Tag Archives: design

Building attractive staircases to encourage better health

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Staircases are necessary in many buildings but a new report suggests constructing them in attractive ways would help boost health:

And as ULI’s report argues, there’s more at stake than just aesthetics. A raft of research suggests that more appealing stairways may actually beckon more people to climb, in turn helping to reduce stroke risk, improving cardiovascular health and fighting obesity.

First, the obvious: More exercise, like the kind you get from taking the stairs instead of the elevator, is good for you. A 40-year study of nearly 17,000 (male) Harvard alumni, published in 1986, found that those who walked, took the stairs and played sports were likely to live longer than their more sedentary classmates. The researchers found that by age 80, one to two additional years of life were attributable to exercise. Take the stairs, enjoy a longer life.

And it appears designers and architects really can bait people into doing what’s good for them. A 2004 study saw a 9 percent increase in foot traffic when researchers added motivational signs, artwork, carpeting, new paint and music to a CDC building’s stairwells. A similar 2001 study published in the American Journal of Public Health tested two interventions in the University of Minnesota’s public health building and found that while shaming signs—“Take the stairs for your health”—didn’t motivate stair travel, adding artwork and music to them via a compact disc player (aww, 2001) increased stair traffic by nearly 5 percent. “Buildings should be designed with attractive stairwells that are accessible to the general population,” the researchers concluded.

There are more dramatic intervention options, too. ULI, guided by principles from the Center for Active Design, argues that developers should be thinking seriously about stairways even before the construction crew moves in. The groups recommend placing stairs closer to building entrances than elevators and making them more visible. (A 2007 analysis found stairways’ accessibility and visibility explained 53 percent of their use in 10 university buildings.) Using glass panels as walls instead of concrete and cinderblock also gently guides people toward stairways.

Stairs can be an exciting architectural feature as well as a health boon. In contrast, elevators in large buildings don’t present many benefits for health or architecture. The typical lobby of a modern high-rise includes a spacious room with ill-defined sections with banks of elevators somewhere to the side or back. Stairs, if done well, can present an interesting focal point and help define the space. However, I wonder if these findings primarily apply to low-rise buildings where the stairs could be used as the primary means of traveling between floors.

Designing homes in “Disaster Chic”

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Looking for a home that will help you survive the coming apocalypse? Look no further than printable homes, prefabricated small homes, and shipping containers.

You peer warily out of the single window in your zombie-proof steel box. The street seems deserted—except for a lone figure who is staring at you from a distance. Is it 2079, in the years after the Great Drought Plague!? No, it’s 2015 in Royal Oaks, Michigan, and that zombie is a curious local Fox reporter.

Royal Oaks is just the latest American town to get a house made from shipping containers, which offer something unique to consumers with a taste for apocalyptic adventures. While designers are developing smarter ways to build temporary housing and disaster shelters, developers and real estate agents are using the same technology to sell trendy and high-end homes. What results is a bizarre kind of hybrid style that pairs our worst fears with our biggest hopes for the future—utopia and dystopia overlap. Call it disaster chic…

Of course, it’s not surprising to see interesting ideas cross-pollinate—3D printing, containerization, and pop-up dwellings are all really cool concepts, and there’s no reason they should be shrouded in break-in-case-of-emergency glass. What’s interesting is how similar our ideas about crisis engineering and future chic really are. In the city of the future, everything is instant, whether for a good reason or a bad one. The cities of our dreams have a lot in common with those of our nightmares.

These homes don’t seem all that well equipped to help keep you safe. If anything, their primary feature in relation to disasters is that they can be quickly produced and moved. Those are important features in recovering from disasters but I imagine some might want more solid homes to survive the disaster in the first place.

But, it is interesting that such homes that do well at addressing disaster recovery might become more popular with a broader audience. Do such designs simply offer something different in a housing market where the typical home or housing unit isn’t really that exciting or different? Is this a way to offer ironic commentary about one’s home – homes in the United States are often intended to imply permanence but these structures hint at catastrophic change and adaptability? Or is this primarily driven by younger adults looking for cheaper housing options in cities that seem pretty determined to not provide much in the way of affordable housing?

Using Chicago skyscrapers as inspirations for spaceships

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“Jupiter Ascending” may not be very good but some of the spaceships are based on Chicago architecture:

When Hull came to Chicago, the Wachowskis began peppering him with reference photographs of Chicago buildings, facades, landmarks, ornamental detail and infrastructure. “Of all the directors I have worked with, they are by far the most architecture-minded,” he said. “They wanted a very decorative vision for the ships, almost Louis XIV-like in places, existing alongside this other aesthetic, far more gothic and less feminine.”

