Using 3 Recyclable Building Materials is Kid's Play

When I was a little boy, I used to love building things out of cardboard. Whenever I found a refrigerator box, it was as if nothing could be better.

While in architecture school, my design class was assigned to design and build our own bridge that could only support our own weight. If it was overdesigned for a load heavier than us, we would get docked a letter grade. If the bridge failed under our own weight, well, we would fail. I think that the bridge assignment was one of my favorite projects because of its narrow requirements. My bridge did well, so I passed with a high grade.

Another design/build project that I have done out of paper was a piece of furniture. I designed a chair that looked like the profile of a hand that has the thumb extended. The seat would be where the thumb is and the back of the seat would be where the index finger would be.

About this time, last year, there was an article posted on the web about a Cardboard House of the Future. Check it out at http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/cardboard-houses-of-the-future.php#ch02.

My radio show that is aired today covers this article in depth. I also discuss the article in the latest March LAD Sketch Pad newsletter about houses built of straw. Download your free copy from http://www.scribd.com/doc/13042420/LAD-Sketch-Pad-March-2009.

There are a lot of other materials that can be used to build houses that are recycled. The metal shipping containers that you might see stacked all around shipping ports like Newark are among architects' favorite building blocks.

Metal shipping containers have been used to build houses, youth centers, schools, multi-family complexes, swimming pools, and offices. They can be put together in just a few days and don’t usually cost very much.

Check out this web site for some photos of buildings built out of metal shipping containers http://weburbanist.com/2008/05/26/cargo-container-homes-and-offices/.

With the economy in the tank, the idea of saving money on our construction and operational costs is more attractive than ever. Sometimes, we need to get back to the basics and get excited about the possibilities of building things out of materials that might have caught your eye as a kid.

A tip for a Better Office

Anyone can say that they need to hunker down in their dark cave and wait out the recession before doing anything to improve their office environment. I bet your competition is doing just that. Take a step to excel beyond your competition and prepare for the better times to come by taking a good look at the state of your office.

Do you have empty desks scattered about? Having people scattered about the office is very common when lay-offs occur. This leaves the remaining people feeling self conscience about their own job security. While looking at the desk that once was filled by their co-worker, they are bound to think, "Am I next?"

Minimize this dis-empowering atmosphere by relocating departments into a tighter group. This will improve their productivity, create a better feeling of belonging, save money on energy costs if you are able to block off the unused area, and create a concentrated area of empty spaces that can be sublet until this economic storm blows over.

Before you do all of this. Find out where all of your desks, furniture, and personnel, exists today. You need to light up the cave and create a road map of where you are before you can figure out where you need to go.

We can help you with that. Call us at 212-594-2007. Don't go through this recession in the dark.

P.S. I have no idea who is in the above photo. But, don't be without a light and plan of how you will survive the recession.

Seven Ways for Offices to Thrive

With businesses struggling during this recession, we are now finding a staggering increase in vacancies in office spaces. In Manhattan, space that tenants have put on the market for sublease more than doubled last year to 8.2 million square feet. According to Reis Inc., a New York-based real estate research firm, there was an increase of 14.4 percent of office vacancies throughout the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2008. This is the highest in three years.

Two Bloomberg reporters, Peter S. Green and David M. Levitt wrote this quote in one of their most recent articles:
“This quarter was like no other quarter we’ve ever seen before,” said Joseph Harbert, chief operating officer of Cushman’s New York metro region, in an interview. “It’s as if someone let the helium out of the balloon. The downfall of Lehman really changed the real estate consumer’s psychology, and put everyone in a cautious, wait-and-see, don’t-make-a-decision attitude.”

Unemployment continues to rise. It is expected that 175,000 jobs will be lost in Manhattan. Many are from the financial industry.

People are finding that many of their co-workers are now gone. And they are wondering if they are next in line during the next wave of layoffs.

Fear sets in and productivity begins to decrease.

