BUILD Blog

BUILD llc recently completed a home on Bainbridge Island here in the northwest that uses some materials and methods that may be of interest. The home was designed and built for Dr. Marc Ferrin. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: good projects are the direct result of extraordinary homeowners willing to partake in the adventure of design and construction & trust our guidance.

[all images by BUILD llc]

1. Orchard of low-growing fruit trees on a pure geometrical grid.
2. Gravel hardscape.
3. Milgard aluminum windows with bronze finish – the dark, minimal corner mullion gives the appearance of a corner window.
4. Blomus stainless steel mailbox on custom steel plate stand with punched numbering. Mailbox sold by Pure Modern.
5. Milgard aluminum window system with bronze finish. The roof joist support beams are pulled back into the living space and exposed – this allows the window system to extend all the way to the roof joists.
6. MDO soffits painted white as a visual extension of the interior drywall lid. Exterior grade can lights installed at soffit.
7. Rainscreen siding system composed of Cembonit panels by CBF. For an explanation of rainscreen systems click here.
8. Cable rail system by Feeney Cable Rails with custom fabricated galvanized steel verticals and custom ipe top rail.
9. Clear sealed fir exterior door with tempered glass panel and weather-stripping. Reeded glass panels at entry door, clear at all others.
10. Clear T&G cedar mounted vertically and clear sealed. These particular boards span the entire height of the house.
11 Single membrane “flat” roof sloped ¼” per foot and concealed with parapet.
12. Outdoor shower (Kohler Stillness series) with winter shut off valve located inside house at conditioned area.
13. Clerestory windows add additional light to the upstairs hallway and maintain privacy.
14. Chimney capped with galvanized steel wide flange frame to conceal vent cap.
15. Standing seam metal roof with minimal vent penetrations.
16. Cedar fascia stained dark to match the window system.
17. A cantilevered bay allows for extra area inside but doesn’t change the line of the concrete foundation wall below. The change in form is reflected by using a different material at the cantilever.
18. Flush panel wood garage door by Clopay, painted dark to match soffits and blend with window package.
19. Strategically located vegetation to eventually hide the heat pump.
20. Rainscreen panel breaks strategically align with changes in plane.

[all images by BUILD llc]

21. Cold rolled custom steel handrail with blackened finish.
22. Vertically mounted aluminum return air grill – custom size by Shoemaker AFP series.
23. 1×4 flush base trim, pre-primed mdf, painted.
24. Prefabricated concrete stair treads by Diamond Concrete Products.
25. Miele DA series island hood.
26. Thin fin-wall made from 1-3/4” x 11-7/8” LVLs stacked end to end and wrapped with GWB, painted.
27. Slot window – as part of the sequence of entry a visitor gets a peak at the extraordinary view.
28. Absolute black granite countertops with slight eased edge.
29. Lutron Diva light switches with stainless steel cover plates – all devices mounted at a common datum line around the house.
30. Bamboo vertical grain flooring.
31. Custom galvanized vertical guardrails drilled to receive Feeney Cable Rail system.
32. 1×6 ipe decking
33. 5’ foot wide sliding door to pantry – the cabinets are notched to receive sliding door.
34. Maple cabinets by Canyon Creek Cabinet Company with Mockett satin chrome tab pulls.
35. The clerestory window at the shower allows natural daylight but maintains privacy.
36. Milgard aluminum floor to ceiling window system with bronze finish.
37. Kohler Stillness series shower fixtures.
38. Epco polished chrome shower curtain rod.

For more information on the Ferrin Residence check out the YouTube digital model and the YouTube time elapse construction process.

So there we were, logged on to YouTube, staring at the monitor glassy eyed and naïve. We submitted our search for “modern, architecture, Seattle” and guess what we came up with. Nothing. Not a single entry. It was like cresting the Cascade mountain range and finding all the waterfront property on the west coast entirely vacant. Our wild-west epiphany was a few months ago now – and in the meantime we’ve asked some of our experienced friends, like the sharp shooters over at Chase Jarvis Photography, about video generation, editing and sharing. We’ve stumbled around a bit, experimented, and now understand the process enough to share some useful information. Here’s why you should get your work up on YouTube and how to do it.

