Project Details

Here I present Arckit Model 23, a residential green home with luxury amenities built into a home that takes care of itself. There is an enormous roof that accounts for the homes electrical needs with mounted PV panels as well as the home's irrigation and grey water needs, collecting all of the water and bringing it towards the south end of the house for heating, collection and filtration. All of the amenities offering water and electrical equipement are located along the west wall to allow for efficient piping and wiring of the MEP. The open and engaging floor plan offers a communal atmosphere with flexible programming that can cater to all of the resident's needs without compromise.

Going into this project, I wanted to create a residential home with an massive sloping roof and a backyard pool to continue exploring the use of Arckit with topography. After some very minimal sketches, I started laying out the foundation using 4X4 floor tiles giving myself plenty of room to work with. From here I start outlining the extents of the two pools and also the direction of the landscape grading.

With most of these projects, I am designing on the fly in 3D rather than on paper. I find it very helpful to use the regular walls to visually outline and test out different configurations to get a sense of scale for the project and also keeping an eye out for part management. You'll often see me placing down placeholder pieces so I can keep track of the form I am trying to create.

Continuing on, its a good tip to know that one 4 foot (1.2meter) wall section is as tall as 5 floor tiles stacked on top of one another. Therefore, if I want to sink a space 4 feet (1.2 meters) into the ground, you would need to surround that space with a 6 layer floor landscape. The 5 floor sections would be stacked on top of the floor baseplate that the wall is already pinned to, adding one more layer. As you can see, landscaping with Arckit uses components really fast. 

After I completed the entire topography/cut-and-fill, I started adding the walls along the outline I created. I envisioned a program of space and divided each of the rooms accordingly, including all of the standard home amenities. I then made the large main roof where I extended the overhang to well beyond the confines of the house and over the two pools where I placed a column to hold up the far end.

Once I got the roof to fit and hold itself, I added the second floor and started polishing out the surrounding space by creating the second wing of the butterfly roof over the mechanical area and creating a garage overhang. From here the building was pretty much done and I was amazed at how it turned out! 

Overall this was a pretty ambitious model that allowed me to try working with topography once again. I will be working on smaller scaled models over the next couple of weeks to cater to those of you with smaller kits! Have a great week and I hope you enjoyed this model!

Diagramming

Photo Gallery

Video Documentation

Notes

If you have any questions, suggestions or comments, I would love to hear from you in the comments section below or through email at rikysongsu@gmail.com.

For more information regarding Arckit visit www.arckit.com or to see all the models visit www.rikysongsu.com/model