BUILD Blog

Most of the projects we work on incorporate forced air heating systems. But these systems aren’t always the most effective solution for heating a home because they require a furnace and ducting. Furnaces are big and expensive, ducting requires labor and space. If the floor area is less than ~1500 square feet, forced air isn’t cost effective or space effective. We’ve been doing quite a bit of research into alternative heating systems for smaller spaces and, as always, the Europeans are several steps ahead. We’ll look at two systems in today’s post:

Electric Baseboard Heating Systems: We know what you’re thinking - but the systems we’ve tracked down aren’t the flimsy, unsightly baseboard heaters you used to have above the shag carpet in that college rental house. Modern electric baseboard heaters are effective in smaller spaces because they do not require a boiler, furnace, or ducting – just an electrical line which is typically 120 or 240 volts. A thermostat located in each room allows for more temperature variation within a home and quicker heat response time. The U.S. Department of Energy website describes the mechanics of electric baseboard heat best:

“Baseboard heaters contain electric heating elements encased in metal pipes. The pipes, surrounded by aluminum fins to aid heat transfer, run the length of the baseboard heater’s housing, or cabinet. As air within the heater is warmed, it rises into the room, and cooler air is drawn into the bottom of the heater. Baseboard heaters are usually installed underneath windows. There, the heater’s rising warm air counteracts falling cool air from the cold window glass.”

OMB & OHB by Ouellet Electric Heating

ODIA & ODBA by Ouellet Electric Heating

Thermodul Electric system by Dryzone
The perimeter heaters become the base trim in the room

Radiant Hot Water Baseboard and Wall Systems: If you’re picturing grandmas two-hundred pound cast-iron radiator, encrusted with high-relief acanthus leaves, stay tuned. These are typically closed loop systems where a plumbing supply line carries hot water from the heat source to the radiator, the water radiates the heat and the plumbing line carries the cooled water back to the heat source to be re-circulated. The heat source is typically a gas or electric powered boiler or hot water heater, circulation occurs by means of a pump or convection. The panel and tube systems come in a wide variety of sizes and are moderately flexible in terms of location - limited only by the plumbing lines. The thermostat is typically located on or near the panel itself, temperatures are typically lower and the units do not present the fire hazard of electric systems. Variations of hot water systems include towel warmers and profiles which mimic architectural base trim.

Honeycomb & Zephyr Hydronic systems by Aeon

Millennium & Octet Hydronic systems by Aeon

Xeno & Talus Hydronic systems by Aeon

Planet Hydronic system by Tubes

Square Hydronic system by Tubes

UF Series Hydronic system by Runtal

Dualis Plus Hydronic system by Zehnder

Yucca Star Hydronic system by Zehnder

Charleston Hydronic system by Zehnder

Projectclima Hydronic system
An ecological product that uses recyclable tiles which the user can arrange in any configuration. They produce a variety of colors and sizes with the option of printing your own pictures onto the tiles.

Steamview by Steam Radiators

Slimline Radiant Base Heater Hydronic system by Radtech 2000
The perimeter heaters become the base trim of the room
hey Radtech - how ’bout getting some photos up on your website that are as clean and crisp as your product.

While toasters seem like a trivial design element, the fact of the matter is that they’re usually out on the countertop and fully visible in most kitchens. A well designed toaster can be a pleasing sculptural element – while a poorly designed model can look like a steaming pile of design dog doo. So go the distance with your hot, modern kitchen and park one of these sleek toasters on the counter. We’ve rounded up some of our favorite models as well as a few concepts that caught our attention.

Some very simple toasters with minimal knobs and accessories:

Aluminum Toaster HD2618 by Philips, $137.00

Rowenta Electric Toaster Designed by Jasper Morrison, $150.00

Trabo Block Toaster Designed by Piero Russi

Trabo Toast Designed by Gae Aulenti

Toaster, designed by Naota Fukasawa
For more of Fukasawa’s work check out our post on Masters of Industrial Design

Flat Toaster TP-2006 x by Fagor, $62.00

A toaster with the bling factor of 200 Swarovski crystals:
Crystal-Encrusted Toaster, Neiman Marcus, by Russell Hobbs, $300.00

Siemens TT9110 Porsche Toaster by Porsche Design Studio
They create beautiful cars, they must create a beautiful toaster that toasts your bread to perfection.

Transparent Toaster by Inventables Concept Studio

Dyson Toaster by David Chacon

There are also a few horizontally fed toasters in the conceptual stage:

Mool Toaster Designed by Atil Kizilbayir

Glide Toaster Designed by George Watson

And of course a toaster inspired by Gehry must break away from the box:
Gehry Toaster Designed by Olivier Gregoire, Inspired by Frank Gehry

Shipping containers, also referred to as “isotainers”, were originally invented in the 1990’s to help architects achieve greater levels of design fetish. While their primary function is typically seen in overly-complicated forms of residential architecture, additional applications in the commercial and institutional sectors help reinforce the illusion of simplicity and the deception of cost ineffectiveness. Whether applied to altruistic housing for the worlds impoverished or a high-end gallery in Zurich, shipping container architecture upholds the most important principle of good design: a sexy finished photo.

Recently, however, we’ve noticed an innovative use of shipping containers here in Seattle. Forward thinking companies like A.P. Moller-Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd are experimenting with the steel boxes by loading them with manufactured goods and shipping them to foreign sea-ports. That’s right, actually loading the steel boxes onto boats, trains, and trucks and transporting them to different places in the world. This evolution of shipping containers is fascinating to us and today’s post covers some of the details of this pioneering effort to use common architectural objects in new and interesting ways.