Why:
1. Bandwidth is continually on the increase so venues like YouTube are faster and more accessible from more computers.
2. Sharing your work through video clips communicates more. The process of design and construction can be communicated through time-elapsed images. A better understanding of complex volumes and spatial experiences can be conveyed.
3. Design ideas and construction progress can be communicated to clients who live elsewhere or travel frequently.
4. It’s another way to back-up your work on a remote server (it’s also free)
5. Your work is visible to a wider audience.

Here are some amateur examples by your friends at BUILD:

How:
1. You’ll need a copy of Adobe Premiere Elements 4 – its a hundred bucks and can be purchased in the box or downloaded here. A downside of the program is that it is 463 MB, yikes.

2. Generate .MPEG or .AVI animations in any number of digital modeling programs you may be using (Form-Z, Rhino, Sketch-up, 3-D Studio Max, etc).

3. Generate the title and credit pages as static images in Adobe Illustrator or any number of similar graphics programs. Save them as JPEGs.
4. Using Premiere: compared to the complexity of digital modeling programs, Premier is Mickey Mouse. Playing around on it for a couple of hours should teach you most everything you’ll need to know. While there are hundreds of tools within Premiere, we find that only a handful are actually useful and tasteful. Here are a couple of basic concepts and tools:
A. Images, movie clips and music clips are imported into Premiere and dragged to the timelines below. Right-hand click on a timeline to add, remove or purge timelines.

B. For transitions between images and movie clips we like to use the “dissolve” tools in the “transitions” category.

C. For the soundtrack transitions right-hand click on the soundtrack timeline and select from the fade options.

D. When your movie clip is complete go to the SHARE tab in the upper right hand of the screen and follow the directions for an Online YouTube upload.

E. Start an account with Youtube to manage your movie files.

F. Share your vids with us.

For more of our video clips go to this Youtube link or the BUILD website.
To take a look at what the pros are doing check out this blog.

Recently BUILD finished up a nice little condominium interior which introduces several new products to the palette. We’ve put together a brief roster of several materials, products and methods that may be of interest. With the condominium boom here in the northwest, several of these items seem to lend well to a kit-of-parts for condominium upgrades. As with any project, a successful end product can largely be credited to extraordinary homeowners and a contractor that slaved over the details.

[Images by BUILD llc]

