One day outside Facet Studio

Today we made a visit to The Brick Pit to pick some recycled bricks for Uchi Lounge project.

Uchi Lounge is a 2 storey restaurant, whilst ground floor is under renovation, the restaurant operates as normal on the upper floor, and vice versa.  Now that we are very close to the completion of ground floor, we need to start firming up on a few things for the upper floor design - brick selection is one of them.

As we are keen to continue the organic, deep atmosphere of existing Uchi Lounge within our new design, we proposed to use recycled brick which affords a sense of artistry and individuality.

So here is our day today..

upon arrival we were greeted (and overwhelmed) by tonnes of recycled bricks...being hand cleaned and slowly compiled into pallets.... how are we to find the bricks we want from here?!

we were shown around the compiled pallets; these yellowish sandstock bricks were from the Merrickville area - each area has different clays and as the result produces different characterised bricks

....there we ventured into an interesting world of recycled bricks.....

Keith from The Brick Pit was very passionate when it comes to the difference between modern bricks (the ones behind him) and the recycled bricks

Keith was very kind in showing us photos from some of their past projects

With the help of knowledgeable staffs, we were able to find from towering pallets of recycled bricks....

....our dream bricks for the project (by the way, these bricks are original sandstock from late 1800's, with a beautiful deep red hue... Can't wait to see them in Uchi Lounge!).

Afterwards, with full brain-ful of new brick knowledge but empty stomachs, we made a pitstop at Chinatown for Yum-Cha refuel session......

.....and back to the high-density FS office!

 

M House Roof Up Ceremony 上棟式

Just like the title of this entry....ROOF IS UP!

There was a humble ceremony held on site on Jan 29, one reason is to celebrate a major milestone, and the other reason to pay regard, and pray to God for a safe construction through out.

the client and his wife to the left, with a small setup for the ceremony inside the house - undercover and away from weather

the roof is up - still waiting to install gutter and complete flashing, but it is up! we love the sharpness or the lines and the muted natural colour scheme of the material... window and door frames are also installed (visible behind all the scaffolding)

edge of the steel roof was manually folded on site in such precision and crispness. flashing is to go between the roof sheeting and top of the rafters

close up of the roof sheetings

inside view of the timber ceiling. skylight spans perfectly between 2 structural bays, as we have studied last year

component study model of the skylight, as of blog entry dated Nov 28 2010 ....yes I like it very much when things turn out the way we have designed...

view within the house... compare with the study model (below), as of blog entry Nov 11 2010

study model, photo dated Nov 11 2010

our excited and nervous clients.... it is becoming so real! so soon!

What defines the edge

Starting up 2011 with discussion on how to define the edge of the roof.

As you know, with M House, the roof is the physical presence of our design philosophy (read more HERE); how that roof finishes itself at the outside of the house, where visible by whoever walking past it, will set its first impression.

Again, we have constructed a 1:1 mock-up of the roof edge to help us thinking and deciding (by the way our builder, skeptical and resistant at first, now LOVES the idea of making 1:1 mock-ups!  They see the value in checking prior to construction on site - saves so much time and cost!)

our first go was to align the edge of the roof plane with the edge of the exposed timber rafters. By doing so the entire composition of the roof (rafter, ceiling/ bracing, insulation, roof sheeting) becomes one element, and was inevitably visually heavy.

we then tried pushing out the roof plane (ceiling/bracing, insulation, roof sheeting) proud of the roof rafters by the thickness of the fascia board. What this does is starting to break down the mass of the roof composition visually and gives it a slightly finer presence at the edge.

then we pushed the roof plane out further.. further... stop! It looked good there! Let's see how much we have pushed it out..

now the roof plane and the rafters are visually distinguishable, and gives a sharper definition of the roof edge!

