Category: Work

Shipping Container House Prototype

exploded-axon-0106-2016

I love shipping container houses, and I have seen some creative ways of making space with them. But with this home, I wanted to make a modern home that would fit into almost any neighborhood. A simple rectangular volume, to maximize the usage of the shipping containers. This home is designed to be affordable, with a hybrid model of shipping containers and dimension lumber with prefab trusses for the gable roof.  The current gable roof is not only to match common existing houses you might find in an urban neighborhood, the gable roof can provide for good solar access, as long as you are working with an “east-west” lot.  With this concept in mind, we are using the gable roof as a solar-ready angle; I thought this would be a great way to create a solar ready prototype that has a 40 degree roof pitch that coincides with the latitude, making it a truly solar-ready home that is built to catch some rays.

It uses 8 shipping containers. This would be approximately 16′ x 40′ or about 1200 sq. ft. with 3 bed 2 bath.  There is an option to have the Master on the ground floor to accommodate aging in place.

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Collective Food Market

collective food market perspective

collective food market section

This a collective food market, a place where local farmers can bring produce and goods to sell, local people can cook and there is more room to socialize provided than at regular super-market. This makes it a more civic place, instead of solely commercial. Having more social space allows for higher sales and creates a culture of ‘regulars’ who hang out at the market.

Subverting Suburbia

Next Gen Notables: Subverting Suburbia

“We are keep­ing the baby and we are using the bath­wa­ter to water our garden.”

A published online article about me and some friends getting a notable finish in the 2009 Next Generation Metropolis Magazine Design Competition. Mark Tirpak, who is not mentioned in the article, also helped–he is an urban planner.  Sam Schonzeit did most of the architecture work that I helped do rendering, and John Hart Asher did the landscape design.



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Box Vase

A 4″x14″ box vase that is made from Wenge wood, an exotic handsome dark wood from Africa.  I designed a geometric pattern and cut it out with an ancient CNC router, the “lacing” or tracking of the router blade is parallel with the geometric design creating a stepping finish on the wood–as seen in the pictures.  The darkness of the wood and the ‘complicated-ness’ of the design create a subtle effect.  The box slightly bulges in the middle, giving it entasis–similar to a Greek column–that ‘tricks’ the eye into seeing a more straight and vertical volume.

BioclimaticX Philo

At Bio­cli­mat­icX we strive to look at build­ings as part of Nature, as humans are intertwined with their environment. Together they can cre­ate a syn­ergy that will increase efficiencies of systems and reduce negative impacts of development. Designing with nature can lower energy bills, increase indoor air qual­ity, and increase pro­duc­tiv­ity of the build­ing and the inhab­i­tants. We enthu­si­as­ti­cally embrace a recon­struc­tion of nature, just as we would embrace ‘the real thing. ’ Humans have a strong pro­cliv­ity to Nature. By guid­ing the design process with a sus­tain­able approach that reduces over­all envi­ron­men­tal impact and inte­grat­es ‘recon­struc­tions’ of nature, we achieve a prod­uct that gives peo­ple a new per­spec­tive on ‘Nature’ and ’systems-thinking’ and ‘ways of liv­ing.’ As designers, or just as humans, we are stew­ards of the earth. We draw from the fields of bio­philia, bio­cli­matic design and archi­tec­ture, perma-culture, hor­ti­cul­ture, land­scape archi­tec­ture, genet­ics, hydro­pon­ics, aqua-ponics, and many others. The end result are sites and structures existing harmoniously optimized within their environment and operating at maximum efficiency. The unique geography of each site is translated into the site-specific techniques to ensure humans and their structure will best fit for resource use efficiency and inhabitant livability.  Grow­ing food and generating electricity on site are excellent techniques, but beginning the site plan design with maximization of these two techniques shows how to fully optimize human and nature integration. Houses built into the side hills in the South of Spain incorporate building techniques that are suited specifically for the unique geography of the community. The architectural techniques are most successful when the site and surrounding community are incorporated into the design.   Working to create a more sus­tain­able lifestyle for 100% of Human­ity.