suburban tract house

Progress 5.7.

Our first office site visit since construction began over a week ago.  We had assumed slab on grade would be the most cost effective strategy for the first floor, but were quickly educated on how these houses are typically done.  The house sits on shallow footings and stem walls, with TJI joists pocketed in and set on 32” centers. The framing and truss plans were delivered in gorgeous detail, calc’d and permit ready, from their material supp

liers in a matter of hours. The framers have completed the first floor deck, the first floor walls, and the two story balloon framing of the stair hallway, which is currently the tallest element of the structure. We are working to finalize color and siding details. 

The foundation is already backfilled and connections have been made to both the sewer and storm systems.  The roofs in the sub-division are black composition shingle, so we have taken that as a starting point of the material palette. We debated about just comp shingling the house boxes in their entirety- we loved the idea of the roofer showing up and enclosing the entire house- but caution prevails and we will clad the top “boxes” in a cement shingle panel and find a paint to match the roof.  We set a goal of a very abstract expression for the pitched roof boxes, and have tried in the last week to re-examine and sketch through traditional details to cost effectively hide the gutters and leaders, but time is running out, and a simple solution is evading us.  We will settle for exposed gutters and work to run hidden leaders in ABS to deal with the overhanging volumes. 

We are also fighting an uphill battle to avoid attic venting with the local inspector.  As this house will be over-insulated, we are willing to spray the cavities with a self-skinning material to create the vapor barrier. However we will probably need to go with standard vents, eave and ridge, and try to minimize their visual impact.  We are putting a lot of freight on the dark paint to cool out the parts and pieces. For the lower wood box we briefly discussed siding the walls with decking material, but will instead use a similar 1x material on a rainscreen to save cost. We are choosing a semi transparent stain so we will hopefully get a uniformity of color from wall surface to deck surface. 

 The windows are an Anderson 100 series, a composite frame, and the order was placed when the footings were poured.  They are being manufactured in Texas, but should be on site by the end of next week. We are anticipating the roof trusses to be up by then, and possibly the roofing will have begun.

The Experiment.

Architects touch probably 5-7% of the built environment. Tops.

We as a profession speak romantically about prefabrication and mass production as a way to bring thoughtful design, no…architecture, to mainstream homebuyers.  We speak of efficiencies and cost reduction that can be achieved by applying modern manufacturing methodologies.  We hope for construction costs of $150/sf and “fast” schedules of 6 months.  We are a little lost.

Currently there is mass production in housing on a mammoth scale, happening not in controlled factories, but out in the converted farmland of exurbia.  Thousands of houses at a time are rolled out on blindingly fast schedules, with sequenced assembly line-like efficiency.  Our home improvement retailers, like Home Depot and Lowes, are a catalogue of their employed ingredients. This industry’s bottom line is closer to $60-75/sf and houses are completed in 40-75 days.  It is the fast food of shelter- carried out with much bottom line forethought, and formatted for temporal sensory satisfaction.  Much in parallel with our food industry, space is delivered in higher quantity at lower cost, and the bulging beltline of American houses is the result.  In 1950 the average American new house size was 850sf.  Today it is up to 3 1/2 times that.

This project isn’t looking to solve any larger issues with suburban sprawl.  We are not knee-jerk front porch neighborhood militants. We see these sprawling communities, even with their nods to new urbanism and pedestrian infrastructure, as still a bit Frankenstonian, but desirable for many Americans. Their land use strategies are still metered by automobiles and the resulting physical and social detachment has long ago reshaped the landscape of our country’s culture.  That horse left the barn long ago.   We are not looking to change the matrix, rather we want to participate to understand the economics, both time and money, of this industry. We are trying to use the same ingredients to cook a better cake, one slice at a time.

We were asked to collaborate on a new model of tract house, a new American bungalow.  The metrics are simple: 3 bedrooms and two bathrooms minimum, two car garage mandatory.  The house needs to meet or exceed the economics of the competition.

This is what we came up with.