New Mexico EcoSteel House - moved in and furnishing

Some new photos from the owner of the New Mexico EcoSteel House today. They have begun to furnish the house, and at last the house looks and feels lived in.



More of the photos in a photo browser after the click-through.




And remember you can trace the entire construction process in the Flickr photo set for this house. Thanks for following, and thanks to the owner for sharing their house.

3030 House - last window installed

Observant readers may have noticed that the front of the Cabin John EcoSteel house was missing one window unit in the last set of photos. That last window was installed and now the front of the house looks more complete.

This window needed to be modified because it is crossing in front of the floor framing at the vertical column of windows on this side of the house. So although it is a window unit it is not being used as a window - you won't be able to look out of it because it extends down below window sill height, crosses the floor, and ends high on the wall of the level below. In this case the window unit is being use as a spandrel panel. In order for the window frame to be able to cross over the floor framing like this the window jambs had to be trimmed to make the window more shallow so that there was no interference.

Cabin John 3030 House Flickr set

Letters from Sweden - automation in the factory

When Scott and I corresponded about the Swedish housing industry we often looked at techniques that automated the construction of house components in the factory. Automation was implemented to different degrees in the factories, some using a highly automated process, and others essentially building by hand under roof, but most somewhere in between.



Today Scott forwarded a promotional video from machine maker Randek Bautech. Here you can see a number of the machines in action, forming up studded wall panels, placing, fastening, and trimming sheathing panels, as well as the handling of completed wall panels.

This really should be the future of production housing in the USA. This kind of production is a way that high quality, energy efficient housing can be made more affordable. And just as important to me it is a way that good product design can begin to displace the schlocky amaturish house designs that pass for the status quo in the USA.

Links to past entries in the Letters from Sweden Series:
Letters from Sweden - the foundation
Letters from Sweden - deliver and set
Letters from Sweden - plumbing the prefab
Letters from Sweden - wiring zen
Letters from Sweden - a windows tale
Letters from Sweden - panel building in Sweden vs the USA
Letters from Sweden - Europe is different, Sweden is not, sort of..
Letters from Sweden - land of modern, land of prefab
Letters from Sweden - conversations with an expatriate builder

Alternative to teardown: a move by barge

The New York Times has a story in today's paper about the Robert Venturi-designed Lieb house in Barnegat Light, NJ. The house was lifted from its pilings and is now sitting in a parking lot in New Jersey where it awaits the green light to move it by barge up the Atlantic coast, under the Brooklyn Bridge, into Long Island Sound and then into the harbor at Glen Cove, Long Island. A couple there, who sound like excited adoptive parents waiting to receive their new baby, will use the house as a guest house. Here's Tammy La Gorce's story, and Inga Saffron wrote about it last month in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Wish them smooth sailing! – GF

Eames and Saarinen

Lots of good stuff on Materialicious, including this amazing juxtoposition of a case study house designed by Eames and Saarinen with a post-modern/contemporary house designed by Barry Berkus, whom Materialicious refers to as "idiot Barry Berkus." - ta

Bad Deal

Today's Times has one of those stories documenting widespread idiocy that is both sad and infuriating. The story starts in Greenhills, Ohio. Here are some key paragraphs:
This 1938 village, along with Greenbelt, Md., and Greendale, Wis., was created to move struggling families out of nearby cities and into a healthier, more verdant environment, with shopping, recreation and nearly 200 small modernist apartment buildings and houses surrounded by a forest.

“The houses may be kind of plain looking, not spectacular, but to me at least, they are a treasure,” Mr. Strupe, 47, who repairs scales, said last week. “Like my old metal kitchen cabinets — the landlord asked, but I don’t ever want them changed.”

Yet, change has come. Over protests from residents, officials tore down 52 apartments on the National Register of Historic Places, saying they made the village look down at the heels. Signs saying, “Not for Sale” and “Keep Your Hands Off My House” are taped to frosty windows. Hundreds of buildings commissioned by the Works Progress Administration and Roosevelt’s other “alphabet” agencies are being demolished or threatened with destruction, mourned or fought over by small groups of citizens in a new national movement to save the architecture of the New Deal. In July, at the Santa Fe Indian School in New Mexico, a dozen buildings built in the Spanish Revival style in the 1930s, including murals with Native American themes, were bulldozed. In Chicago, architectural historians have joined with residents of Lathrop Homes — riverfront rows of historic brick public housing — to try to persuade the Chicago Housing Authority not to raze the complex. In Cotton County, Okla., a ruined gymnasium has only holes where windows used to be. Across the country, schools, auditoriums and community centers of the era are headed for the wrecking ball.

The buildings are designed in a variety of styles, including early modern. None of the examples shown in the Times are stunning, but the point is that at a time when we're all yapping about constructing and living in more energy-efficient buildings, governments all over the country are tearing down useful, energy-efficient and historic buildings. (The image above is of a New Deal-era mural, in Port Chester, New York; I found it here). - ta

interior almost complete - XHouse1

Most of the interior is dressed now, but I've not worked on the extensive interior hand rails yet.

Here's one crazy fish-eye wide angle sketch of the open kitchen, dining, living space from the far corner of the kitchen.

New LamiDesign House Plan offered at FreeGreen Open Source web site

FreeGreen's Open Source is a new House Plan site that allows any architect to offer house plans for sale. We think its a great idea and to support them we've posted a house plan set that comes from a past custom design.

Our new house design called the FS House has been shown before on the blog under the guise of Suburban House Project. We have not offered the design in our own catalog because as a custom design it just did not fit in with the design themes that were present in the current family of house designs. For me this is a great opportunity. We've never wanted to force this design into the catalog just to increase the number of house plans, so Open Source is a great chance for us to offer the design. In that spirit it is priced significantly below the cost of Construction Prints from our regular catalog. There are no design prints. Documents are delivered via PDF file download, so there are no paper prints - you print them yourself. There are extensive design images posted at the Open Source catalog page to allow you to become familiar with the design. Documentation is very complete as are all our Construction Prints.

So surf over and have a look at it. Maybe its the right house for you?

UPDATE: FreeGreen has rebranded this as Better House Plans:

0751 RS House at Better House Plans

3030 House - panels installed and trimming out

Wall panels on the EcoSteel 3030 House in Cabine John Maryland are all installed, and the windows and panel ends are being trimmed out.

Once the outside is buttoned up the owner will being with the interior fit out. There are a couple of additional photos at the Flickr set for the Cabin John house, so jump over there to see them and the entire series of construction photos.