Vorig week op mocoloco een hele mooie prefab gezien. Omdat er al een tijdje het idee is (ik maak graag plannen) om onze eerste verdieping wat uit te breiden heb ik het concept van die prefab een beetje gepikt om een ontwerpke te maken.

We wonen in een rijhuis met een gevel van 6 meter.. de extra contructie zal 9 meter lang zijn, houtskeletbouw om het gewicht onder controle te houden en heel grondig worden geïsoleerd.

hierin komt een fatsoenlijke badkamer, een technische ruimte voor zonneboiler, apart toilet, en een wasruimte.

zodra het tuinhuis, de kamer van Zohra, de garage, de keuken af zijn begin ik er aan. tenminste… als de gemeente dit goedvind natuurlijk..

Nu ja, ik heb goedkeuring gekregen voor een immens tuinhuis, en de buren aan de rechterkant hebben een bakkerij die bijna 15 meter verder uitsteekt. Die mens van stedenbouw moet al een hele slechte dag hebben om dit te weigeren.

there is this organisation in Belgium and the Netherlands called Living tomorrow. they are researching how we might be living inthe future.

I think this is a very cool initiative, not only are they looking to save energy, but they seem to be doing very well on the design aspects too.

I haven’t visited the place yet, but would like to do so… when the garden pavillion is finished.
(people who know me have heard me say that many, many times already..)

this is the building in Vilvoorde (Belgium)

looks nice, but they missed the ball on the Amsterdam version:

why are they trying so hard to revive concept architecture found primarily in 60’s Sci-fi movies??
in fact, the entrance can be used immediatly in a Star Trek episode (the original series that is..)

it looks ‘nice’ in it’s own way, but who want’s to live in that? Austin Powers, but not me..

look at this kitchen:

and then look at http://www.omodern.com/Eurobad/euro8.html
similarities?

the Belgian version has some nice features, the bathroom looks very cool, but again, they missed the point in the living room / kitchen, again this is clear sixties inspired stuff, but with modern materials, they use corian instead of fiberglass, but still sixties
(I don’t have any pictures, the gallery is swf, and my photo application is screwed..)
but you can check out the images on the Living tomorrow website

the kitchen they have installed is actually available today.. it is designed by Zaha Hadid who, by the way, have a very confusing website…

either way, I will never see myself cooking on something like this.

I finally started the construction of the garden pavillion (let’s not call it a garden house anymore ).
My daughter was sick today and spent most of her time either in bed or being awake and missing my companionship. so i decided to take a break of renovating the attic and do some stuff in the garden. baby girl was happy to see me, and a happy child is still the best thing a father can have..

initially a just wanted to clean the place up, but after a while i decided to go ahead and start measuring the foundation of the pavillion.
the concrete slab will measure 400 by 800

tha above picture is just after removing the top soil for about half the surface. (please ignore the mess in the upper right corner.. there used to be bushes covering that up, but those bushes had to go. Soon that little crappy shed can be replaced too.)
It was ‘hot’ today, really, it is the end of april, and it feels like it is already well into the summer.
Because of the heat, it was hard to keep the pace…

one advantage I already discovered about the location of the pavillion: it is covered in the shade of the surrounding threes for 2/3ds of the day. this will allow the building to stay cool in the summer, extreme insulation and a wood furnace will keep it nice and warm in the winter.

the red tripod thingy is a laser that shines 360 degrees, it turns out to be useless when the sun is shining…the beam is invisible… bummer.
I tried it just now (in the evening, twilight) and it is very clear now.. so the actual levelling of the surface will have to be done in the evening. come to think of it, if these tempreatures keep up, the evening is probably the best time to dig into the dirt anyway.

I have to take of around 10 cm of dirt, the concrete slab will be poured to a thickness of 15 cm..
after that has set, I have a very large working surface to start with the wood frame… really looking forward to this.

the plan is to work at the attick when little princess is awake, and work on the pavillion when she is sleeping. 2007 will be a very hard year…did I mention that number two is due to be born at the end of october? so it would be cool to have these two projects finished.

more to come soon.

I should probably start blogging about the attic too, a lot of things going on up there that are worth talking about..

In the coming summer I’m going to build a garden house, but obviously I hate the ‘tiroler’ type shed’s you can buy anywhere. I even hate those so called modern cabins.

I wanted something stylish and unique…then I found out about Zenkaya on mocoloco

an architectural masterpiece.
Based in South Africa the company offers beautiful one piece prefab’s.
I asked for pricing and delivery, but both were (as expected) a bit of a disappointment

can it be a disappointment if one was expecting
it??

delivery limited me to a size even smaller that the smallest unit on the website, but i wanted a cabin measuring 8 by 4 meters.. and the price… let’s not go into that.
The layout was also not very ideal for what I need, in fact, the only thing that was perfect was the look

so what does a man has to do?

Design It Yourself and get something like this: (gotta love google sketchup)

This will be the biggest project yet (apart from renovating my house) i measures 8 meters in length, and is 4,2 meters wide.
The outer shell will be constructed using a wooden frame, covered in OSB and finished with a few layers of polyester.
I’m currently still in the planning phase, in may, a concrete foundation will be poured, after this has set, the construction of the wooden frame can start.
expect lots of updates here..