Indeed, the Wachowskis, who started a small construction company and worked as carpenters before becoming filmmakers, wanted the two warring ships at the center of “Jupiter Ascending” to somewhat reflect Chicago itself. “I like how the great curling femininity of the Frank Gehry (Pritzker Pavilion) is juxtaposed against the weight of those harsh, more severe buildings on Michigan Avenue,” Lana said. “I liked that tension in Chicago, that something as elegant as a big river can curl through so many grandiose statements. When we were looking at the design of the ships, we kept exploring this, placing almost baroque, exuberant levels of detail on one end, while on the other, contrasting a rigorous, rational logic.”…

“But also I really love the top of the Carbide & Carbon Building (on Michigan Avenue),” Lana said. So its lighthouse peak informs the back of Titus’ ship, while the front is, well, a play on the flying buttresses that shape the top of the Tribune Tower. “But I often wasn’t flamboyant enough for the Wachowskis,” Hull said. So the gold-green design along the facade of the Carbide building is mirrored on the outside of the ship. And inside: The ceiling of the ship’s loading dock is reminiscent of the dense mosaics in the Chicago Cultural Center ceilings; the long, vaulted chapel is vaguely similar to the reading room of the Newberry Library. “Which was a sanctuary for me as a kid,” Lana said, “where I went when I cut school.”

Balem, played by Eddie Redmayne, is the imperialist, the severe, ominous bully. His ship, therefore, is gothic, less curvaceous than Titus’ ride. The front end, its T-shaped bow, has some inspiration in the terra-cotta faces that watch from the facade of the old Tree Studios building on Ontario Street. And there are hints of the former Midway Gardens entertainment venue in Hyde Park, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (torn down in 1929). “His ship is more of a towering, hard-looking, Albert Speer-ish brutalism,” Hull said, “but it would be too on the nose for his designs to just reflect that, to not suggest Balem wouldn’t want some ornamental embellishment to his world.” So, his boardroom has touches of the latticework beneath the Loop “L” tracks.

An interesting source of inspiration for objects – spaceships – that we might typically think are otherwordly or something completely different. Additionally, buildings are pretty static, even if they are involved in dynamic social settings, while spaceships have incredible mobility. But, as noted in this earlier post about The Hunger Games, it is difficult to make something completely new. Human creativity rarely involves completely innovative ideas that have never been expressed before but rather often involves taking existing forms and objects and doing new things with the mix. So, in trying to imagine the future, why not draw some on the past while also adding potential changes?

This is also a reminder that Chicago architecture is influential. If we do get to an age of large spacecraft, would Chicago still be a major inspiration? Could we have competing fleets based on different global cities?

Making a concrete McMansion with a 3D printer

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A Chinese firm can put together a McMansion with a 3D printer:

WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co., a Chinese architectural materials company with more than 70 patents to its name, has now come up with a way to construct a 12,000 square-foot home – a kind of McMansion – out of 3D printed blocks.

A special technique has resulted in a concrete building that, while requiring paint to be attractive, still manages to be perfectly functional.

The printer that created these buildings is 105 feet long, 33 feet wide, and 21 feet tall, larger than most rooms, but it works on basically the same principles as one of MakerBot’s printers. It uses a nozzle to pump a mix of concrete, sand and fiberglass (which are recycled; the company’s name seems to translate to ‘Surplus’) onto a flat substrate, slowly accumulating into a tough material that can be buffed to create a smoother edge and/or overlaid with various traditional-looking decorative elements. A zigzag design inside the pieces helps reinforce them, similar to corrugated cardboard.

It takes about a day to print all the components. The prefab blocks are then trucked to the construction site, where it takes just five days to put them all together. The final height of the building is 20 feet by 4,000 feet wide, and the total cost to build it was just $161,000. This method saves between 30 and 60 percent of construction waste, cuts down on time by 50-70 percent, and cuts labor costs from 50-80 percent.

While the cost seems attractive, I can only imagine what McMansion critics would say if some of these started showing up in American neighborhoods. Want mass produced? Want concrete as your primary material? Of course, this all may get refined over time but there is some work to do before this would meet single-family home standards in the United States.

Plug and play 10 square feet Cubitat on display

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Toronto’s Interior Design Show featured a 10×10 square foot Cubitat living unit:

Cubitat is a 10-by-10-by-10-foot cube that houses a kitchen, bathroom, bed, laundry, and storage.

Once plumbing and electric are hooked up, the structure can theoretically turn any dwelling into what the developers are calling a “plug and play” living space that looks something like a giant’s Rubik’s cube and seems to beg to be painted in Mondrian colors…

The concept is appealing but problematic: For the moment, Cubitat comes assembled in one giant piece. So although it looked great in the large, light-filled exhibition space at the Toronto show, figuring out how to get this giant module through the doors of most existing structures is an obvious obstacle (unless you’re lowering it into a roofless barn or sliding it into a converted double garage).