the cavity between ceiling bracing and the roof sheeting is where the insulation will be. The cavity is 20mm bigger than the insulation material in order to have some airflow for ventilating the moisture during the wet summer seasons

looking between the rafters towards the outside of the house....the gap between rafters, roof plane and top of wall will be filled with clear glass, so the extension of roof rafter to the outside of building will be visible.....and permitting natural light to enter the building (the timber beam over top of the wall will be continuous rather than broken as seen here in mock-up)

testing the edge gutter....it was initially a box gutter at the edge of the roof plane (so hidden behind the fascia board) but for practical reasons it is now hanging out at the edge... we decided to go with the bracket on the right, which has fixing at the same level as the bracket (the one on the left has fixing points above the bracket) so the gutter will be raised higher to better catch the roof water, and allows for more room for gradient along the gutter.  The gutter will be in the similar silver colour as the brackets.

testing...testing

A few decisions to be made on site urgently for M House ...here are some examples....

on the left are different colours for the wall finish - シラス壁 ("shirasu-kabe" external rendered finish with volcano ash); on the right are the different timber decking types

bolt testing at the top junction of roof rafters (if you look closely, the bolts are all different colours and sizes); this is quite important because after 20m of exposed continuous roof rafters, bolts can be very distracting...  here we realised the length of the bolt thread (the long bit that has the grooves) is of vital importance and we need to find the one that is the same size as the nut (the hexagonal donut that goes around the thread)

timber sealant; the idea is to be as close to the raw timber as possible. here we tested this product "木肌美人" (timber skin beauty....), on the left is timber sealed with oil based product, on the right is raw, unsealed timber.  On the top right corner of the raw timber is a small testing patch with "木肌美人", water based product ....Once when the "木肌美人" is dried, it becomes just like the raw unsealed material. Timber has to be sealed to control moisture content, termite attack etc for longevity....we can't just ignore the practical side for our aesthetic preference... Best is to be able to have both!

introducing Seatondale

We have been working on the schematic design for a heritage house in Sydney, called "Seatondale".

The building history could be tracked back to 1815, and several important people have owned the property.

The client is looking to renovate the existing heritage house, and add 2 new dwellings to the rear of the heritage house....our task is, "how?"

With 3 dwellings on the same land, there is inherent issues on privacy, overlooking, and overshadowing to address.  Easiest is probably to build a wall around the dwellings to isolate them from each other.....but then, there is no interaction, and no benefit for them to be next to each other.  It is a rare situation to have 3 dwellings on the same land, of course we should make something interesting out of it!

So the idea is, "garden as the sharing, buffer zone between the dwellings." - ok this is still rough, there will be many more refinements to come along the design process... - rather than using fences to block each other out, we started exploring ways to screen and borrow views to expand the imaginative boundary whilst maintaining the privacy of individual dwellings.

we first looked at off-setting the building volumes from the heritage building articulation. Down side is access and overlooking.

We then tried to reduce building bulk by building smaller (but more) volumes, so the dwellings become part of the landscape - but the building appeared bulkier at standing height, and overshadowing was aggravated (this is like the 10th scheme already...)

..............So.............

So we decided to go simple - minimise building footprints, orientate to face the sun (and away from each other) to improve building amenities

We will get busy on this project in 2011, hopefully I can tell you more about it soon!

Making of Phamish - Part II

Today lets talk about the lightbox at Phamish, following the previous blog entry on making of Phamish (HERE).

Half way through the design process, the client raised issue about something they had some serious problem with in the original shop - the lightbox.  It was also nicknamed the "lobster pot", or the "broomstick cupboard"..... the love showed in the naming.  Apparently it was shipped down from Gold Coast, costed a bomb and weighed a tone. Arrived smashed, it didn't deliver much light if any to the shop.  In order to relieve their agony, we had to come up with something in line with our design concept.

the original lightbox - this was as much light as it could deliver

...so this is what we proposed after a week of brainstorming.

together with the panels, the shop could have a festive atmosphere, quite so Chinese

One of the main imagery we had during design phase of the shop, was people dining amongst the field of chrysanthemum flowers, surrounded by the amicable and mysterious ambience.  By incorporating the lightbox into the scheme, and with the light projection on to the ceiling, it could add another dimension to the ambience we aimed to create.

