#vaproshield

One of the many problems – but also one of the more expensive ones that building owners run into is moisture seeping into a structure and causing damage.  To prevent this and other problems, NewsWatch checked out VaproShield membranes.

As we get busier it gets really easy to fall into the office/coffeeshop trap trying to keep up with emails, takeoffs and phone calls so it's days like today that make it all worthwhile.

After reading quite a few MRB blog posts on the Omar Gandhi Fyren project in Halifax, it was time to go for a visit. 

The good folks at MRB Contracting do a great job of keeping us all posted on the progress of their jobs. This entry was a particularly nice "history lesson".

"Most of our work at this gorgeous old home has been concentrated at the back. However, the foundation at the front of the home required some attention from MRB too.  

As Steevo and the team prepared the foundation and removed the old mortar, they found a lovely old seashell. Typical of building practises of yesteryear, sand used to mix mortar was collected straight from the beach!  

Traditional mortar was made from lime putty, or slaked lime, combined with local sand, generally in a ratio of 1 part lime putty to 3 parts sand by volume. Often other ingredients, such as crushed marine shells (another source of lime), brick dust, clay, natural cements, pigments, and even animal hair were also added to mortar, but the basic formulation for lime putty and sand mortar remained unchanged for centuries until the advent of portland cement or its forerunner, Roman cement, a natural, hydraulic cement.  

Received the Tweha monthly newsletter this morning and discovered one of our projects is featured in it, what a great way to start our week!

This recently completed Halifax residence featured VaproShield RevealShieldSA, Cembrit Cembonit cladding, custom aluminum bug mesh and of course Tweha Limjtec bonding adhesive for a clean look. Tweha can be used to bond everything from stone to glass.

This beautiful residence was designed by Heather Bown and Michael Napier at MNA (Michael Napier Architecture) and installed by the pros at CladTech.

REALLY proud to have played a very small part in this project. Great work Garrison Architects and Mark Line Industries. 

Gimme Shelter: The New York City Office of Emergency Management begins testing its new architecture for disaster relief. 

It's nothing short of building a city within a city…overnight. That's the fundamental premise behind a new modular post-disaster housing unit designed by Brooklyn-based Garrison Architects, which was introduced by New York City officials early this summer. The premise is simple but ambitious: the housing will allow city residents to live in their own neighborhoods for months or years after a major disaster while their homes undergo repairs. The full-scale and operational prefabricated prototype—currently displayed in downtown Brooklyn's Cadman Plaza—is part of a lengthy quest to change how cities respond to disasters in the 21st century.

The critical problem is a total absence of emergency housing solutions in dense urban settings. Conventional approaches, such as the FEMA trailers of Hurricane Katrina infamy, are simply infeasible in major cities where space is at a premium. To address that issue, New York City's Office of Emergency Management (OEM) and Department of Design and Construction partnered with a slew of municipal, state, and federal organizations—including FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers—to address the issue. American Manufactured Structures & Services tapped Garrison Architects to work with them in designing the prototype. "We built the prototype as an option to keep people close to home," explains Cynthia Barton, disaster housing recovery program manager at OEM. "We knew that if we could do this for New York City, it would become something that FEMA could have that is relevant for cities across the country." Former OEM commissioner Joseph F. Bruno called it "a local solution to a national problem," Barton recalls.

City agencies and federal organizations formulated a set of universal standards and specifications to govern the design of any future post-disaster urban housing in New York City. While the steely yellow-and-gray prototype exudes industrial toughness and is the first built to these rigorous performance standards, it represents only a preliminary step in disaster planning for cities.

"Most emergency housing has been incredibly expensive and time-consuming to construct because the planning required is essentially the same as for a regular building," says James Garrison, principal of Garrison Architects. "We want to raise the bar so the units are acceptable and fully functional for longer than a few weeks. The goal is to show that emergency housing can be built to the same standards and quality as any other housing."

The three-story prototype, composed of five modules, is currently arranged into three apartments stacked on top of one another: a 480-square-foot one-bedroom unit with an adjacent gallery and mechanical room on the ground floor, an 822-square-foot three-bedroom unit on the second level, and a 480-square-foot one-bedroom unit on the third floor. The cost came to approximately $200 per square foot, though according to the architects, a mass-produced model would likely cost less. In addition to meeting strict ADA-accessibility, cost-effectiveness, and durability requirements, Garrison implemented several sustainable strategies in designing the modular prototype. Built with recyclable materials, each unit is outfitted with cork floors, using zero formaldehyde. Double-insulated walls reduce heat loss, while floor-to-ceiling balcony doors with integrated shading lessen solar-heat gain and increase ventilation. To further reduce energy consumption, the units are designed to include photovoltaic panels. Garrison employed a rainscreen system to prevent moisture from seeping into the exterior walls. Other small yet important steps were taken to enhance the overall performance of the units, such as installing LED lighting and low-flow toilets and faucets.

The existing prototype's prefabricated modules—available in units 28 1/2 feet long by 12 feet wide and 40 feet long by 12 feet wide—were assembled on-site in a mere 13 1/2 hours. In the event of an actual disaster, city officials would aim to have all "transitional settlements" up and running after four to eight weeks spent planning and installing supporting infrastructure for potable water, electrical energy, and waste removal. Diagrams provided by the city indicate that a range of potential configurations, including off-the-grid infrastructure capabilities, are also being explored.

Brooklyn-based Pratt Institute's Resiliency Adaptation Mitigation and Planning (RAMP) program has already collaborated with New York City officials in exploring how units such as these could be deployed in the storm surge–-vulnerable neighborhood of Red Hook. The work of a recent RAMP studio, displayed in the housing prototype, considered everything from placing post-disaster units on waterfront piers and barges to infilling parks and public housing parking lots. The challenge, says Deborah Gans, Pratt professor and principal of Gans Studio, is finding sites for the interim housing where infrastructure is already in place, such as a public park or an empty lot.

The city has also released an Urban Interim Neighborhood Design "playbook" that outlines a post-disaster design process in broad strokes. However, the playbook is too generalized to offer any insight into what that would entail in practice. For now, it seems city planners will address the detailed implementation of these units only in the weeks following a major disaster event.

In the meantime, the prototype sitting beside Cadman Plaza will undergo a year of testing from NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, Pratt Institute, and intrepid city employees who will live in the units for five-day intervals. The prototype shows one possible design solution. "It is a representation of what you can get from the specifications," says Barton. Once the trial year comes to a close, the prototype guidelines will be adapted in accordance with the feedback received from the temporary inhabitants.

This is a great project designed by the good folks at East Coast Modern and built by the talented Brad Goodsell Design Build crew here in Halifax, NS.

The MODCLASS was built for The Halifax Independent School which was in need of additional space for their growing student population, and they wanted to do something interesting. The school found our the East Coast Modern website and contacted them to see if we could design and build a modern classroom for their students - and if they could do all of this in just 6 weeks! This is how MODCLASS was born.

If you are in Halifax drop into the school yard to take a look at the newest addition to the East Coast Modern portfolio.