Blogging from Birch Bay
Blogging from Birch Bay, WA this week, it is a lesson in views. The Birch Bay is part of the northern Puget Sound. This area is not far from Victoria, the San Juan’s, and it is quite beautiful. The condo I am staying is situated so that the beach side units are angled like a saw tooth to give the maximum view.
Key to this the lay of the land and thinking forward in time to how the view will change over time. First is how the sun will affect the view throughout the day, shadows, glare and direct sunlight. The unit I am in faces northwest. In the morning, the sun comes in through one window in the loft, but because of the trees in the area, 80’ tall Douglas Firs, that light is filtered and does not shine directly on to a wall, but scatters off the pitched ceiling and exposed beams. At noon the unit is in shade except for the deck, which quickly fades as the sun continues it’s path. The afternoon and evening the unit is full of sun glare from the bay.
Further, in time one has to consider the foliage and landscaping. How will it grow, how will the trees at their mature height, maybe 5 or 10 years later, will impact the views. Will the owners be changing the landscaping often, or leaving it to mature. Knowing what the client’s plans are will be helpful.
Finally, how is the surrounding area likely to evolve over time? This property sits across from the beach, so other than the tides, it’s not likely to change. However if this was up on a hill, what kind of zoning is further down the hill? Is it residential, or commercial, is there a possibility the view can be blocked by a Target? Spend time looking at the area, the community, and what kinds of issues are present in the local papers or website. Birch Bay’s future is to stay the same as much as possible, not everywhere else is as lucky.
The veiw from the deck of the unit we are staying in at Jacobs Landing
That looks like a good box…
The old Seinfeld joke – “When you are moving, all you see are boxes everywhere, and you think: That looks like good box!” I have been involved in several office moves in my career and they all suffer from one commonality: Too Much Junk! Especially samples.
I was a temp at an A/ID office that was moving from Wicker Park to Downtown and we filled two dumpsters. A lot of it was samples. We all love getting things for free, concrete simulated stone, granite counter tops, glass blocks, binders full of paint chips and Formica planks. But home much space do they take up? How often are they used? I spent hours of man power throwing all of these things out. I could have built a house from the debris.
Every architecture office seems to collect tons (literally!) of this material, and has to provide space for it. Granted during the shop drawing review stage we may need to select colors, finishes, but then what? For the needs of documentation we’ll need it to prove we selected “bone white” not “Autumn white” for the trim at the 9th floor. But do we need to keep the actual sample?
There is a hidden cost in accumulating all of this stuff – it takes up space – either in square-footage we pay rent on, or in garbage costs when we end up filling a dumpster with it, or when we pay to have it moved to our new office. Then we find out a few years later they have discontinued that color or texture of that material entirely.
Has anyone found a solution to this? Is the internet and your used monitor trust-worthy enough to forgo a sample entirely? Will clients put up with making all of the color selections themselves? Is it considered cheap to send samples as Christmas gifts to in-laws? Let’s discuss what we can do before I have to fill another box full of brick samples.
Space & Measuring it
How many square feet is your project? As simple question you say, it’s AxB=C and other geometry equations we all learned in the 4th grade. But what if your project is going to be leased out? Or owned as condos, but have common spaces? Do elevators count? Commercial spaces can have complex considerations for dividing up the area’s between the common areas, areas belonging to the building owner, and area’s leased to tenants. Thankfully there is BOMA – Building Owner & Manager Association – to set a standard to follow. I’m going to go over the types of building areas and some tips on how to measure them using AutoCAD. In general Area counts can go on a separate layer they you can freeze and turn off when not needed. Use an obnoxious color you can’t miss, so you can remember what they are for, and in AutoCAD set it so it is a “Non Printing Layer” in the layers options.
Gross Square footage:
This is your overall building size following the exterior perimeter of the building following the outer finish. This is used by building codes and authorities to establish your buildings’ square footage. If you are going to rent the building in whole, you could use this measurement, especially if the lease allows modifications to the building exterior, and the renter is responsible for all exterior maintenance. If however, the landlord is covering the maintenance and exterior of the building you would look at shell and core square footage.