Now is the best time for companies to assess their strengths and challenges in order to come out on top from this recession.

Here are 7 tips for companies to use that will boost their productivity and save them money:

1. Save on the energy costs by subdividing unused areas from active work stations. The heating bills can be reduced by locating open plan work stations near perimeter radiant heating units during the cold seasons.

2. Individual offices are great for privacy. But, they often require their own variable air volume control for the air conditioning. They also require more light fixtures per square foot than open plan office spaces because there is a more efficient distribution of lumens in the open areas. You can save a bit on your energy bill by reducing the number of individual offices.

3. Having vacant desks scattered between occupied desks sends a strong and negative message to the office workers. “That is where my office mate used to sit, will I be next to go?” Get rid of empty office spaces by relocating office workers so they are located closer together.

4. Share common areas such as libraries and file rooms. Sublet the excess and redundant areas.

5. Reduce the number of coffee break rooms by combining their use with other departments. Get rid of excess kitchenettes by subletting them out with the unused office spaces.

6. Digitize old paper documents. Dispose of obsolete documents by storing them off-site or by shredding them.

7. Hire an architect to record where all of your desks, files, chairs, etc. exists. They can draw this on a floor plan that allows you to just click on a space and read who is in that space, the condition of each piece of furniture, and the function of that space. This is the best time to get a clear picture of what should be kept and what needs to be removed or replaced.

It is wise to be cautious during these challenging times. Your competitors will probably remain in the “wait-and-see, don’t-make-a-decision” mode. This is the perfect time to do just the opposite by getting your office to work more efficient than ever before.

Call us at 212-594-2007 to learn more about how your company can thrive in these times.

The Real "Iron Man" Remembered

I mentioned that Mr. Bob Bruno was the real “Iron Man” in one of my recent newsletters (June 2008) Click Here to read the newsletter article..

In short, Mr. Bruno was an architectural instructor at Texas Tech University while I was attending architecture school there. Also while I was at Tech, he was just getting started on the construction of his now famous welded steel house.

Unfortunately, the “Iron Man” was not able to fight off cancer and he passed on in December. Below are a couple of articles that tell a little more about him.

You can also learn more from his web site at http://www.robertbruno.com/ and from his 5 min. 31 sec YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azy-Xxfnxvw .

Robert R. Bruno
Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
December 12, 2008

Robert R. Bruno (born January 30, 1945, Los Angeles, Calif.), internationally recognized sculptor and artist, died Tuesday, December 9 from complications of cancer at Covenant Medical Center in Lubbock.

Robert's 110-ton steel architectural sculpture located in Ransom Canyon is a well known labor of love and artistic expression of 35 years in the making. It has earned international accolades and publicity in art, architecture, and many professional publications, on film and TV events including HGTV's "Extreme Homes" and The Learning Channel. His sculptured home attracts photographers and admirers worldwide. It was the backdrop for the 2007 Fall Neiman Marcus fashion catalog.

Robert taught, guest lectured, and mentored students at Texas Tech's School of Architecture for years and freely shared his philosophy and sculpture with many visitors to the Canyon. He was also recognized for the design and creation of the first solar-powered surge valve and fertigation system for row crops through his Lubbock-based irrigation manufacturing company, P&R Surge Systems. His valve has conserved millions of gallons of water, fuel and fertilizer for row crop irrigators worldwide for over 25 years. "

Here is a great article about his house:

Against Interpretation: Robert Bruno’s house of welded steel conjures up many meanings, but it arose without any of them
AIArchitect November 2007

For 33 years, Robert Bruno has meticulously designed and built his welded steel house on the edge of a canyon outside of Lubbock, Tex. But, somehow, he’s not sure how many square feet it is (his guess is 2,700) and he can’t explain the influences that have informed his design over these three decades—despite the fact that the house’s otherworldly shape seems tailor-made for free association. A brief jaunt through any design-oriented mind brings you to: an insect’s carapace, an alien spacecraft, M.C. Escher’s hallucinogenic maze-scapes, and perhaps Deconstruction’s ongoing War on the Rectangle. But Bruno isn’t an entomologist, a science fiction writer, or even a Koolhaas/Gehry acolyte. He’s an artist, and not a conceptual one. “This house doesn’t deal with concept at all,” he says. “I’m not trying to have something re-emerge in the guise of my house.”

