and the rest...

thought i'd post the rest of jamie's lovely renders...






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the design

so...the overwhelming response to my last post has been something along the lines of "so david, nice site...bit small...but it's not a house". how astute (and kinda rude). so with limited further ado, let's see what the proposed joint looks like. we're a bit past sketch design now, having already submitted for council approval, but it hasn't changed too much from day 1, just grown and matured.

it's 93m2 (perfect for zac and i) with roughly 200m2 useable outdoor space, including a huge roof deck (perfect for open-air dinner parties). the north facade is all operable glazing to allow for efficient heating/cooling/lighting, and the rest of the walls are grey cement block. they in turn, match the floor, which is a polished concrete of some sort, the deck, which is also concrete, and the carport, which is concrete council pavers. concrete is the material of choice this time around...in case you didn't spot that...

in addition to that grey, grey exterior, the house will have some huge 'green screens', for privacy, shading and general sexiness. and a lovely green carport...for porting cars, i guess. the roof has access, up an exterior industrial staircase, to water the plants and sunbathe.

the interior is as yet unclarified, but the gist is that the house is sliced into thirds (3 panels each on the glass facade). the first three, closest to the r.o.w. and the green wall in pic 1, is the huge master bedroom and reading room. the middle is the ensuite/main bathroom (situated at the rear with a chimney-like skylight open to the sky), the small study and the kitchen. the last 3rd is the living and dining free-for-all area. this area can then be opened up to the deck to allow for al fresco something or other...

for those archiphiles out there, the little house is, to some extent, based on phillip johnson's first residence, which i hope bodes well for my future career. look it up, it's beautiful.

so that is that, until the concil tell me i can't have half of it. thanks to jamie for the lovely renders. comments and critiques are always welcome, but i'm pretty sure it's pretty awesome.

site

the site:



so this is the little bit of earth that zac and i now own. it's a very strange thing to realise that you are in possesion of a bit of 'the earth'. of course there are all kinds of people and regulations that tell you what you can and can't do with it, but still...i know it's a corny sentiment but when i first stood on it i had a sense of responsibility and respect - that this was a piece of ground that i would need to treat well and take care of it...well, like a caretaker... it's a blank slate and i'll try my best to do something worthwhile with it, but after that i have to pass it on to the next person. is that what everyone else thinks when they get land? anyone else? anyway, here are the stats:

241sqm, inner suburban perth, subdivided rear lot (it's an old backyard) with right-of-way access. it's on a hill with a nice landscape-ish slope to it, and has some very close, very character-y neighbours. my favourite part is the dinky path down to the letterbox at the front of the old house. it's a long way to walk to pick up our mail in my y-fronts, but still, it's cute.

so that's the site. i'm looking forward to tearing into it with a bobcat.

apartment house

this is a blog about a small house. a small house that is going to be built on a small block for (hopefully) a small amount of money. it's small like an apartment, hence 'apartment house'. it's also having a bit of a difficult birth at the moment (both this blog and the house itself) - it has taken me two days to get this first post online! i'm going to avoid any further exposition at the moment, in preference for actually getting something recorded.

so that means that THIS is the first post, which means that i am going to have to go backwards to cover events and incidents that have already occured, as well as going forward as new events unfold. don't worry, it'll be just like a david lynch film!

things that i will be coming back to:

- the block
- the sketch design
- the block party

things that happened today which are still too irritating to be recorded in a coherent fashion:

- the submission of planning application

so unfortunately, instead of some grand, clever first post, this is all i've got. don't be too concerned - it will get better (at the very least because there are pretty pictures to attach!).

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