"Hi Ross, in your conceptual design you are recommending "stained concrete" for our kitchen and great room. Concrete sounds so hard and unwelcoming, why would you suggest it?" Answer from Ross: Dear Greg, Thank you for your great question! I am sure when you saw my concrete suggestion, it raised some eyebrows but let me see if I can’t change your mind. Concrete is an excellent passive solar in rooms that receive adequate sun. Your great room and kitchen receive excellent south sun and the concrete floors will absorb heat during the day and radiate it back at night which can cut down on your heating bill. Conversely, by blocking mid-afternoon sun you can keep those floors cool during the hot
Yesterday I discussed the external structure of The Biosphere but today, I want to take you deep inside the structure. As you may remember I started by creating a utility tower – a hexagonal concrete structure with a massive foundation. As noted, the lower level was a giant cistern providing both water storage and treatment which feeds a series of surface pools in the plaza area for interest, cooling and humidification. The upper levels of the utility tower feature mechanical rooms, an electrical room, and is topped by the ventilation control room- essentially pair of “rooftop” commercial HVAC units in a large, louvered room which help control the atmosphere in the huge open space. The tower
A week ago I shared my vision for a modular living unit dreamed up by my New Mexican colleague. This week, I want to talk about his other major design idea for the modular hexagonal living units: a community focused biosphere. The question we asked ourselves was: could the individual units be assembled in such a way that they create a large, enclosed environment? As someone who loves futuristic video games, I found this intriguing – individual living pods both physically and socially forming a community environment! So off I went, using variations on one-level, single family pods as a perimeter. The spline system I designed for tying individual panels together for each unique unit worked nic
I was recently approached by a colleague, a craftsman and artist in New Mexico, who has spent years dreaming of building modular living units for desert use. His idea, currently in the form of simple CAD drawings, is a series of individual hexagons which could be pieced together to create interesting new shapes through what we call “tessellation”. If you have ever marveled at M.C. Escher’s amazing intertwined lizards, fish, and birds that seem to merge and grow from one another, you have witnessed tessellation! It is simply the act of combining one or more complementary shapes to form a greater pattern. In the case of the modular living units, the artist envisioned small stand-alone living u
