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Container House Design with Minimalist Grit: Part 4 (Podcast)

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Container House Design with Minimalist Grit: Part 4 (Podcast)

This is week 4 - and the last post in our series - covering Oklahoma City’s first shipping container residence. Last week we looked at our unique foundation design, touched on shipping container anatomy, and looked at container modifications. I shared information about the homeowner/developer and his website. This week we are picking up where we left off and doing something special.

This week, I wanted to share an in-person interview with Josh McBee, our shipping container homeowner and owner of High Cube Industries, LLC.

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Your Common Thread Stitches a Vibrant Community

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Your Common Thread Stitches a Vibrant Community

Do you want to live in a Green Heart Town, where there is a sense of health, community, and legacy? This kind of town can only be a product of community-wide sustainable development, which takes thoughtful planning and action. At the center of the effort, I see each one of our lives as a common thread skillfully used to create better places for everyone to live, work and play. 

The transformation begins by loving our family and community well, caring for our neighbors, and becoming more future-minded. The wonderful paradox is that being future-minded also makes our lives better today, too! 

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Container House Design with Minimalist Grit - Part 3

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Container House Design with Minimalist Grit - Part 3

This is week three covering Oklahoma City’s first shipping container residence. In last week's post we looked at how the home was positioned on the site, peeked at some interior pictures, and discussed the concepts of both minimalism and rightsizing. Whew! 

This week, I want to move to the exterior and reveal a few more facets of this container design. I hope to share some insight into how building with containers must be approached differently from the ground up. I also want to introduce you to the owner and share more about his vision for working with shipping containers in the future. 

Whole Building Life-Cycle Assessment & Historic Properties

Whole Building Life-Cycle Assessment & Historic Properties

"When we build, let us think we build forever.” John Ruskin's words evoke the notion of building in a sustainable manner, thereby leaving a legacy to future generations through the story of our places. Every day in my work at the Oklahoma Main Street Center, I am fortunate to encounter historic buildings that mirror Ruskin’s ideals; however, I have also seen in the modern building movement that we have lost our way in designing sustainable places over the last half century. 
  
I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on a wonderful experience from 2015. I visited Taliesin West in early October to attend the the American Institute of Architect's (AIA) first joint colloquium

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Container House Design with Minimalist Grit - Part 2

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Container House Design with Minimalist Grit - Part 2

Welcome back! We began covering the design of this Oklahoma City shipping container home in last week's post. This was the first container home permitted by the City of Oklahoma City when we filed in 2014, and the first shipping container design either the property owner or myself had experienced.

As an architect, it is always a challenge to put myself into the mind of my client. During the Pre-Design phase, I get to ask a lot of questions and get to know the owner. 

Transferring another person’s vision and allowing room for their identity to thrive is what it takes to design a home. This is harder than you might imagine, but it is very rewarding when you get it right! Serving another person in this way is not a one way street, and the best residential designs are a product of a team effort.

 

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Conquer Whole Building Energy Efficiency Retrofits in 3 Stages

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Conquer Whole Building Energy Efficiency Retrofits in 3 Stages

Call the energy retrofit doctor! Historic and existing buildings may look alright on the outside, but they could be a lot more energy efficient. Don't get me wrong; they have potential. Through the years, these properties have often been updated and remodeled, usually to address particular issues, without considering effects on whole-building energy efficiency. We tend to compartmentalize our homes, and changes to them reflect this paradigm. In the past, we many have needed more space, so we built an addition or enclosed a porch. A room got too hot or cold, so we installed an A/C unit or baseboard heater. You might live in a house with these kinds of alterations.

This kind of thinking allows for quick comfort and cheap solutions (in the short-term) but does improve the property value or allow it run at its best. 

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Container House Design with Minimalist Grit - Part 1

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Container House Design with Minimalist Grit - Part 1

Shipping containers belong in a dark, modern version of Dwell magazine featuring Frankenstein’s metro-modular castle. These corrugated units of space are all the rage in print, but they are underrepresented in reality. Point blank, there were no shipping container homes in the Oklahoma City metro in early 2014. That is when I received an email from a childhood friend.

He had heard that I was an architect practicing sustainable design and he wanted to team up to do something new. He had just returned to Oklahoma after living out west and in Asia for several years. Through his travels, he had learned a lot about living lightly and found that a minimalist lifestyle suited him well. He wanted some help designing a small house using recycled shipping containers as the main structure. Sounded interesting!

