#ruralstudio

As we put together the final pieces of our home, we were able to do a bit of last-minute design work for our porch. The porch was built to be enclosed with a screen--just like the original iteration of Dave’s Home--but we have chosen to leave it screenless in order to create a more direct connection to the eastern side of Spencer House. As a result, we had to create a new entry threshold, which meant that we needed to determine a method for integrating the existing sill plates into the revised porch design.

After a series of charrettes, we decided to open up the front (west end) of the porch by cutting back the sill plate. To complement the completely exposed and screenless facade, we chose to partially enclose the rest of the porch (the north and south faces) with benches, keeping those sill plates intact. After a mocking up a few bench iterations at Morrisette, we constructed the benches on site.

We’d like to thank everyone who helped us choose our final bench design by testing out our mockups! May you always find a comfortable place to rest your weary bones (and if not, you’re welcome to pop a squat on our benches anytime). 

Comfy and Yours,

Day 4 | Stability

Without a stable and welcoming environment, it is hard for people’s personal life to flourish. People are strengthened from community support and stable environments. 

The courtyard will provide an inviting safe space for people to be surrounded by nature within downtown Greensboro. A place where the community can breathe fresh air and sit under a tree to read a book or observe the vines moving with the breezes. A place that is constantly accessible for everyone and can be used during the day or night.

Help us make this a possibility by donating to the link below! All donations are extremely appreciated and go directly towards the building materials. 

https://secure.auburn.edu/s/1715/giving/form.aspx?sid=1715&gid=2&pgid=776&cid=1576&dids=230&bledit=1&appealcode=RURLSTHT

We’d like to thank, yet again, the incredible Johnny Parker, without whom we would have a little more than an empty shell of a home. Last week, Johnny helped us put together our rainwater collection system, in addition to all of the electrical and plumbing help he’s already done for us so far.

The rainwater we collect will be used to flush the toilet, which could save us hundreds of gallons of water usage a year.

The system works as follows:

A gutter directs rain from the north-facing roof plane into a 600-gallon cistern, which sends water through PEX into a small pump box. Once in the box, water travels through a small filter, after which a meter records the amount in cubic feet of water passing through the pump. The rainwater is then pumped through a solenoid valve, which talks to a float switch that’s inside the cistern. The solenoid valve knows when the cistern is empty and when we need city water, as well as when the cistern is full and when use collected water.

As soon as our gutter arrives this week, we will be able to finalize the system and begin our water collection process. During the next four months, we will record how much water we actually saved by recycling rainwater.

Ready for April showers,

Toward the end of last week, we used the trencher and a couple of shovels, (ok, let’s face it, we mainly used shovels and a ton of elbow grease) to trench out for our electrical and plumbing piping. We ran wire from the electrical panel in the house to Spencer House’s main power box, PVC from the house’s plumbing fixture’s main drain to the septic system on site, and plumbing supply PEX from the house to Spencer’s plumbing supply.

We’d like to give a huge shoutout to Johnny Parker for helping us hook up our plumbing and electrical systems in one morning! Thanks to Johnny, we now have working lights and outlets and are one step closer to having running water and flush-able toilets in the house.

We’d also like to thank Mason Hinton for helping us connect the wiring in our electrical panel to power! 

Congrats Team Faunsdale!

While avoiding intermittent rain showers, we spent the past week fastening our metal siding to our ZIP-covered walls. To install the burgundy panels, we placed drip edges and j-channels around the edge of each wall and opening. Then, we screwed each wall panel into their j-channel frame, making sure to precisely cover our intra-wall sensors.

We also installed the final two roof panels, so our exterior metal--apart from a little touch up paint--is complete!

During the rain, we worked back in Red Barn, reliving our long days in the computer lab. We’ve been designing our porch entry sequence and organizing our final days on site. We have just a few short weeks left in our schedule until move-in day!

Jammin’ out to light-metal tunes,

WEEK 26-30

This year Pig Roast was on April 28th! It was great to see our families and friends come out to support us, and for us to finally be able to show them what we had been up to for the past year! While we celebrated a year’s worth of work that weekend, we also prepared for stress test, which was two days later…. and WE PASSED!! The three teams presented to Christian Dagg, Rusty Smith, Justin Miller, David Hill and David Hinson. It was a long day, we started presenting at 10 am that morning and the rest of the presentations went through all the way to 7 pm, but at the end of the day we knew that all of our hard work had payed off!

Since our last post we have continued contacting our consultants, we met with Jake Labarre and David Hill, we also called Joe Farruggia, Cheyl Noel and Ravi Ricker. Which has been incredibly beneficial in pushing our design forward! We have also reflected on the feedback from pre-stress test and spent many days charretting. So, moving forward, our screen will still be made of steel cables, but rather than being all vertical cables, in certain areas we will treat the screen as a series of curtain panels that conceptually are tied off on one side, like a fabric curtain would be. This concept gives more movement to the facades as well as facilitates the growth of the vines above the datum line. It also eases circulation, allowing people to pass through the vegetated curtain from one space into another and makes the different zones more connected. In terms of vines, most recently we have been looking into Confederate Jasmine and Apple Blossom Clematis, which are evergreen vines, and how those can be combined with other deciduous vines such as Dutchman’s pipe or Virginia Creeper. Mixing the different types of vines provides different colors and textures to the courtyard, as well as fragrances and blooms during different times of the year.

WEEK 21

It’s Spring Break y’all! Before we all go take a quick break and return with renewed energies, here is what happened last week:

We got to spend half of Tuesday with Joe Farruggia, our structural consultant to grasp a better understanding of our structural systems for both the screen and the walkway; as well as how we can design it to be as light as possible.

On Wednesday, David Hill, our landscape architecture consultant, was extremely helpful in answering our questions about trees, vines, water collection, and surface treatments. He even gave us a few case studies to look into. The following day we had a visit from the Perky Bros, a graphic design firm out of Nashville that has been doing some work with the studio.  We got to hear a presentation form Jeff, Lindsey and Rex about their work and some helpful tips about representation and graphics.

And finally on Friday we had one more great presentation with Dr.Dorsey and Michelle before the break. We received good feedback and both the team and Dr.Dorsey are excited to see the project move forward!

WEEK 8

We have just completed one of the most exciting and stressful weeks of the semester!

Following Rural Studio tradition, Soup Roast took place this past Saturday in our very chilly Red Barn. Parts of the celebration were cancelled due to the unexpected snow! That’s right... snow in Hale County! Even though all of our special guests could not make it into town because of the weather, we still had a helpful review from those that could make it, such as Steve Badanes, Jim Adamson, Jake LaBarre, Mary English, our very own Andrew Freear, and Rural Studio Alumni. 

Before the review, we completed our model of the Hub at 3/8 scale and created a design that fits with Evidence Based Research for mental health. We focused on addressing light, elimination of environmental stressors, safety, security, observation, avoidance of visual disturbance, color, group interaction, and access to nature. With the desire to keep the design simple, we are striving to make each element dual purpose.

Our proposal includes a 20′ high vegetative screen wall with strategically placed perforations along all four sides to define the space and to protect the west-facing facade from the harsh summer win while allowing views and entrances into the space. We also propose a gaggle of trees that allows for either one large activity or multiple small activities to happen at once.