In the coming year or so, there’s going to be a new construction-oriented TV show on national PBS. The purpose of the show is to demonstrate new building materials and techniques–things that have the potential to be mainstream, rather than just new for newness sake or different for the sake of being different. This isn’t a show with any agenda but highlighting quality new products and showing appropriate new techniques.
The first year’s episodes will follow the construction of a thin-shell concrete dome in Stuart, Florida. The producers of the show are also the builders of the house: Billy Elkins and Deborah Razette-Elkins. They each have construction backgrounds. They chose a dome as the first project because of its exceptional energy efficiency, and its classification by FEMA as providing “near-absolute disaster resistance” (hurricanes being a problem in FL and all).
Part of the episodes will cover the details of the construction of the dome, of course. But lots of air-time will be given to products that apply to all forms of construction. For example, they just used the V-Buck window buck system, which is as appropriate to ICF construction as thin-shell domes.
Throughout construction, I’ll link in some of their pix, but many, many more are on their web site: Safe Harbor. This way you can follow progress if you wish before it even hits TV. My role is that I did the renderings of their design (shown below) and am consulting on whatever aspects of dome design and construction on which they want help.
Edited 4/25/2003 9:10:07 PM ET by Cloud Hidden
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The inflated airform at night--always an illuminating photo...
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Inflated during the day...
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Foaming inside the airform...
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LOL I didn't know they grew pumkins that big in Florida!
Be sure to let us know the dates it will be playing..
Excellence is its own reward!
Worth noting again that piffin helped me convert the files the owners sent from the engineers so that I had the dimensions for the renderings--file format not much used in my world. The hemisphereical shapes are not my first choice typically, but they're trying to keep it somewhat simple. The integrated dormers should turn out real nice, and will look even better from the inside--smoothly curved concrete is such a cool-looking medium. They're also planning on a lot of landscaping within the context of the show.
And compared to the regular rants here on Vila and ToH, these people are regular people with a construction background building their own place--they're gonna live here and their hands are the ones getting dirty. It's about 2500 sf or so--not a palace by any means, and about normal for the projects I'm seeing. Some of the materials might be upgraded, because the suppliers will take the opportunity to show off their best stuff, but it still is just a normal house for a normal middle-aged couple. They'll focus on products available to the regular joe.
Jim,
Thanks for including the pics in the posting and not making them an attachment. I live behind a firewall here at work and there is something that triggers a blocking filter when the pic is posted as an attachment.Frank
Nice rendering work Cloud. You using Viz or Max? Perspective matching a 3D Computer model to a photo like that is a bit of a trick.
Count me among the impressed!
Kevin Halliburton
"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -Elbert Hubbard-
What's Viz and what's Max?
I design and render with VectorWorks. I do the photo stuff with other software. I love doing the perspective matching--no one else is doing it in my little part of the world, so it helps to differentiate my work. Always blows the client away. A few days ago they had a picture on the photo page of the inflated dome from the same angle as the rendering, and numerous visitors were actually confused over which was real and which was memorex! Too cool how well everything can match. People finally figured it out because the real airform had some dirt marks on it and my renderings were clean! Ha ha ha.
Cloud,
are they going to include budget/costs in the show?
always informational, even though it is reginal.bobl Volo Non Voleo Joe's BT Forum cheat sheet
I don't know. The tricky thing with theirs--hope I'm not speaking out of turn here--is that some goods and services are in exchange for promotional opps (commercials, for example, and not necessarily on this show--it's PBS, after all). I know they keep strict accounting of it all, and get detailed documentation of all donated services and materials. One of the complications is that contractors might be chosen on basis of being comfortable with the TV thing and meeting the production schedule, rather than as a result of competitive bidding. I can think of one component that the contractor priced at $25K, that I'm used to seeing at $15-$18, for example. Since it's a trade-in-kind, rather than cash, there was no big need to quibble. Also, they are likely not pricing out their own labor.
That said, I'd expect theirs in their location for that size and what I know of it to be a 175-250 kind of place if I were giving guidance to a new client with the builder I'm working with in that area. Depends on amenities.
3D Studio Max and 3D Studio Viz are a couple of seriously rocking 3D rendering packages. Viz is geared specifically toward Architectural work while Max is more geared toward the film industry. Rendering engines tend to have their own "look" and your images sure "looked" like they were rendered in one or the other. Shows ta go ya what I know.