The pictures are really interesting and hint at the creative possibilities of mass-produced small housing units. Yet, the biggest problem seems to be ignored: since a number of the features open outward (the bed, the kitchen, etc.), this unit is only as good as the larger space in which it sits. If you had a big loft – particularly with taller ceilings – you could plop a Cubitat or two right in the middle. But, what other spaces offer such options and provide another set of exterior walls?

Can townhouses look like McMansions?

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One resident claims units in a proposed townhouse development “look like a bit like the stereotypical “McMansions.” Here is a description of the proposed units as well as an artistic rendering:

“The idea is to capture the transient market of people coming from urban areas to work at the colleges,” Buhl said.  “They would ultimately buy a house, but don’t know where to locate.  We’re looking for young, two-worker families.  It’s an in-between type of rental of higher-end people that we’re looking for.”

Cayuga Farms has gone through several changes over the past recent years.  Originally it was conceived as a 144 unit townhouse condominium community.  Today it is being packaged as a 102 rental two and three bedroom townhouses with one or two-car garages in a total of 21 buildings.  Buhl characterized it as a high-end development targeted at young families who may have moved to town to work here, renting for a while before purchasing a house.  He said rents will range between about $1,800 and 2,200 per month…

cayugafarms elevation
An artist’s elevation of the proposed design for the townhouse buildings

These do seem to be aimed at a wealthier renter. So, could these be McMansions? These townhouses do appear to have some of the features tied to McMansions. A multi-gabled roof. Big emphasis on garages. A mish-mash of styles on the facade. Possibly two-story entryways (the windows right above the door do suggest this). Odd dormers on the third story. Windows of all sorts of sizes. Porticos at the front door. Height and width that seems to dwarf the green space between the driveways.

Yet, I think not being single-family homes is a big barrier as McMansions are viewed by critics as cartoonish versions of the single-family house. The design of townhouses seems not to be as much of an issue. Perhaps this is because there are fewer design options for townhouses or because they tend to be located within their own developments (avoids teardown situations) or density is a bigger issue for opponents compared to design.

My verdict: these look like McMansions but can’t quite be labeled McMansions.

“America’s Ugly Mansions”

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As this Forbes piece notes, “Money, after all, doesn’t buy taste.” See some of America’s ugliest mansions here:

“Everyone has opinions on other people’s houses,” says Sarah A. Leavitt, a curator with the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., which recently unveiled the exhibition House and Home, surveying how the American hearth, from two story colonials to row houses, has changed over the last 200 years. For some, their nightmarish take on someone else’s dream home may be “because they would have done it differently.” For others, the critique may be “because they can’t afford it.”

Most homes, after all–colonials, capes, ranches and splits, follow the same boxy patterns. Developers “have to appeal to the common denominator,” Leavitt says, leaving only those with deep pockets to tailor their own palaces.

One thing seems to unite these ugly homes: they have features or portions that are out of proportion with the rest of the house or with what people typically expect in homes. Take the Gas Station home. A portico is not necessarily a problem but one that extends over the driveway at a two-story height looks cartoonish. Or the Concrete Blocks house. Concrete can be effectively used in modern architecture but an elongated concrete garage looks like too much. Thus, if you have money and want a big house, try to have a design that has some moderation.

If you want to vote for which home you think if the worst, go here.

Creating the “mobile-ghetto” in major cities

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Affordable housing is scarce in many major global cities so one architect has a design for the “mobile-ghetto”:

So as Malka sees it, Parisians need a way to “reclaim” the city. His idea is a modular micro-city consisting of rooms that attach to scaffolding built around existing infrastructure, like barnacles clinging to a ship. He calls it the P9 Mobile-Ghetto, and has imagined them here hanging off the side of the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris.

“In a time when we are getting more and more mobile, not only regarding our phone and laptop devices, but also…the increasing number of freelancers or homeworkers, mobile-cities would totally change the uses and the morphology of the city,” Malka says. In practice, this means that the idea of a third space—in which city dwellers inhabit coffee shops and parks the way others gather in their living rooms, or regard shared bicycle programs as their own bikes—extends to include a smattering of rooms or event spaces created for the public, and run by the public. The bridge can become your meditation center; an out-of-use monument could become an art gallery.

Obvious complications with zoning and historical preservationists aside, Malka says the Voluntary Ghetto is technically plausible, and would just require using scaffolding to support shipping container-sized rooms. That said, this (conceptual) new layer of infrastructure says more about urban lifestyles than it does about feats of architecture. Would Parisians (or New Yorkers, or Londoners, or any city residents) delight in finding more intimate, indoor, spaces, or would it feel like a brash paint job on a historic city? “If there is an utopia in this project,” Malka says, “it’s more in its social dimension than its architectural aspect.”

