Featuring Zack Bishop

Project Details

With Zack's first model, I wanted to try something different using the Arckit angled pieces to create right angled, inverted gables. After some time sketching we finalized on a plan that would merge a two "U" shaped programs together. One of these programs would have a flat roof and the other would have three separate inverted gables meeting at two right angles. This produced the idea/image of a flower or several blades of grass reaching into the air and absorbing the southern exposure. While extravagant in terms of design, this build provided much insight for future models and new ways for demonstrating the possibilities with Arckit. Looking back at this model, the roofs could have been made smaller achieving the same effect.

As shown above, Zach and I were able to divide the space, building around a central core to effectively create private and public sides of the home. The central core contains the home's water storage tank, treatment, mechanical/electrical closet, utilities, and three bathrooms and kitchen area. Efficent material use can be acieved by building a program where all water and electrical needs are in close proximity.

When we were done with the floor plan, it was time to test out our idea of three inverted gables meeting each other. The idea worked well be now as well as I have envisioned and simple fix to the problem would have just been to make each of the sections smaller. The overhang of each of the roofs sections and steep pitch caused each piece to be slightly off balance with a tendency to fall over.  In the future, I will definitely plan for a larger interior space to lower the pitch and also limit the overhang. Be sure to check out the video documentation video below for a better idea on how everything fits together. 

Overall this was a challenging model to build and with Arckit we were able to build upon the iterative design process to test out several situations before settling on this final model. I do want to explore this roof possibility again and see where it takes me.

Photo Gallery

Video Documentation

Notes

Zack Bishop is a first year architecture student at the University of Maryland. He is interested in sustainable materials and design as well as techniques to fortify buildings for extreme weather situations.

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