Shell & Core:
If the lessee is only responsible for the area inside the building, the gross square footage is measured differently. The lessee area is measured up to the exterior wall, and halfway through windows that make up more than 50% of a room’s wall area. If there is a common area, elevator or other shaft the lease line would end at the exterior of the walls surrounding those areas. If there is another tenant the demising wall each share the wall equally. A way of figuring this out in CAD is to use a polyline and the “in-between” snaps. Start at a corner and follow the lease area as above. You can use the “in-between” snaps to get between the inside and outside of window openings, wall intersections and other areas. Always make sure to use the “close” command to make it a full polyline object. Using properties one can get an exact area take off. To get the landlord’s area you must be a little tricky. Start the poly line on the outside corner and follow the perimeter, but when you get back to the start point stop short so it doesn’t automatically close, go to the inside edge of the lease polyline. Follow it back along that line to the start point. Close the polyline as normal then zoom in on the part where you stopped short, edit the polyline so you can move that point back to the “start” area. The polyline object is a big “C” shape essentially. This polyline will now give you the total area of the building’s shell.
Net Square footage:
Net square footage is the area of the space minus the walls, columns, chases and shafts that go through the space. Think of it as the area of the carpet. This has couple of ways of being measured in CAD too. Start on an inside corner and measure around as above, but at doorways go halfway between the walls. To deduct columns and other objects in the middle of the space, drop the polyline down to the center of the column (Good old “midpoint” snap and “O-tracking”) follow around the object back to where the line dropped down, place a point there and continue back up to where you dropped down, and continue around the space. Another useful tool is “Bpoly” command in AutoCAD that will drop a polyline into an enclosed space – like the “Hatch” command can cover an area. However – there is some planning involved. To get columns and other objects included correctly draw a line that connects them to a wall. Lines between doors must made to enclose the room, and other objects like text, hatches, leaders must be turned off (freezing is probably better though). When all of your objects are linked you can drop the “Bpoly” command, then erase your guides. This may take some trial and error to get it right, but it can be very handy to do take-offs very quickly.
Definitely pick up the BOMA standards guide and review it, it is a great resource and you can help your commercial clients make sure they are renting and leasing the correct amounts of space.
The Future of America’s Transit – thoughts while waiting for the bus
I grew up in the Washington DC area, a metro area blessed with a well funded transit system. As a kid I could take a bus or subway into DC. I grew up a few blocks from the deepest subway station in the US, I used all the time. When I skipped school I didn’t hang out at the shopping mall, I headed for the Mall in DC with all of the free Smithsonian museums. Later I went to school in Chicago, a fantastic transit town. The L, an extensive commuter train system, and pretty good bus service. I went for 7 years without a car, and I took that system for granted.
Now I live in Puyallup Washington, a small town east of Tacoma Washington, part of Pierce county. For the last few weeks my car has been laid up needing some repairs. To get around I have been using Pierce Transit and King county transit. It is a different experience.
Those of us who would like to see oil consumption reduced, our carbon foot prints diminished, and everyone using as much public transit as possible forget that America has really poor public transit outside of the major metropolises. I am going give kudos to Pierce transit for that they have very modern hybrid compressed natural gas – electric hybrid buses, a free light rail in downtown Tacoma, and have worked hard to have tight schedules. However – as we move to more transit and less individual cars – we really have to rethink our towns. “Downtown” Puyallup could be a set for the Andy Griffith Show, (though St. Charles Illinois is the unofficial official Mayberry), it is walkable and has a good connection to the train line that serves Tacoma and Seattle. But that core quickly becomes sprawl a half-mile in every direction outside of that main street location.There are few sidewalks, and it then quickly becomes farms and industrial parks.