Two quick thoughts:

1. Shipping container type structures are popular these days since they are relatively available and have a standard size. Yet, I wonder how communities would respond to the architecture that is often made with them. For lack of a better descriptor, it is boxy. It is one thing to supply affordable housing; it is another to put these sorts of designs on the Pont Neuf. Add that to the barnacle type image and it doesn’t necessarily look pretty.

2. A design like this or other recent innovations like tiny houses really can be limited by zoning laws. Major cities are often mazes of zoning regulations. While these zones exist for a reason, they can often make true innovation quite difficult. How much would cities be willing to revisit their zoning laws to allow spaces for these sorts of designs that are smaller and more flexible? I’m not imagine an overlay district – that is simply putting a temporary or permanent zoning change or exception over existing zones – but rather revisiting the whole thing to adapt to buildings and spaces in the 2010s.

What are the “dead giveaways” in landscaping outside a McMansion?

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One forum generates ideas about what kind of landscaping clearly marks a McMansion:

Most mcmansions in this area (mind you that’s only upper-middle class, not very upper class) have one tortured looking weeping nootka falsecypress, one fat albert spruce, a weeping mulberry and/or a callery pear…

MULCH. Large expanses of mulch dotted with discrete plants. Screams modern, if not commercial…

I think black mulch is the 2014 version of red mulch. Any dyed mulch screems Mc mansion to me. Undyed mulch used for function is ok but any munch used as decoration looks unnaturally trendy to me…

Faux “outcroppings” of rock are another big millennial landscaping conceit to avoid. I am not aware of many spontaneous outcroppings of rocks and plants with a waterfall springing out of it in the middle of Indiana. The ones that are there are probably planted. Just say “no”…

Too many hydrangeas. But ultimately, I think the “McMansion” look is one that is too manicured, too perfect and planned out…

Basically, 98% of American McMansions (or even what pass for mansions these days) are ridiculously over landscaped, at least compared to the European manors and stately homes they are claiming as inspiration. Just as the building architecture itself is often a bad, ham-fisted copy, the “design on the land” descends into contrivance and excess. I’ve heard of more than one case now of a 10-20 year old planting of “foundation shrubs” being ripped out because it had become unmaintainable and was overpowering the facade of the house. I suspect we are at a tipping point where there is soon going to be an article about it and partial backlash.

 

Some interesting ideas throughout this long thread. McMansions tend to try to impress observers with their features – whether that includes turrets, big entrances and foyers, multi-gabled roofs, stonework (or fake stones), numerous windows, mish-mash of weighty older styles – but the landscaping may not get as much attention. One factor common across these comments is that McMansion landscaping doesn’t account much for long-term appearance and care of plants. In other words, the landscaping is also meant to impress or get the job done but may not serve the home and the owners well 10-20 years down the road. If this is true, then the McMansions are what critics suggest: homes with limited staying power once you get past the facade (or landscaping).

Boom in Data Designer jobs in the future?

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One designer argues the proliferation of data means the job of data designer will be needed in the coming years:

When I began my career 25 years ago, the notion of design in the software industry was still nascent. It was an engineer’s world, in which just making software function was the consuming focus. So the qualification for this design role was quite simple: do you know anything about software? Those of us trying to apply humanistic or artistic notions to the process faced fundamental technical challenges. It was actually quite exciting, but a constant uphill battle to effect change…The new design challenge is to use this data for the same humanistic outcomes that we have in mind when we shape products through the user interface or physical form. Even conceding that many interfaces are not changing much—we still use PCs, and the mobile experience still mirrors traditional PC software tropes—we can see the data that moves through these systems is becoming more interesting. Just having this data affords the possibility of exciting new products. And the kind of data we choose to acquire can begin to humanize our experiences with technology…

We might consider the Data Designer a hybrid of two existing disciplines. Right now, Data Analysts and Interaction Designers work at two ends of the spectrum, from technical to humanistic. Data Analysts offer the most expertise in the medium, which is a great place to start; but they are approaching the problem from a largely technical and analytical perspective, without the concentration we need in the humanistic aspects of the design problems they address. Interaction Designers today are expert in designing interfaces for devices with screens. They may encounter and even understand the data behind their interfaces; but for the most part, it’s too often left out of the design equation…

Sociological implications. Presented with new capabilities of new technology, the design problem is to determine not just if a certain capability can be used, but how and why it should be used. When systems take in data quietly, from behind the scenes, from more parts of our lives, and shape this data in radical new ways, then we find an emerging set of implications that design does not often face, with profound sociological and safety issues to consider.

Data doesn’t interpret itself; people need to make sense of it and then use it effectively. Simply having all of this data is a good start but skilled practitioners can do effective, useful, and aesthetically pleasing things with the data.

My question would be about how to make to this happen? Is this best addressed top-down by certain organizations who have the foresight and/or resources to make this happen? Or, is this best done by some new startups and innovators who show others the way?