The house hitches itself to no stylistic wagons and has been spontaneously designed and revised over the course of its 33-year construction. “What you’re seeing is 33 years of design, not three months of design and 33 years of labor,” Bruno says. If he would have had to design the house in full initially and then build to this exact standard, “I would feel as if I were working for somebody else,” he says. This is a literal distinction for Bruno. He began the house when he was a young man, age 29. Today he’s 62, and the majority of his years have been spent working on the house; an open film exposure documenting his aesthetic development and intent.
Bruno says this type of spontaneous, whimsical design is what creates the aesthetic complexity people crave, missing from most of the built environment around us, and largely absent from the practice of architecture itself. “It isn’t that we’re looking for the silliness of a maze,” he says.

“We’re looking at a higher order of complexity.” The crux of the problem: Market realities demand that architects communicate to clients what a project will be before it exists through imperfect, distorting mediums like models. From this point on, Bruno says the scale is manipulated and details are whitewashed in the transition. “Inadvertently, what ends up happening is that the resolution at the model level is potentially quite different from what you would resolve at full scale. I would venture to say that almost all the large buildings we see around us are the replica and the original is the model,” he says."

Creating a virtural walk-through of your home

Sometimes, it is not easy to visualize how your home will look before it is constructed. I have had clients who preferred to change their minds about the design during the construction period. But, this is always more expensive than having our office build it virtually. Here is an example of how a project can be veiwed virtually before any wall is taken down and any construction fees are spent.

Your Customers, Clients, and Employees Need to Take "Ownership" of Your Workplace

Imagine how you would feel if you were in my shoes when the doors opened for the first time at Niketown, NY. During the period of time that I was the project architect who worked directly with the directors of Nike Image, a lot of other things happened in my life.

For one, my wife saw so little of me because I was at the office or flying to Beaverton, OR to work out design and construction details so she got us a Black Labrador to keep her company. We named the dog Jackson (the painter, Jackson Pollock’s studio was near the dog rescue shelter in the Hampton town where we adopted our dog).

A year later, my first son, David was born. David helped me refocus my priorities, but I was still committed to getting the Niketown, NY project finished. I really feel that part of David is still left within the walls of that building because he became so much a part of my life-even at work where I was able to enjoy my passion of architecture.

There was a lot of fanfare and drama at the grand opening. Celebrities came out of the woodwork and from all parts of the world. When Phil Knight, one of the founders of NIKE came, it was as if a rock star arrived. NIKE employees came out from their hidding places and exploded into a chant, “NIKE,” that echoed throughout the massive atrium space that was filled with curved walls and oval shaped fixtures to emphasize their image of “movement.” It was almost cult-like.

So, when the doors opened during that first day, it was as if I was leaving a big part of me there and to be watched over by strangers.

Have you had that feeling? When you have passion for something or someone, time just stands still. Everything seems to just fall into place and you take “ownership” of all that you do.

Our buildings can cause your clients, customers, or colleagues to feel a sense of belonging – I know because I was able to help NIKE provide that to their customers and employees. The secret of our success is that we design with a focus on the “experience” that you want others to feel while in your space.

Check out the earlier blog dated September 18, 2008 to learn more about how we helped choreograph an “experience” through architecture for NIKE and how we can do that for you.

Also, don’t miss out on downloading the archived radio shows (you can even listen to it as a podcast). You will find out various strategies that you can use in order to get the edge over any of your competitors while having the best fit of a building for your company.