Here are the process we went through to make the lightbox possible....

we had to create a 1:1 prototype to test out the lighting condition, to see if it actually works...

the sun filtered through the prototype cutout, looks like the idea could work

we then went into the restaurant after it closed at night, to test on site. It was difficult to see if it actually would work on site, because the lightbox had diffused fluorescent tubes as light source which was not too good at projecting shadows. With the success earlier with sunlight, we decided to replace fluorescent tubes in the lightbox with spotlights, in order to cast clearer shadows on to the ceiling.

electrician installing spotlight. We also decided to remove the dowels on the side (see earlier perspectives) because they were loosening up and could fall on patrons dining directly below

testing light effect with the new spotlights.......hmmmmmm........we could see "something"......

at that point there was no going back, we had to keep progressing with the new lightbox (it would still be better than what was there even if light projection didn't work)

miraculously after it was installed properly, the projection worked beautifully!!!!!

effect at night. Because the restaurant only opens for dinner, the lighting effect was of vital importance

sitting underneath the new lightbox, looking towards the wall panelling...surrounded by chrysanthemum flowers...

reopening night after (3 days of) construction. people dining amongst the chrysanthemum flowers in a festive atmosphere...exactly how we imagined!

With every project there are things we can not expect or test before we go for the real deal, but it is important that the decisions were made with background study and a level of confidence.

Try out Phamish and experience the ambience we have tried to create when you walk past it in Darlinghurst - their duck and prawn pancake is absolutely the best!

Making of Phamish - Part I

While we are approaching end of 2010 a.k.a. 2 years birthday for Facet Studio, I will be putting up some construction photos of older projects.

Found some old photos on Phamish construction....it feels like a long time ago!  Lets have a look of the process the panels went through...

The client approached us with an existing restaurant, requesting for "feature" incorporating "chrysanthemum" and "gold".  "Red" is the image colour of the restaurant with 10 years continual popularity, one hidden task for us is to inject a new image without sense of abruptness, and without interrupting operation of the restaurant operation.  Together with public holiday, restaurant weekly day off, and weekend, we had 3 days on site for construction.

original site condition

original site condition

The design process started about 8 months before the actual construction, to plan everything out.

As we have had extremely limited space to work with, we started by thinking that if the “new image” we were creating not only serves as graphic design, it would be fantastic if it could also contribute in creating a sense of expansion in space.

From here we focused on the “partition” as a system which softly defines the spaces and is widely utilised in Asia, then decided to randomly locate five “partitions” which features both “chrysanthemum” and “gold”.  As a result a space was formed between “partition” and the existing walls, which is where people can feel the sense of depth.  Furthermore, by dividing the chrysanthemums into five panels, the void between the sliced-open chrysanthemums gives room for more imaginary chrysanthemum to form in the human brain.

original perspective presented to client for design sign off.  We proposed partition system with laser cut chrysanthemum artwork to juxtaposition the solid and void for a rich lighting effect, and to stimulate people's imagination

We were inspired by Chinese traditional paper cutout for the chrysanthemum patterns. After going through several options of patterns, studied on perspectives, and settled on one design.  We then transformed the design to a suitable format in preparation for laser cutting.  Original artwork (c) Facet Studio

panels are being prepared for applying brass florentine after laser cut.

the brass was applied to the laser cut panels, then aged with patina and polished back

panels were delivered on site

first panel was up very soon. this panel has little issue with rear access so was relatively straightforward

while the first panel was being installed, we started installing new spot lights on the other side of the shop

electrician working to minimise the amount of cords visible. This is the difficulty with retrofitting or working within existing context.... we had to go under existing timber floor, and trim part of the light fitting to bring cables through.

new spot lights installed, equally distributed along the bottom of the wall.

now we can start installing panels on the other side.....but the distance between the ceiling and the floor is much smaller ....the panel is too long for the space..

unfortunately the panels had to be trimmed on site.

...now it fits!

one by one, panels were installed with some minor adjustments

all installed!

end of the day, client came for a visit. We all sat in the restaurant after 2 long days.... this was after a long 8 months of design, tender, studies, finally we sat in the space we have been imagining....(sigh with satisfaction)

Tomorrow I will talk about the lightbox ...another battle in Phamish!