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The Modular Man (with a weight problem)
When asked what my New Year’s resolutions were going to be this year I had to think about it for a few minutes.
Before I start committing myself to a bunch of things I’m not going to end up doing this year I thought I’d start with a tally of the accomplished resolutions from last year. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember any of them.
Every year we (and yes I’m pulling you into this now) snuggle down into our burrow of comfortability and completely forget about all of the great aspirations and goals we had ambitiously set at the beginning of the year. I usually start off every year with good intentions, focus on them for a few months … then waiver a little in the middle … then summer rolls around and there are pool parties and bbqs … fall sneaks up on me, then it’s the holidays and before you know it … I’m back at square one. No resolutions accomplished.
New Years day is the time when we should all take a step back, evaluate our lives, and realize just how much potential we have. Instead, most of us wake up at 3:00pm, eat a slice of cold pizza, and then watch that Kardashians marathon we’ve been saving up to watch for the last 3 weeks (don’t tell me what happens to Kim and Chris…I haven’t gotten to that episode yet!!).
I realized that maybe I should ring in the new year by getting fit. Maybe I could eat a little better, take the dogs on a run a little more often and get back in the gym instead of watching the P90X infomercial as a substitute for working out (that post infomercial stretch is really important. Also, don’t forget your post workout recovery drink … Mountain Dew).
I got married this past year and found myself on the ever prevalent phase known as the “post-honeymoon diet”. This is the period that precedes the wedding – where you are supposedly in the best shape of your life – and you move on to the honeymoon phase where you throw out all dietary discretion, eat like a pig for a week and lay around on the beach until your butt gets sunburned (you know what I’m talking about). Fortunately, there are the lucky few who are able to regain their self control, but for the rest of us, it’s a steep uphill battle over chocolate covered donuts and chicharrones.
With my increasing self image issues I’ve started to notice the amount of home gym equipment commercials that start airing this time of year. These commercials are on day and night advertising home gyms, stretchy rubber band thingies and pushup bars all while being hocked by celebrities, athletes and 60 year old men that look like they’re 25. This is a no holds barred attempt to make you feel insecure about your body in the hopes that you’ll pick up the phone (and with 4 easy payments (plus S&H) you too can own a pile of steel and rubber crap that will take up the space in the closet where you use to store your luggage (or for the architects out there, the place where you use to store your college architecture models and/or design magazines). So this got me thinking… are there any fitness machines out there that could be left out in the living room and not be an eyesore? Better yet, is there anything on the market designed by an architect? Would an architect ever have any inclination of attempting to be physically fit to begin with (which is another stereotype that has not been reserved for the architectural profession…see beards of an architect)?
What types of home workout equipment would STARchitects design?
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Mies Van Der Rohe “Barcelona Bench Press”
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Zaha Hadid “Thigh/NURBS Master”
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Tadao Ando “Cast-in-place Concrete Free Weights”
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Frank Gehry “Titanium Clad Home Gym (with fish attachment)”
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Lebbeus Woods “Leg Extension (please don’t sue me)”
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Charles and Ray Eames “Molded Plywood Exercise Ball”
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Michael Graves designed toilet plungers that Target mass produced … does it really seem that ridiculous to have STARchitect designed fitness equipment? Obviously, you’ll never see any of these in your local sport supply store but in the future, you might want to double check that Design Within Reach catalog.
And remember, don’t forget your post blog reading recovery drink …
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- Scott
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Not every residential project I work on as an architect is large with an even larger budget – that just happens to be the case lately and where I find my role in the office. Since smaller projects with smaller budgets tend to be less complicated, let’s just say they don’t always need me to work on them and the client becomes the beneficiary of assigning someone with a lower billing rate than me shoulder much of the load. However – since my office is an “all hands on deck” sort of office, everyone contributes whenever and however they are needed. Such was the case with me at the end of last week.
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I found myself working out some design ideas for a small addition with a respectable yet modest budget. The clients are a young husband and wife who had just bought this house and have bigger visions and better taste than their budget can really accommodate. The project is moving really quickly (for reasons I won’t go into here) and my task for the day was to develop elevation design studies to present the clients that reflected the floor plan addition that had already been roughly worked out and previously approved.
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This is a picture of the front of the house – great neighborhood, large site, fantastic trees and … not so great curb appeal. This house has had (from my estimation) at least three additions that have been scabbed on to the original house over the years. By “scabbed” I mean the additions are obvious and stuck on in the cheapest, most direct manner, without any consideration of the whole. On the left you see a detached garage, and on the right, I am going to say it was the second additions garage that the third addition turned into a sunken playroom. If you want to walk up to the front door, you have to shoot the 5′ wide gap between the garage and playroom structures for approximately 50 feet.
Perfect for an ambush, not so great for welcoming people to your home.
So on last Thursday, I sketched up a series of exterior elevations – real quick studies (12 in all) and presented them to the clients that afternoon … except they had a hard time reading the 2 dimensional drawings. Since communication is really the name of the game, I told them that on Friday I would generate a 3-dimensional model of the house in SketchUp.
I thought it would be interesting to see the difference between the sketches I drew using nothing more than trace paper, sharpie pens and a straight edge – and the dimensionally accurate ones I generated using SketchUp.
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This is a look at the main house – this is the passageway up to the front door (with the garage taken out-of-the-way for clarity).
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This is the front elevation – same as the photo shown up above (but with the Volvo taken out-of-the-way for clarity). This 2 dimensional look is a little misleading because I have removed the pitched roof on the garage and replaced it with a flat roof. It doesn’t appear that way in this view because you are looking at the pitched roof of the main house well behind the garage. (Good thing the clients get to see the actual 3D version).
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These sorts of projects are always a lot of fun and I am excited to see it develop. Trying to find a way to marry the clients budget with their modern aesthetic and budgetary goals is a rewarding way to design a project. I have always enjoyed the challenge to designing with common materials and reasonable budgets – its part of the reason I started the Low Cost Modern House Challenge (despite not being able to find the time to develop it properly). The major design consideration here is the budget – there are 100 things I would do differently if I had 25% more money to work with … but I don’t. Being clever and finding a way to solve the clients problem without spending money they don’t have is part of the puzzle and part of the solution.
Have a great day!
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