Tool shed for the project

11/23  and 11/26, over thanksgiving break, we built a tool shed to store our tools in on site. It is a 8x12 shed with a 45 degree roof.

12/3 and 12/4 we disassembled the tool shed, and then re assembled it on the Farnsworth house site. We cut the rafters on site. This is the first time we built anything on site that would be there for a few months. The rain and breeze were not kind, but we managed to finish construction. We also learned how to make a building plum (even in the rain).

 

getting ready for final review

We took a group photo with all of us from fall semester in front of crown today. We also finished the renderings and the brochure of our building. We had our site surveying for permit postponed to Monday after break. Our giant model is making it's way to being completed. The plan is to have movable doors too.

Mechanical meeting

Sachin Anand came and helped us work on our mechanical system. We are trying to take the current geothermal system from the lumenhaus and use it for our building. We learned more about duct work and how to get our building to be heated and cooled with little impact to our current architecture design.

Special use permit

11/7/2011
We gained the minor special use permit, so we can now turn in our drawings. We have our drawings almost completely done. We only need to finish the mechanical, electrical, and some touch ups to the foundation drawings.

Fall Farnsworth Trip

 10/28/2011

We went to the Farnsworth House site to survey and look into the ground conditions in preparation for putting in the foundation. We surveyed the building perimeter to get exact measurements of the amount of soil that would be required to dig up for each site to put in our foundation. We also dug a four foot hole to figure out the soil type and get a better understanding of how many rocks and other things would be in the soil, that we would have to move out, in order to do the foundation. We had a barbecue for lunch, and showed off the Farnsworth house to one of our studio members who had not gone before.

Permit meeting

10/12
We went to the Kendall County Permit office and discussed our building with them to get a better understanding of what will be needed to get the permit for our building. We found out that our building's lowest floor needs to be at least one foot above the flood plane elevation. Both of our schemes work so we don't need to move our building on the site for our scheme in order to fit the code. We also got names of places to get concrete and found out that the permit office will take 5-8 business days to process our drawings.

We are moving along to get the permit drawings done so we can build as soon as possible.

Site Visits

We have visited the Farnsworth House site twice. Once to take a look at the site, and the second time was to survey the site. We had Prof. Rohter, from the civil engineering department,  help us survey the site, and we redrew the topographic lines for the site, as our old ones were wrong.

Pictures are of the new team for Spring.

Barnsworth Studio- Fall Semester

First thing we started was to deal with the site, the only thing  We have spent the week working with the ideas of different concepts as to what to do. Professor Flury is back from his trip, and we are going to the Fransworth house this Friday.


New crew of Fall semester, with 4 people returning from the last two semesters.

Summer- Final

We presented two final schemes. One was a twelve sided, one ten sided. The client prefers the simpler design of the ten sided, and we added movable storage for the chairs. We did a final packet and got the permit document information, and set up for next semester.

Midterm - summer

We presented 4 different schemes; facade based scheme, concentric circles, and 2 egg shaped schemes. We had a really good review, and our reviewers enjoyed arts of every project, but also said there was room for improvement within each project as well. We are now as a class starting over with the structure worked on by all, starting with a circle, but trying to put some direction as well into the building. The idea is then incorporate the parts of each project we liked into the building as we design it from the structure forward. Afterward we had a barbecue to celebrate the end of midterms and the hard work we had achieved up to that point. We are now down to the last 3 weeks to create permit drawings by July 29th.

Visiting the Farnsworth House

The summer studio visited the Farnsworth house and the Lumen house. We can build our building for 1-5% of what the Lumen house cost. We all had alot of fun seeing the site, and the house. Below is a picture of the summer team on the steps of the Farnsworth house.

 

We also wrote a mission statement for our project:

Linking the visitor center and the Farnsworth house, this structure is built to showcase Mies's wardrobe in an exhibition space with a clear, strategic approach.

Design process

6/15
First desk critiques of the new summer studio. Everyone had their own rendition of a round building, and we got a small grasp of the construction schedule for the studio.

Summer semester

June 13th:
We have a new crew for the summer semester.Researching new round buildings, and planning on what information we need. Site plan, schedule, donors, budget, database.

Our final building

may 13th
We build a round prototype and have it up in M and M. Built in 4 mornings. Came out really well,and a great end to the spring semester. We showed it at open house, and it was well received.

Sunday meet up

After spring beak, we all are all meeting up and diagramming or new schemes based off what was said at midterms. We are now down to three groups. Matt brought brownies for us for lunch, and Prof. Flurry supplied his tasty coffee for anyone who wanted it as well.

We are analyzing paths and the site diagrams. Matt and Will are describing one of the drawing to the class (pictured).

Midterm Review

3/11/2011

Our midterm review of our 6 schemes. Each scheme has a booklet of technical drawings and details created and a board to show our reviewers. Each one also had a structural model and a site scale model of the scheme. Our reviewers gave us a great critique of each design, and some problems that every design was struggling with. Complemented though was that all of our designs were very modular and would be simple to build.

In the pictures are the reviewers listening, and Jibril and Alysa, part of group 2, talking about their scheme.

Saturday

2/5/2011

We created a project description to give to possible sponsors of our project. Each student took pictures and wrote our biographies for a page about each of us.We also all had Chinese for lunch break together. Not as tasty as when Frank Flurry made sausages for us, but still just as enjoyable.


We are meeting with the head of the Farnworth House, Whitney, to present our designs and get critique and overall concerns with the buildings, such as cost, placement, and size.

Review of Charette

2/4/2011

We reviewed or designs, and critiqued each other on improvements of design to think about later. This was the first time any of us had seen each others designs, and concepts. There are strong similarities in the buildings with some projects to one another, and some vast differences from others. This ranges from a full open plan, to a narrow passageway, to a shifted boxes design.

Charette

1/31/2011

We did a four hour design charette, where each student created a scheme of a possible 800 sqft building. The initial ideas were documented with this charette on each student's design ideas, in relationship to site analysis, creating plan, section and elevations of a possible building idea. We Then had to build a model of out idea for Friday, due to the blizzard that hit Chicago, rescheduling the review from Wednesday to Friday.

 

Building the site model

1/27/2011

We built a 1/8" = 1'-0" site, coming out to a 4'x4' square of the surrounding area. Here we have pictures of Will and Matt drawing and cutting the contour lines in meditate to be glued and added to the site model.

Trip to the Farnsworth House

1/24/2011

We went out to the Farnsworth House. This was the first time for many of us visiting the house. We then surveyed and measured the land, distance elevations of the surrounding land of the visitor center and Lumenhaus. We are looking to build our building closer to these buildings rather than the Farnsworth house.

Timeline

We have done:
1/28/2011
Site model built

1/24/2011
Surveyed the possible sites around the Farnsworth Information Center and Lumenhaus.

1/31/2011
Four hour Charette, of building ideas

Opening

Welcome to the Farnsworth studio, a design and build studio.

Our program is to create a exhibition or information center  for the Farnsworth house in Plato, IL.