The city that once reigned as the locus of brute American manufacturing strength has been in collapse for decades. Yet now, in its deepest decline, Detroit is once again ripe for a new kind of development, as Urbanophile explains in an exceptional piece of internet journalism. What kind of craft revival could emerge from the recession-wrought wreckage of Motown?
Hat tip to Galen Pierce-Gardner and Sistah Sarah.
dream house, rough draft
One of our first Big Graduate School Projects is a residential design for Sustainable Building Design & Construction. We're supposed to incorporate everything we know about sustainable building into a house.
To make things more exciting I decided to design something I'd actually want to live in...when I win the lottery.
I learned Autodesk Revit 2010 for this project. It's a lot like Inventor, but this house still took a full day to draw this up, with plenty of help from my classmate Mike Hairston, and the model is rough.
Three bathrooms are clustered on the north side to accommodate a composting toilet system.
Of course there's greywater treatment, composting, rainwater catchment, maybe even a biogas digester to make methane from animal wastes.
Most exterior walls would be 6.5" polyurethane SIPs, R-40. Probably a SIP roof too.
From SE. Exterior glass is concentrated on the south wall, where it does the most good for passive solar heating.
The floor of the 2nd level is polished concrete, which has pretty good thermal mass properties. Not as good as water, but water is so much harder to walk on. Unless you're in the bible. But then you'd have bigger problems, like locusts. And whales.
Um, anyway, we're restricted to 1600 sq. ft. of living space...but there's no limit on shop space...so I added a 1600 sq. ft. shop in the basement.
The three bay doors would be these, R-value 17.5, with windows along the top for daylighting, and taller than shown here.
The shop is wired for a nice TIG rig. 220 volts on 30 amp breakers at least.
I'm leaning towards a rammed-earth shop floor on top of a concrete slab. From what I've heard, earthen floors are really comfortable. My feet hate concrete floors.
A separate ventilation system removes fumes and dust, preventing any nasties from mixing with the air in the living area. LEED is really particular about indoor air quality.
South elevation.
To make things more exciting I decided to design something I'd actually want to live in...when I win the lottery.
I learned Autodesk Revit 2010 for this project. It's a lot like Inventor, but this house still took a full day to draw this up, with plenty of help from my classmate Mike Hairston, and the model is rough.
Three bathrooms are clustered on the north side to accommodate a composting toilet system.
Of course there's greywater treatment, composting, rainwater catchment, maybe even a biogas digester to make methane from animal wastes.
The floor of the 2nd level is polished concrete, which has pretty good thermal mass properties. Not as good as water, but water is so much harder to walk on. Unless you're in the bible. But then you'd have bigger problems, like locusts. And whales.
Um, anyway, we're restricted to 1600 sq. ft. of living space...but there's no limit on shop space...so I added a 1600 sq. ft. shop in the basement.
The shop is wired for a nice TIG rig. 220 volts on 30 amp breakers at least.
I'm leaning towards a rammed-earth shop floor on top of a concrete slab. From what I've heard, earthen floors are really comfortable. My feet hate concrete floors.
A separate ventilation system removes fumes and dust, preventing any nasties from mixing with the air in the living area. LEED is really particular about indoor air quality.
East elevation. The north side is set into a modest hill, so the upstairs door and the shop bay doors are all on grade.
South elevation.
From SW, showing master bedroom. I haven't figured out the interior walls yet.
From SE.
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