Hey, Eric here with 30 by 40 Design Workshop back with another installment of the vlog.
Today on the vlog I want to kind of bring you into the studio talk about what's happening
you may have seen in a recent video of mine where we talked about being over budget with
a project so that's having some impacts on the studio, thought I'd bring you in and show
you the things that people don't talk about in practice very often.
I'm a sole practitioner which means I'm responsible for everything here: bringing in new work,
processing that work through the design process, completing it, and all the meetings, emails,
invoicing, all those things fall under my responsibility.
As a sole practitioner you have to maintain this kind of careful balance between new work,
work that's in progress, and work that's finishing up.
When there is work that - creative work - that's extrinsically motivated, that is, work that's
commissioned by others external to you, there's a natural cycle to that work.
People will delay projects, you know, financial situations will change, personal situations
will change, and if your entire creative life is tied up in those extrinsic motivations
when something is delayed you'll need to fill that hole in with something else and that
can be a struggle.
So finishing up this barn studio project, this is actually going into construction right
now.
They're casting the slab this week so we had some framing members to figure out some coordination
to do on these eave details here.
This was done as a schematic set and we're…we're now, we now have to figure out what some of
these details at the corners are.
So it's not uncommon to do a set of details for a schematic or design development set
of drawings and then have to return to them to do some additional detailing.
And this practice is called detailing because it's describing all of the parts and pieces
and materials and components and dimensional requirements that the contractor is going
to need to actually construct the structure in the way that you're intending them to.
So if we look at if we just return to the drawing set here for a moment and we look
at a framing plan for this particular area it's right in this zone in here we know what
the orientation of some of the framing members are here and some of the members are here
and we've cut a section here to say, okay, this is a three and a half by seven and a
quarter continuous beam here that's going over a post but where do we locate that?
Now we're saying it's positive eight plus eight foot six but how does that relate to
the outriggers that are framing this canopy here?
How does it relate to all of the other parts and pieces that we’re describing on the
elevations?
So if we come over in this elevation right here you know if we're cutting a section through
here we have some sliding barn doors we have a fascia here we have roof shingles that are
turning down to a vertical wall we have cedar siding we have a covered canopy so there's
a lot of things happening in this zone that is not apparent until you go into a deeper
level of detail.
So you know the purpose of this detail is to basically say okay these are the parts
and pieces that make it up, but detailing is also a process of figuring out sequence.
So sequence-wise from a construction standpoint obviously we're gonna be starting with the
foundation and then we're moving up here into the rough framing.
So the first thing that's going to come in this section is our structural members that
are going to form the shell of this building so we have a beam that's making up this covered
canopy we have a post that is supporting that beam and we know exactly where that's located
because we've located it on the foundation plan…in place, then we're going to come
and frame our roof rafters on top of that that's going to sit on here these are engineered
framing members and this is all light wood construction so it's just sticks essentially…over
here these are hurricane ties and then we have some blocking here so blocking in a section
is just essentially a piece of wood it's a two by six or ripped two by ten or ripped
two by twelve it's basically a dimensional piece of dimensional lumber that the contractor
modifies to fit the current situation here.
We're gonna describe what the roof slope is I think it's nine and twelve and this sub
assembly here is going to be in place first then it's a matter of figuring out okay well
what relationships do we want to show.
So in the elevations you know we have this roof system that's sloping down and it turns
to - that's our roof system here - and then it turns vertically here and then we have
this fascia piece that comes along and this fascia piece is meant to conceal a barn door
track.
So where do we mount the track?
Well the track has to mount to something that's solid so we're basically going to be sheathing
this building with plywood or OSB as it may be so that's the next layer that happens.
This plywood gives it rigidity and strength and it's also a substrate that we can attach
all of our finishes to so we have the post in the beam we have the roof structure we've
now skinned it with this plywood skin and then we're going to come and attach all of
our final finishes to that.
So we've got a vertical cedar boarding that’s coming up and we have to vent all this siding
so we're going to leave a little gap here.
We want the cedar to continue across the soffit that's what this is right here and it'd be
nice if this little gap showed itself on the column here because we're gonna have a wall
on this face that's continuing here.
It'd be nice if the column had some sort of a reveal to reference that.
So we're gonna call that reveal out like that and there's probably a detail note that says
- you know - 1/2 inch reveal kerf at column top.
So there's that that's kind of a nice detail so that's something that we needed to figure
out that we need to specify otherwise the column just goes up and it meets the you know
the underside of the soffit assembly.
