john t. unger studio

Change to third floor window layout

Greg's post on the Baltazar residence by public over at materialicious caused me to re-think the way we had the windows laid out for the third floor… I like the new design much better. The transom windows at the top will open to allow a breeze, while the more solid panes below will be static. One of my favorite parts of the house design is that I plan to use a thin paper curtain for the glass wall facing the highway and project movies on it with my epson dvd projector. When people drive by during movies hour, they should be able to see a pretty clear image of whaever Hollywood action film I'm checking out that night— so, I'm kinda hoping it will look like cars are flying through the living room on fire, or bridges are blowing up, or gunfights or martial arts are going on in the house. Heh.

Container studio images from finished model

 

Front view of Container Studio with courtyards	North view of Container Studio with courtyards
Rear view of Container Studio with courtyards	South view of Container Studio with courtyards
click thumbnail to view larger image.

 

So, the modeling process for the new studio is wrapping up. Greg La Vardera is working on floor plans, elevations, and building sections so we can start the permitting process and seek financing for the building.

The courtyards off to each side are just roughed in in the drawings above… in the finished version, these will have insulated siding panels and probably some kind of shade roof similar to Sean Godsell's FutureShack design (although I prefer a single slant like a shed roof). I'm thinking that the plan for the siding will be to use slate flooring over durock over foam insulation. Most of it will be a grid of black 12 inch slate, but some panels may be adaptations of designs from the Gee's Bend quilts, done in stone. That would look insanely cool.

The four 20 foot containers in the courtyards will probably be used as guest bedrooms with very simple kitchen and bath fit-outs like a trailer or camper. The two 40 foot containers in the courtyards will be gallery space for hanging artwork. The courtyards will be the display space for sculpture. I'll be making steel gates to close in the openings between the courtyard and the studio… I'm looking forward to that, because I can pretty much let myself go nuts with the gate designs and show off a bunch of ideas that have only been on paper till now.

Links to some of the materials we're planning to use:

Bifold doors for the studio ground floor: We may get these from Bifold.com or they may be done custom. Jonkman's doors were my first choice, but  their design conflicted with some of the other elements.

Second floor windows: An 8 foot by 24 foot span of glass gets real expensive, real quick. We're planning to use double layered walls of PolyGal to glass in the second floor openings. These will let light in to the studio all day long, and have decent insulating value. The plan is to frame in the openings with steel studs and face both sides of the studs with PolyGal. There will also be a PolyGal wall on the inside, framing the studio in to keep fumes out of the rest of the building.

The roof of the container studio will be a self supporting steel span roof. It should arrive in about six pieces that can just be craned into place and bolted on. Still sourcing the manufacturer for this component.

The balconies will be made using pre-fab Mezzanine structures.

The flooring between the studio and the third floor residential are will ideally be made from pre-fab concrete panels. TMCP Building Systems has what looks like a very promising solution for this. It might be more expensive than pouring a floor, but if I can have six sections craned into place, bolted down and be done it might be worth it.

More details to come…

Container Studio design

East Elevation of Container Studio	North Elevation of Container Studio
West Elevation of Container Studio	South Elevation of Container Studio
click thumbnail to view larger image.

Here's the basic layout of the new studio project. Doors, glazing and exterior insulation will be in the model soon and I'll update then. But you can see the basic structure of the building in these images.

The two lower floors will be the studio, with a 24 x 24 foot atrium in the center. The third floor will be residential with bedrooms, bath, closet, etc inside the containers and kitchen and living area in the center.

The advantage to this model over most of the other container projects I've seen is that the boxes will not require a great deal of modification… doors and windows, sure, but I won't have to weld multiple containers together to make larger rooms. Instead, I'll use the space between them for the areas where I want more space, and use the interiors of the containers for the rooms that don't need to be as large.

Shipping Container Studio Backstory

I've been working with architect Greg La Vardera recently to design a new home and studio for my property, built from six 40 foot shipping containers. He's been blogging about it here and here and I've been meaning to start blogging it since before we started. But before I start detailing the plans for the new building, I want to take a moment to look back at where this project really began.

On February 11, 2004 the studio building where I worked was destroyed by snow. I was standing on the roof shoveling when the building collapsed and pretty much rode the thing to the ground. I've posted a bunch of photos to Flickr.com that show the building during clean-up and demolition.

It was a pretty awful situation. I couldn't afford to move, and even if I could, it was the middle of a very nasty winter. The gas line into the house was severed when the building collapsed, so there was no heat, hot water or cooking. The pipes froze, so there was no water. It took three months to restore the utilities because the natural gas company refused to run a new line until spring and all the appliances had to be replaced by propane or electric units.

I was pretty ready at this point to give up the idea of making a living as an artist, certainly closer to giving up than I had been at any other time. In a word, it sucked. But I have this weird brain condition that seems to thrive more the worse the odds get. After thinking through the other options I could follow if I gave up, I decied that my best course of action was to dig in my heels, not quite and pull some kind of frickin' miracle out of thin air. Sometimes doing the impossible is just the easiest way to go.

When the bank came out to assess the damage, they liked the art they saw and proposed a trade. I did a $10,000 commissioned sign as the down payment on the remaining two buildings and acreage. I spent the months without heat working on the beginnings of the blogs that later became my main source of sales for the art. By the time spring did come, I was finally making a decent living solely through sales of art and commissions, and it's gotten better and better every year.

Anyway, even though it worked out pretty well in the end, the new building is gonna be all steel, concrete and glass. I'm done with wood. I want something that only a meteor or a falling 747 can damage, and that's what we're going to build. I'm planning to have at least the exterior and structure of the building done before the snow falls this year, and then the current buildings will be razed to make room for a couple display courtyards that showcase the art.

I've been dreaming of a container house for about twelve years now actually, and a lot of the design elements have changed over that time but some of them have remained pretty consistent. I'm in a position now to make that dream happen here and I'm excited about it. Over the next bunch of posts, I'm going to detail quite a bit of the process… mostly quoting from emails between me and the architects (I started with a different firm who was great on green building but did not have much experience with steel).