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Holistic Building Design: Inherent Green and High Tech

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Holistic Building Design: Inherent Green and High Tech

Preservation Future Tense” was the theme for Oklahoma’s 29th Annual Statewide Preservation Conference held in Oklahoma City. In partnership with our State Historic Preservation Office, the Oklahoma Main Street Program invited James Lindberg, Senior Director of the Preservation Green Lab (PGL) to speak at the closing Plenary Session. Since 2009 PGL, a part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has authored some of the most current and forward-looking sustainable preservation research ever done. 

Through reports such as The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse, PGL is outlining how historic preservation

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An Early Setback for Red River House and Upcoming Topics

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An Early Setback for Red River House and Upcoming Topics

This marks our first Monday post. In addition to the backbone topics on Thursday, I hope you will look forward to some periodic "fieldwork" related updates.

My goal for these Fieldwork posts is to share my perspective and provide practical information just for you. Live-streaming an overview of the design process of the Red River Passive House is an example. There will be a lot of questions along the way, so for your part, I only ask for a little feedback. Sound okay?

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Main Street: The Time-tested Basis for Green Heart Towns

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Main Street: The Time-tested Basis for Green Heart Towns

The Main Street America™ revitalization strategy applied at the grass-roots level has allowed thousands of communities across America to recast their historic downtown districts as the heart of town life. The movement was launched by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1980. Since then, over 2,000 communities have followed the Main Street Approach, bringing renewed energy and activity to America’s downtowns and commercial districts, securing $65.6 billion in new investment, creating more than 556,000 net new jobs, and rehabilitating 260,000 buildings.

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Pre-Design for Fidelity and Buildings with Spirit

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Pre-Design for Fidelity and Buildings with Spirit

Last week we began discussing the Pre-Design (aka predesign) process currently underway for a high-performance residential design unfolding in the Red River Valley of Texas. So, why share the process with you? 

My hope is that “live-streaming” the architectural design process will serve us both. Writing provides reflection and adds surety to my decisions. I also know that involving others in the design process is a great way to reveal additional opportunities, and avoid missteps.

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How to Design a Passive House in the Red River Valley

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How to Design a Passive House in the Red River Valley

There are some places that take a long journey to reach, and there are places that have always been there waiting to be discovered. This is sense of how I felt last week when Lucas Sustainable was hired to design our first Passive House. 

For several weeks prior, a wonderful property owner and I have been working to assess our fit as a team, and considering the prospect of this kind of undertaking.

For a project such as this one communication should be open and transparent from the very beginning. Especially, for such a beautiful piece of land, nestled in the rich, verdant Red River Valley. 

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Weatherization: Old Buildings Need to Tighten-up

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Weatherization: Old Buildings Need to Tighten-up

Basic weatherization is a simple approach to improve comfort, energy efficiency, air quality, and the durability of an existing building. Weatherization is composed of two primary measures:  Air sealing and insulating. Both are important for improving energy efficiency, but pursuing airtightness should take precedent.

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Existing Buildings are Green: Do They Energize You Heart?

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Existing Buildings are Green: Do They Energize You Heart?

Existing buildings just don’t stand a chance. Every month many glossy architecture magazines hit the newsstands, arriving in checkout lines like a plague of locusts. Anyone who loves beauty and design can’t help but shoot a quick glance and read the headlines. We can’t help but peek. As Americans, we are programmed to desire, want, and spend.

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Vernacular Architecture & Place-Based Design - Part 2

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Vernacular Architecture & Place-Based Design - Part 2

Vernacular architecture (aka. traditional architecture) is a topic we are going to be referring back to often. “Looking back before moving ahead” is a principle that any sustainable designer should cherish. Not only are our communities’ histories informative, they are also treasures that can enrich our lives. We can choose to become part of the great story of our community, and leave it stronger.

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Vernacular Architecture & Place-Based Design - Part 1

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Vernacular Architecture & Place-Based Design - Part 1

There is a timeless way of building and we have forgotten it!  

The historic vernacular architecture is the rudimentary construction done by your town’s original builders, with the traditions, skills and resources they had at hand. You might also think of it as your town’s architecture, before architects.

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Welcome to Green Heart Town

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Welcome to Green Heart Town

This blog is about creating a Green Heart Town: Renewing Your Home, Neighborhood and Downtown from the Inside Out. 

For over a year, I considered the right direction for this blog. I could use the "I have never blogged before" excuse, but the truth is I'm a slow poke. One thing I knew for certain is...

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