boston meeting

slant roof, summer solstice, noon

pitched roof, summer solstice, noon

shed design from the circle

pitched design from circle

shed interior, south wall

pitched interior, south wall

i travelled down to boston yesterday and met with many faeries at jim and jay's place in cambridge. we had a good meal and meeting. i presented the rationale for changing the plan of the kitchen to be narrower and the idea of phasing construction to allow for variability in labor and weather. everyone liked the new plan. this was the same presentation i made in new york.

i then presented some new drawings that showed some different massings for the building. i'd been playing with pitched roofs but they didn't seem right to me for some reason. so i tried out a shed roof pitched in the same direction as the slope of the land. gabriel came by my computer and said he really liked the shed roof. i showed it to a few other people. they liked it too. so, i did a little more work on the modeling and brought drawings down to boston, which are pictured here. the window designs are preliminary and not thought out, so think of them as hints rather than explicit.

the shed roof has many features that make it attractive for our kind of project:

• lower slope that's fairly easy to walk on with less danger of falling off. a steeply pitched roof is more difficult to work on,
• all precipitation drains off the back of the building, downslope of the building which eliminates having to drain as much water away from the front of the building.
• the southern facade is taller allowing for another row of windows facing south which will let in more light and in the winter more solar gain to help heat the building.
• because the slope is lower on a shed, the north side could have an extended roof that provides good cover for wood storage and even an alternate hang out spot.
• a shed roof allows space for clerostory lighting above the porch roof proving the kitchen with more southern light.
• the higher windows on the southern side of the shed will provide a higher view of the hillside and sky than a pitched roof, unless the pitched roof had a southern skylight in it.
• the shed roof design presents a much larger face toward the circle than the pitched roof design, which people seem to like.
• people like it!
• it may be easier to build a shed structure.

so, by the end of the meeting, there was informal consensus that we should proceed with the new kitchen plan under a shed roof design.