There are an estimated 18 million containers in the world, as Wired magazine puts it “enough shipping containers exist on the planet to build an 8-foot-high wall around the equator – twice”. The containers are built in 5 standard lengths the most common being 40’ long by 8’ wide by 8’-6” tall. With a volume of 2,385 cubic feet, the maximum load for a 40’ container is about 58,800 lbs (this excludes the weight of the container itself which is about 8,300 lbs).

The containers allow for a number of customizations including temperature control, ventilation, tank containers for liquids, rolling floors for heavy cargo, units which open on the sides, and collapsible units.

It is speculated that container shipping is twenty times faster than pre-container shipping methods lending to reductions in waste and cost. A large facility, like the port of Singapore, moves over twenty-thousand 40’ container equivalencies on an average day.

With the demand to move an increasing volume of containers and to keep ships on their schedules (set by ocean tides) the horizontal transportation methods of truck and train are critical. A variety of trailer beds have been designed to accommodate the range of container sizes, double loaded train cars allow for a greater number of containers per train and faster loading/unloading.

Transferring the containers between modes of transportation and stacking the containers for storage has also developed its own species of machines. This equipment includes:

Gantry Crane or Ship-to-Shore Crane

Straddle Carriers

Rubber Tired Gantry Cranes (RTG’s)

Rail Mounted Gantry Cranes (RMG’s)

Forklift Trucks

Reach Stackers and specialized Stackers for Empty Containers.

There are also some interesting hybrid machines like truck mounted container lifts

The largest container ship in the world is the Emma Maersk at 1,300 feet long. With a crew of 13 it has the capacity to carry approximately 5,500 40’ long containers, on average about $300 million worth of cargo.

Although containers are staggered in height to keep the boxes from shifting during shipping, an estimated 10,000 containers are lost at sea each year. Wikipedia states that “Containers lost at sea do not necessarily sink, but seldom float very high out of the water, making them a shipping hazard that is difficult to detect.”

A used 40’ long shipping container can be purchased for $1500 to $2500, find them on ebay.

Several shipping companies allow guests to travel with them from port to port. For more information get your hands on a book called Travel by Cargo Ship.

Another good book about shipping containers and the shipping industry is
The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger

For more web-based information on shipping containers go to wikipedia

Wired magazine also has a good article

Today’s post documents two industrial designer heroes of ours. While independent of one another they have developed similar aesthetic vocabularies and their design philosophies relate to the entire spectrum of design. We’ll keep our words to a minimum as the designs objects themselves (and method of photography) communicate the ideas very clearly.

Naoto Fukasawa (born 1956 in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan)

Muji wall-hung CD player, 1999

Cloud Sofa, 2006

Maruni small dining table and chairs, 2008

INAX Tile light, 1998

Toaster, 2007

Seiko Message watch, 1997

[Image from Design for the 21st Century by Charlotte and Peter Fiell]

Dieter Rams (born 1932 in Wiesbaden Germany)

LE1 Loudspeaker, 1959

Braun T41, 1959

Tecnoline DRD 99 Ni matt, 1999 & FSB Door handle, 1989

RHA desklight, 1981

Pocket radio T3, 1958

620 Chair Programme, ~1966

The ten points essential to the design philosophy of Dieter Rams can be found at Metropolis Magazine or Vitsoe. Wallpaper also has a nice gallery of additional work.

[Photo by Joe Schell]

If the graffiti in Seattle were to be graded it would acquire something in the realm of “needs improvement”. Its not an F but it’s substantially shy of a B-. While it appears that graffiti artists here have the time, courage and paint supplies, the level of craftsmanship is at an all time low. Walking around Seattle lately we’re entirely unimpressed with the quality of graffiti, depressed actually. Just when we thought we were becoming a big city, the urban gauge of graffiti reminds us that we’re still provincial and insulated. Graffiti is a precarious but critical form of urban expression and rebellion. It is a necessary component of the urban grit and if we’re ever going to become a big city the graffiti here needs to step it up. Perhaps the graffiti artists need to do a bit of R&D; or maybe a study abroad program should be implemented. There’s no lack of resources out there to help resuscitate the craft and quality of graffiti, here are just a few:

Recommended books:
The Birth of Graffiti by Jon Naar
This was one of the first texts to really document the phenomena of graffiti – even our college profs were touting this one around the studio.

Graffiti World: Street Art from Five Continents by Nicholas Ganz

Recommended study tours:
Five Points neighborhood of Long Island City in New York
Get to Grand Central Station and take the Queens-bound #7 train, park yourself on the left side of the car and keep your eyes open.

The Alleys of Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles

Digital Journals:
Even tags can be well crafted, this site does a clean job with tag archives from nine cities (including Seattle)

This website is a gorgeous display of graffiti and the moving image – the movie clip is worth a few minutes of your time.

In doing our research on graffiti it seems that another important factor in the quality of graffiti is establishing legal zones for such artistry. These zones are typically urban pockets that could use a bit of life, are easily visible and the locations don’t harm businesses or homes. We’ve come up with three candidates for legal graffiti zones here in Seattle.
1. The Alaskan Way Viaduct south of Yesler
2. The columns and walls underneath I-5 between Mercer and Thomas (across from Cafe Venus, Mars Bar and REI).
3. The underside of I-5 up north at the Ravenna boulevard underpass.

Name your candidates…