In order to transition from our gasoline car based life style we need to improve the quality and quantity of our transit resources. Not just in the big cities and towns, but focus on the small towns and suburbs, and really find ways to overlay light rail, more bus service, car and van pools in these areas. If the quality and availability isn’t there, everyone’s first choice will still be to own a car. Even an electric car contributes CO2, most of our electricity comes from coal. Our real solution is more mass transit, get the cars off the road. We have to choose to do it, no politician, lobby or group is going to mandate it, but they can fight for more transit dollars to expand service and improve quality.
In the winter of 1997 it was terribly cold. I was working as a temp just out of college in the Greek Town part of Chicago, west of I-90/94. It must have been -20 air temp and a windchill of -30 at least. The rails froze above ground and we had to get off the train and get the Clark St. Bus to get back to Rodger’s Park. In that 90 minute wait I swore I would save every penny I could to by any car – just so I wouldn’t have to stand in weather like this again. I didn’t care if I would still be stuck driving in the slush for 2 hours, I would be warm and dry. If the bus had come sooner it would have been just another Chicago winter day, instead the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) just sold another car.
Phoning it In
OK, this is late and I’m phoning it in today. So let’s talk about telecommunications in buildings.
Telephone service – (remember those, land lines)is usually not much of an architect’s concern, it’s really a service the client usually obtains, and we get some simple specifications on the minimum size of the telecommunications board and how many phone jacks various rooms need. However that is changing as the pace of internal communications requirements for even the simplest of structures increases.
End users and stakeholders will want Wi-Fi, G4, T1, CATV, LAN, WAN, and any number of other services. As architects, we really need to understand their communications needs, and how they will change over time – and that unexpected resources will appear and disappear over time as driven by technology and marketplace demands. For example WI-FI; In the late 90’s it first became available, and Starbucks realized that people who hang out in coffee shops usually stay longer and buy more stuff if they have something to do. They were early adopters and to cover the wildly expensive job of rolling out WI-FI in their stores they made it a profit center by charging for it-by the minute. Unexpectedly, WI-FI became not only cheaper to put into any computer, and then phones, it became cheaper to install the hubs and software. In a few years everybody had free WI-FI, so savvy customers would come in buy 1 cup of coffee, sit down and warm a seat for a few hours and use the neighboring fast food restaurant’s WI-FI for free. (My IT friends call it borrowing a cup of internet from the neighbors.) Therefore, Starbucks is going to free WI-FI – technology and market overtaking their business plan.
Hotel in a similar vein also treated WI-FI like Starbucks did, but adopted the free model more quickly. WI-FI is like a hot shower, today’s customers expect it to be included in the price of the hotel room, and if it doesn’t work – fast- they will think poorly of the experience. Additionally they want it in their room, not just in the lobby or the business center. On one Hyatt Place I worked on, I worked closely with the IT service provider. The Hyatt Place brand is big on connectivity, MEP players, and Easy access to the TV inputs, computer ports and WI-FI throughout the hotel. Some advice he gave me on placement of the units – have a clear line of sight to the center of the room, avoid being blocked by bathrooms, pipes and ducts can lower signal strength. Additionally assume the signal cannot penetrate floors, even wood ones. Although the signals can, you never know when something might block it. (Like a laundry cart or future renovations) with hubs being cheap, go for quality signal strength. Additionally the computer room the hotel required needed it’s own separate A/C – make sure you coordinate your consultants and get the right specs for cooling equipment.
In a generation or so we may not have phone plugs in our walls, maybe even the light switch will disappear. In the beginning of the 20th century buildings needed copper phone vaults, rooms for operators, telegraph lines, ticker-tape lines, a mail room, and large demands for filling space. In a century, it has all been replaced with computers. We have to stay on top of what the limits of our communications technology is, and what our clients need now, and what they don’t know they’ll need in a decade.
Pursuit of Happiness
How successful is our economy for the people? How would this be measured and what would policies look like if this question were asked whenever a policy is being drafted and debated? Moreover, what does this have to do with design anyway?