room walls within it doesn't feel that big at all. It is basically two pods. The main part of the house is the rectangle which is 1600 sf. The square pod is 400 sf. It is marked as storage but we will finish it later into a guest suite/3rd bedroom. I'll have freedom and more knowledge to try to incorporate some of the features of the prefabs and green homes I admire. I'd like to try to keep the square pod off the grid even though it will be connected to the main space through a shared doorway. Haven't quite thought that one through yet. Basically it would have its own water and power sources set up. I want to be able to try some of these systems on a small scale.

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posted by Mrs Gottfried at 4:03 PM 0 Comments

October 19, 2007

Dwell Video- Michele Kaufman

Not only stating her case but the video also highlights something we got into back in the early days with our first architects. You can use Google Sketch Up to place your home in its actual site and see how it fits in. My old architects were able to pick a time of year and a time of day to see how the sunlight ran across the house to better plan the passive solar design. I haven't yet been able to figure that one out and it may only be available on the paid version. Visit Google Sketch Up.

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posted by Mrs Gottfried at 10:16 AM 0 Comments

October 15, 2007

3 Tree Stumps and Erosion Control


We are having a final site inspection done this week. They want to insure proper erosion control along the bank of the Gottfried Creek. As it turned out, the main clearing will be 3 stumps of non-native trees that would be removed regardless. There will also be a dead slash pine removed and a cluster of 2 palms. This is a plus because of cost but mostly because we won't disturb any old growth or scrub habitat that sits mostly along the opposite end of the site.

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posted by Mrs Gottfried at 12:50 PM 0 Comments

August 02, 2007

Site and Drainage Plan


Click on any photo to enlarge.
We have our site and drainage plan needed for the building permit application. We do have access to public sewer so thankfully no septic system will be needed. The existing land where the house will be is 6 feet above sea level. I guess that puts everything into perspective about how vulnerable FL really is to flooding or losing its coastline. The house is set on an angle for the sun and wind locations. For drainage purposes there will probably be about 2 ft of fill-dirt which raises the house to 8 ft above sea level. The livable space is required to be a total of 12 ft above. Although we technically only need to raise another 4ft to be at the total of 12 ft, we are increasing the height to have usable space underneath. It makes sense but it does cause the house to look a bit over-sized on the ground. Let's put it this way, if we didn't have to raise it we wouldn't. It's also where most of the extra cost will come from.

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posted by Mrs Gottfried at 10:22 AM 0 Comments

June 15, 2007

A Clean Site


Moving on from nostalgia, I managed to create a clean slate on which to place our 3rd and final design. Whatever this comes out to be will be our future home. It is turning out to be a combination of all our influences so far: Tim Snyder's design, The Glidehouse, The Container House... Basically somewhere between Tim's interactive design and the simple, plain, rectangle boxes with lots of windows that are the others. We'll see how it fits into the landscape next week. Hopefully it won't be anything so bad a little landscaping can't fix. How far we've come to begin again as amateurs.

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posted by Mrs Gottfried at 11:06 AM 0 Comments

June 14, 2007

Step up to Sketch Up




As we move forward with designing our house in this 3rd attempt, I couldn't help the nostalgia pouring in for our 1st attempt with Tim Snyder at Osborn Sharp in Sarasota. I was also looking to explore the capabilities of Google's free Sketch Up download. Tim had first told me about it and how he exported our model to Google Earth to show our future home in 3D from every angle under the sun. You feel like you can control your own destiny. A feeling that has been fleeting at every turn. It allows you to "walk through" your home, look out at a water view, see bird's eye and worm's eye views from any distance. Looking back at our first design in Sketch Up is inspiring even though it won't be this house we'll live in. Even the ability to pretend to be in a house and see a house on the site still hints at all the possibility.

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posted by Mrs Gottfried at 11:33 AM 1 Comments

December 18, 2006

Site Plan

The house will sit by the lagoon. It is angled around to maximize the water view. It's down on the edge but if the sea levels do rise as expected we're doomed anyway. The Gulf sits right beyond Manasota Key which is an Island barrier. That is the only land between us and the Gulf of Mexico.

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posted by Mrs Gottfried at 5:10 PM 0 Comments

September 05, 2006

First person walk through


Knowing just enough about video games to know that Wolfenstein 3D was the 1st first person shooter game, I can understand the intrigue here a little bit. But this video is great on many levels. Digitally Disturbed Environments posts what they call an architectual visualization by a Half Life user known as Kasperg. They have produced a model of Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Waters in the Half Life Source Engine. There have been some great comments such as, "I keep having dreams about something like this being done for places that no longer exist, like, the 1893 Chicago World's Fair or the 1939 World's Fair -- places that were built to be destroyed." The best one comes from BLDGBLOG, "[architectual students] armed to the teeth, [could] defend 100,000 acres of pristine Colorado wilderness from an architecturally unimaginative suburban housing boom..." It does inspire the next level of looking at building plans.

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posted by Mrs Gottfried at 8:51 AM 0 Comments

August 16, 2006

3 palm trees and a tree stump



We are aware of the green building issue of location- not to disturb natural habitat. In our defense, if we didn't buy this place someone else would and so we hope what we do on this piece of land is worthwhile overall to the greater good. That said we are attempting to keep virtually all the trees as they are. It looks like we may get away with removing only these 3 palms trees and the tree stump to make room for our house.

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posted by Mrs Gottfried at 12:37 PM 0 Comments

June 08, 2006

There's a lot in a lot

The lot in FL is 2 acres and gorgeous but how does one take a picture with a disposable camera that does justice to unbridled land? I do need to get better pictures once we get down there. There is a banyan tree (which was the inspiration for all this change) and other old palm trees, vegetation and mangroves along the bank of the creek. For now though, we can only imagine it in our heads and hope it still looks as dreamy when we get down there- did we fall hard too fast?

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posted by Mrs Gottfried at 12:53 PM 0 Comments