1. Henrybuilt VGC bamboo cabinets with under-mount puck lights at uppers
2. Henrybuilt d-pull stainless steel hardware
3. Sub-Zero 700BC 2-drawer under-counter refrigerator/freezer with integral panels to match cabinets.
4. Light shelf with painted wood valiance and concealed Juno TL102 on Juno Trac 12 system
5. Juno Trac 12 system with Juno TL112 adjustable heads. This is a clean, low-profile track system for a concrete lid where it’s not possible to recess the track into the ceiling.
6. Caesarstone 2430 “Tequila Sunrise” countertops, 3mm thick at counter, 2mm thick at backsplash. Be cautious of the local distributors and installers of this product. We found that the Caesarstone recommended local supplier wasn’t detail oriented enough for a project of this precision.
7. Kahrs “Genua City” 2-strip maple wood flooring over Dura-son acoustical pad. Acoustical pads are typically required in high-rise condominiums; so far the “Dura” line of products has done a good job of meeting these requirements.
8. 1” x 1” solid maple base to match flooring. We find that in smaller spaces the smaller trim helps with the overall scale of the room.
9. Grohe Single Spray Pull-out, 32 170
10. Raeco concrete skim coat on existing concrete column. The original idea was to leave the existing concrete shear walls of the building exposed. Because of the poor finish quality of the existing walls they were enveloped with ¾” Wonderboard and topped with a Raeco base coat. Two Raeco skim coats were then applied and sanded to achieve the finished product.
11. Raumplus S3000 aluminum sliding door system with 6mm diffused white glass – these “sliding walls” hide all of the various closet functions (washer, dryer, furnace) behind a continuous run of sleek, sliding glass walls. The doors are backlit with Alkco fluorescent ceiling mounted strip lights for that glowing look. The doors include a double top track and a recessed routed floor track flush with the floor. The local rep here in Seattle is Pedini.
12. Schluter aluminum edge profiles between wood floor and tile.
13. Pental Lagos Blue limestone
14. Custom frameless glass enclosure & glass door with minimal chrome hinges by Distinctive Glass here in Seattle.
15. Robern recessed flat mirror door cabinets.
16. Alkco LIN40 150 watt linear incandescent wall mount lights. The Aamsco Alinea line is also a good option.
17. CR Laurence BM series Chrome towel bars. These also come in a trim-less version that can be mounted to glass shower enclosure walls.
18. Toto CST414 toilet
19. Lacava Aquaplane #5066 box sink. Be cautious with porcelain sinks from Lacava – the dimensions on their website specs don’t take into account the inaccuracies and tolerances of fired products like these sinks; subsequently dimensions were off by as much as ¾”. For dimensional accuracy we recommend looking into some of the hybrid plastic products out there like Wetsytle.
20. Stanley Omnia 025 passage stainless steel lever with (3) Stanley 4 ½” x 4” stainless steel hinges
21. Grohe Essence 32 216 Chrome faucet and 28 871 shower faucet
22. Pental ES#19 5/8” tall x 1-7/8” wide matte finish glass tile with 2% clear finish mixed in at random pattern, mounted horizontally. Glass tiles are more brittle than ceramic tiles and break easily, it takes an accomplished tile setter to work with the product and get the tile grid in alignment with the geometry of the space. The perfect alignment of the recessed shelf and the tile grid takes a great amount of coordination between the carpenter and tile setter (one of the same on this project).

The general contractor on the project is Keith Griffin of Griffin Construction.

<begin shameless plug>
Just when someone recently compliments us on having a “concern for the greater good instead of self centered hype and promotion” we’ve got to go screwing it all up. Over the weekend the Seattle Times Pacific Northwest Magazine gave BUILD and the Park Modern some great press. With approximately 450,000 sets of eyeballs looking at the Seattle Times each Sunday it’s darn exciting for our little firm. The article features an interview with our very own CEO, Kevin Eckert, and highlights our Park Modern project; home to the BUILD world headquarters (all 4 of us) and also houses the partners and their families. If you’ve made it this far you may be interested in some of our goals and beliefs outlined in the article; they have guided us in shaping the blog as well as the Park Modern and many other custom projects.
<end shameless plug>

Okay, we got it out of our system, apologies right here and now to Jay and all. We’ll get back to business now…

Despite the growing popularity of rainscreen systems, we find that most people don’t know much about them and don’t understand why they are important to architecture. Like most innovative building systems it was the Europeans that first introduced the concept. One of the first examples we remember seeing is the IRCAM music school completed in Paris in the late 70’s by Renzo Piano. In the last decade we’ve noticed a growing interest and use of raincreens on buildings and houses here in the northwest. The concept of a rainscreen is to create an air gap between the siding material and the water-proof surface. This allows the structure to breathe a bit. Current building codes require structures to be sealed up so tightly that it’s causing unforeseen problems. More traditional siding systems often trap moisture between the various layers of materials. Differences in air pressure between the outside and inside of a building can actually drive air and, more dangerously, water into the building. The rainscreen system uses a water proof membrane to keep the water out, but it allows a bit of air movement – it’s like a Gore-tex wrap for your building or house. This membrane is a softer, more delicate material, it’s also sensitive to sunlight; UV rays will eventually break down the product if directly exposed. This is where the siding comes in. The siding, or skin of the building, is required for protection from physical harm like soccer balls and also to shield the membrane from sunlight. There is typically an air gap between the skin and the membrane of approximately one inch. If detailed and constructed correctly the system allows the building to breathe, allows the inside and outside air pressure to balance better and allows a tremendous variety of materials to be used as the skin. It is a more expensive system and requires more time and care for the installation but a well made rainscreen is hot, modern and functional.