Now we want this cedar to return to this zone in here so that we don't see any any end grain
or any joints here so mitre that corner.
Then we have a cedar fascia now to get this cedar fascia aligned with the soffit we want
to be calling out what dimensions or what the location of the bottom of that soffit
is so the contractor knows okay that's where I need to locate that and in order to fasten
this cedar in the end we need some wood blocking in here and because this extends above that
wood blocking we're gonna need some probably some plywood something that's a little more
rigid in here.
And then we're gonna form the bottom of our concealed gutter, we're gonna use make this
out of plywood and then we're gonna have our EPDM our waterproof membrane that comes up
and over and it forms this sort of bathtub in here and we'll extend that up onto the
roof and then we have our metal drip edge that's coming here and we want to lock that
in with a vertical flashing piece that comes down here, roof shingles, we've got a coping
piece here that'll get locked in there and each one of these parts and pieces we're gonna
call out with notes.
So we have continuous aluminum gutter we want to scupper at the end, we have 24 gauge aluminum
drip edge, what color it is, and you can decide to sort of note it in here or note it in the
specifications.
This project was small enough where we didn't have a separate set of specifications so we're
actually calling it out on the drawings.
Another good practice is to say you know if you have common roof construction we're gonna
say typical roof construction and then elsewhere on the sheet we're going to describe what
that is.
If you make a change to any one of these components in the typical roof construction say we decided
not to do spray foam as the insulation in the roof here we could decide to you know
maybe we went to blown-in batt or something that note then gets changed in the typical
roof construction rather than changing it on 30 different details.
So during my hike today I was listening to Tim Ferriss’ podcast and he had on J. Gordon-Levitt,
he basically talked about how after a series of rejections from other people who thought
he wasn't capable of producing a film for Cannes or Sundance he just decided that he
was going to hit the record button himself.
Creatives are coming to this realization at this time because the Internet has made publishing
your work just infinitely easier than it used to be.
J. Gordon-Levitt started this site called, Hit Record and it's sort of a wordplay “hit
record” and “hit record” you know one is the object: a hit record, versus the action:
hit record.
Hitting record is you know the act of pushing the record button on your camera or you know
whatever the self-publishing mechanism that you're using is and just taking having the
courage to step out on your own and make something and put it out in the world, to be criticized,
to be loved, to be hated, you know that's that's all part of it as an artist as you
know.
When you work and live in a place like this, which is pretty isolated, those outside influences
can have a big impact on your your business and how you move forward.
It's raining I’m gonna get out of here.
It's still pretty beautiful actually.
Okay we just selected the winner of the competition, the business plan competition so hopefully
that's gonna be announced well maybe in the next month or so.
So I want to share with you some of the lessons that I took away from being a jury member
on the architecture of business plan competition.
I really viewed these not as say, holistic business plans, but really more like a schematic
design, that there was these seed ideas they were interesting concepts that maybe needed
further development.
But there were a couple of themes that emerged that I thought were kind of cool.
One of the exciting themes I thought was this idea of being able to scale up your reach
and impact using networks using external resources it allows the small firm owner a bigger reach
in the world, it allows them to maintain a low overhead so when projects are delayed
or put on hold that the workforce can be scaled quickly.
It allows you to practice around the globe and team up with other you know collaborators
that you may not have had access to otherwise.
This idea that you know lifestyle is important and building and designing the kind of life
that you want to live and having your career conform to that lifestyle is something that
I saw in almost every single proposal and I think that's a real shift in our work culture
today and something that people are just trying to figure out how to adapt their business
model to that.
And the other theme that I thought was interesting was this idea of a diversification of our
services.
We are strategic planners, we are creative thinkers, we're problem solvers, we're graphic
designers, we're able to visually and verbally communicate our ideas to others.
We have this great skill set that we can bring to bear on a whole host of problems in the
world and it's time that we move beyond just thinking about architects as being able to
build buildings and serve clients one-to-one.
So I hope this video has been helpful for you, it's helped me to kind of articulate
my own thinking on this subject and help me to kind of recalibrate it a little bit.
Work in the studio does fluctuate new projects come and go.
Building a balanced practice is key to making sure that you have a long-term sustainable
business model and I hope this is inspiration for you and permission for you to go hit the
record button and to publish your own work.
Find the things that intrinsically motivate you to be a creative person to live a creative
life and go out there and make things, alright?
Cheers my friends, thanks for watching.