House like a studio apartment in a S P A C E B O X - General information via reBlog. Would it apply to the US? Not easily.

, good for ya' category

gravestmor via things for "an irreverent architecture weblog."

gravestmor ? do it yourself

Step One: Gather your entire village together in one spot.
Step Two: With your fellow villagers, go out and chop down some trees.
Step Three: Again with the villagers, lean the trees up against each other, forming a kind of tree tee-pee.
Step Four: Seal up all the gaps between the trees using other trees if necessary. This step is essential for later steps so make sure the tee-pee is water tight.
Step Five: Make a big timber box around the tree tee-pee. This will be used as form work for the next twenty four steps.
Step Six: Pour 50cm of concrete into the formwork and leave for a day.
Steps Seven to Twentynine: Each day pour another 50cm of concrete until you reach the top. If you have followed the instructions correctly you should have a big concrete box with lots of horizontal lines on it. Inside the box should be an intact tee-pee made from trees that you and your fellow villagers cut down with ancient farming tools.
Step Thirty: Go inside the tree tee-pee. Light the trees on fire.
Step Thirtyone: Run outside and let trees burn.
Step Thirtytwo: Once trees have burnt away go back inside and clear away the debris.
You should now have a big concrete box with a hole in the middle shaped like a tee-pee. If you don’t have something like this, go back through the steps to check where you got it wrong, otherwise post a comment below and one of our staff members will attempt to help you out.
Step Thirtythree: The final step is to pour floor liquid silver over the floor. This will make the floor nice and reflective.

Google Search: gutter size calc points to an imaginative PDF that looks at rainwater catchment systems in the San Juan Islands.

Google Search: gutter size calc points to a PDF that shows roof calcs in a memorable way.

Sizing Gutter Systems answers the question, one downspout every 10'? 20'?

Counting Bricks The Easy Way McGraw-Hill Construction | ENR - Utility Gets The Joints Too

The Observer | Review | When is a library not a library? When it's an 'idea store' also via things

a-matter - architecture and related. The online medium for architecture. and visited page 5 courtesy of things.

Life ahead of the curve / The world is finally catching on to iconoclastic architect Dan Liebermann's way of building—in the interest of old newspaper removal. An excellent young architect the Toph worked with went to work for his eminence after the Mt. Vision fire and moved a project forward. The office approach was to be be assertive, let's say, with building officials, and the results are truly unique buildings with a basic umbrella-like structural system seen nowhere else. The article describes this and the characteristic canoe-shaped floorplan and building pad he uses for his hillside buildings:

Liebermann says the most efficient structure requires a circular floor plan. Rather than "cutting a big, nasty, square hole" in the ground and building a "nasty retaining wall with a cold space behind it that fills with dirt and leaves," he works with a hill's contours (most of his houses are on steep hillsides), making an elliptical cut, "a bite out of an apple."

Borrowing from his father's expertise as a dam engineer, Liebermann then creates a concave, curving retaining wall, like a bowl halved top to bottom. (Curved structures are stronger, he maintains, so they predominate in nature, as in craniums, eggs and seashells.)

His retaining wall doubles as the main interior wall of the house. Because such a wall could look forbidding, he usually softens it with a massive fireplace. Featuring a hollow large enough to roast a boar, and stacks of limestone stretching across the wall, the ensemble beckons aesthetically and emotionally. Liebermann explains that a fireplace provides "tremendous therapy" because it's a "primordial, womb-like cave, a place of warmth and security."

As for the rest of the house, he figures the best way to cover an ellipse is with an umbrella. He constructs a central column, perhaps a straightforward steel pole or a birch trunk salvaged from a forest fire. Sometimes he opts for a structure of woven steel beams, the straight pieces appearing to curve as in an Asian wicker stool. Planted deep in the ground like a tree and braced firmly at the floor slab, the central column acts structurally like the tower of a suspension bridge or the mast of a boat.

Liebermann says that during an earthquake the whole building moves together like a boat on waves: "You have a holistic, static relationship between all the parts in my buildings."

Small Project Forum Journal and getting paid via BAYA aiasf…

The New York Times > International > Europe > Architect Starts Study of Failure in Paris Airport

The New York Times > New York Region > After 100 Years, a New Rule Book for New York -- toward replacing the building code with model International Building Code

loud paper : news via newthings

ANALYSIS / Designs for living / Prefab house contest, AIDS clinic designs reinforce the role of mobility in creating human shelter

Putting some fab in prefab / Off-the-rack doesn't mean houses have to be boring

In more homes, foundations are built elsewhere: panelization

A house divided / Architect's pre-fab plan to take the sting out of housing market, the Glidehouse arrives on a truck and costs $120 per square foot.

projects archive via eyebeam reblog