1. Panel: Panel thicknesses vary; we’ve found most of them to be 5/16” thick. Panel sizes are typically 4’ x 8’ and 4’ x 10’. Products that we’ve had success with so far are Cembonit by CBF, Hardie-Panel, Swiss Pearl, Fincolorply, and Cor-ten steel.
2. Fastener: Typically we use a #8 wood screw with a gasketed hex head. Some panel types require specific fasteners. It’s also possible to flush mount flat head screws if the panels are properly pre-drilled, and if you have a lot of free-time. The fastener geometry is typically 12 to 24 inches on center in each direction. It’s very important to line the fasteners up on a grid as the fastener pattern becomes part of the finished look of the rainscreen system.
3. Vertical Runners: Trex is a great product for this application because it doesn’t move axially and it doesn’t rot. The dimensions of the runners entirely depend on the specifications required of the panel product – we tend to use 3/4” x 3/4” strips more often than anything else. Cedar or pressure treated lumber can also be used, be cautious of the expansion and contraction of these products.
4. Air Space: The dimension of air space typically ranges between ¾” to 1-1/2” depending on the panel product specifications
5. Membrane: This membrane is basically like Gore-tex for your house – it keeps the water out but lets air through (it lets your house breathe). There are many different brands, we like VaproShield because of the products function, durability and that they just started making it in black so that the membrane disappears in the shadows.
6. Flashing: The flashing we use at window wraps (like the one above) is typically a peel & stick application. It is flexible to deal with all sorts of different situations and angles.
7. Sheathing: You can either use ½” plywood and install flat blocking at all of the panel joints or use ¾” plywood behind all panels – we recommend the ¾” as it is MUCH less work. In either case you’ll want to use CDX plywood – don’t use that OSB crap here.
8. Framing: Typically 2×6 framing at exterior walls but this could vary depending on the situation.
9. Reveal: Typically ¼” but this varies with the panel product and desired finish look.

Okay, let’s get to some examples around the Seattle area:

Seattle Orthopedic Center at 2409 N 45th St
The project seems to use the Fincolorply system, or something very close to it. A very well crafted building that we recommend checking out. It displays two-different panel types.
Architect: Collins Woerman

[Photos by BUILD llc]

The William H. Foege Building at NE Pacific Str & 15th Ave NE
The panels seem to be a fired clay, almost brick-like in look and texture. The building is a very impressive display of the rainscreen system
Architect: Anshen + Allen

[Photos by BUILD llc]

Medina Residence near Seattle
The residence uses the Swiss Pearl system and is designed with the precision of a cabinet at the exterior.  The panel system continues inside to certain areas of the interior.
Architect: BUILD llc

[Photos by Swiss Pearl]

Camano Cabin on Camano Island
The residence uses steel cor-ten panels as its rainscreen. The panels develop a layer of rust which continues to weather over time but protects the inner layers of the panel.
Architect: BUILD llc

[Photos by BUILD llc]

Dr. Marc Ferrin Residence on Bainbridge Island
The residence has just been wrapped with the membrane and will soon be receiving a skin of Cembonit rainscreen.
Architect: BUILD llc

[Photos by BUILD llc]

It’s taken us several years and many jobs to gather the resources and knowledge about these rainscreen systems. So why do we take the time & effort to post this info online for anyone to use and distribute for free? Because the battle against ugly, senseless architecture is a tough one and we need all the help we can get. Cheers