#courtyards
Autumn Afternoons at Alta Heights Apartments
The season is still right for enjoying some lounge time together in the courtyard. Let’s get warmed up for the Pretty in Pink Party this Friday!
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WEEK 76
Hi friends! Lots to catch up since our last post! After many weeks of rain in April, we have designed, built, put up and down our full-scale mockup. Some on Morrisette to test if the 18’ screens would stand safely, and finally on site. As always mock-ups are the best tool for making decisions, so as we were putting up the screens, we made some changes to the design as we saw how the space shaped out. Also, thank you Andrew, Steve and Mass Timber team for helping us raise the 18′x18′ Screens!
Luckily the mock-up was ready by the time Pig Roast came around the corner, and it helped us study how people inhabited the space. Not only as a large crowd but also when the Horseshoe Farm Fellows had one of their weekly meetings in the courtyard.
We have also had many pin ups and meetings in the last 2 months. We had a chance to meet with Zane Morgan and Cassandra Kellogg twice! They are not only super generous with their time, but also incredibly helpful when talking to us through some of the details we have been working through. We also had a visit from David Hinson, whose excitement about the project energized us to keep pushing forward! As well as a long, but incredibly helpful call with David Hill, in which we learned some more key information about tree choosing, and soil conditions of our site.
Additionally, in the last two weeks, we have spoken to Joe many times, in order to work through some of the structural questions of the walkway and screens. We also visited Jim Turnipseed to update him on the newest design proposal. We are incredibly thankful for Jim’s generosity with material donations and for letting us use his shop when the time comes to fabricate the screens!
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East facing elevation shows 18′ screens that slip past balcony datum line to separate the two elements. We are also working through options for the “porch” on the Southern portion of the site, we are interested in using lights or a dropped ceiling to lower the scale.
We finally modeled our most recent design! This past week we shifted from plans, sections and SketchUp to a physical model, so we could charette through the tree and furniture placement.
Stepping out of the waiting room looking towards the active space and porch.
Part of figuring out the tree layout is understanding how it shapes the north end, as another entrance to the courtyard as well as what it gives back to the street since it is the most public area of the design.
Stay tuned as we work through the different options for the railing (not featured in model at the moment) and its interaction with the screens!
We took the Fit for a trip!
In the last two weeks, we have been tackling different fronts. This past Wednesday we took a day trip to Birmingham and presented our project to Jim Turnipseed, from Turnipseed International. The team learned quite a bit about the fabrication process for the columns and even visited his shop. We are incredibly excited about the upcoming weeks and working with Mr.Turnipseed in the near future!
Claire working on one of the screen mock-ups that will be completed in the next couple of weeks. We are testing different materials and density to ensure that it is the best option for the courtyard.
We also briefly met with Anderson Inge and David Hill while they were in Hale County for the 5th year workshops.
While designing in studio and testing different matetials for the project, we keep adapting the vine mockup to get the most out of it! We added two more vines of the same kind (Confederate Jasmine and Carolina Jesamine) to see how they interact when planted closely together.
One of the materials we are looking into for the guardrail is perforated steel panels, in this case 20 gauge. We added a 24″x36″ panel to test if the vines would grow through 1/8 inch openings on the panel or remain on the cables, since they are twining plants.
One of the reasons for testing perforated metal is that from a certain distance depending on the percentage of perforation the material almost disapears.
An important aspect is that the material behind the screen doesn’t compete with the screen and vines, but rather complement it.
This week we had a comprehensive discussion with Andrew, Xavier and Steve about the project and decisions made up to this point. They encouraged us to consider the implications of the materials we are using, but also energized us to keep moving forward!
After calls with David Hill last week and our civil engineer consultant, Adele Schirmer, we decided to test the soil on the site to fully grasp how much we will need to alter on site in terms of drainage, planting and structure.