I've never used Vector works but I've heard good things about it. Hear what you are saying about too clean being the giveaway. I've spent a lot of time blurring and dirtying up my models to make them look a little more "real" in a photo perspective matched rendering but they can still be picked out by a trained eye.
Yours are some of the better renderings I've seen. I didn't realize they were even renderings at first glance. You just keep socking my knocks off man!
Looking forward to seeing a few of the dome episodes. Be sure to keep us posted.
<img src="http://image1ex.villagephotos.com/pubimage.asp?id_=2299037" width=468 height=60>"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -Elbert Hubbard-
wish me could afford a copy of max, got autocad 2k 2002
The 3d applications in autocad suck.
Do you use max at work?View ImageGo Jayhawks..............Next Year and daaa. Blues View Image
I used Max and Viz both at my last company but when I changed firms a little over a year ago I lost my toys. <Sigh> It was fun while it lasted.
I still do some pretty cool rendering work by combining Autocad and Photoshop but nothing like what I used to be able to come up with. Oh well, them's the breaks.
"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -Elbert Hubbard-
time to get the boss man to pony up.View ImageGo Jayhawks..............Next Year and daaa. Blues View Image
You should check and see if they have a student discount.
Get it while you can.
they do, but the student version isnt as good as the real deal.
View ImageGo Jayhawks..............Next Year and daaa. Blues View Image
Been a few years since I looked into it but some time ago the deal was that student versions were full versions of the software but they were not licensed for production work. Maybe things have changed.
The company I work for now just doesn't see the benefit of computer rendering and animation. I still design in 3D with Auto Cad but they can't wrap their noggins around the concept for some reason. My working drawings always end up being plain old 2D cad files.
I do get to build physical 3D models now though and I enjoy that just about as much.
Surprisingly- the mat board models I'm building now actually get a lot more favorable reaction from our clients than the 3D computer animations did with my last company. No body sees them any more whereas the 3D rendering stuff seems to be everywhere. I guess it's just a new form of antiquated novelty.
Go figure?
"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -Elbert Hubbard-
Is Safe Harbour the name of the TV show or is it just the name of this particular project?
P.S. the value of the "donated" materials is important. They will have to pay income taxes on those.
Edited 4/23/2003 2:11:21 PM ET by Bill Hartmann
Hey, I've been watching their site - really cool seeing it go up with a 1-day (or less) delay! But a question arises - a couple of days ago, they went through the effort of carefully placing in a whole bunch of "rebar stickers". Yesterday, they covered them all up with the second layer of foam. What gives? Do they mark their locations somehow?
I want one of these things!
did
Unencumbered by knowledge or fear...
The stickers have a flat end from which barbs protrude. They stick nicely in the first 1 1/2" of foam. Then you spray another 1 1/2" over that to lock the base in to prevent pull-out. But the wire protrudes, and it's easy to twist the slight covering of foam off of that and throw it away. That 4" of wire is what's used to tie the first layer of rebar. And the placement of the stickers is marked to make for easy placement. Actually, the latitude lines are marked by tying a string to the top center, and swinging it along the dome at different lengths with a marker attached to make concentric circles. Stickers go about 14" apart depending on rebar engineering.
Ah - couldn't see the wire in the pictures.
I saw the end of a segment on some Discovery Channel show that showed a different dome method. They did the foundation and whatnot, then layout out a membrane. The un-inflated membrane was then covered with a grid of rebar, which appeared to include some coils of heavy wire. Concrete was poured over that, and then a second membrane was put over the concrete. Only then was the thing inflated, concrete and all. Ever seen that anywhere?
didUnencumbered by knowledge or fear...
I was told about it, but didn't see it. Woulda liked to. Big difference in technique. It'd be interesting to see how you could place rebar flat and have it take a different shape when inflated--don't get that one. One of the advantages of the method I use is that it can be easily insulated, and there's a big diff be/t concrete and insulated concrete. And we can place concrete carefully in the thicknesses called for by the engineer. Also, the shotcrete mix ends up at 4000 psi plus which imparts even more strength to the final product.
fwiw, there's also a method some have used of placing concrete on the outside of an inflated form. Not nearly as good an idea. Insulating is once again a problem. But the biggest problem is that by being outside and exposed to elements--especially sun--the curing is different than spraying inside where the humid and protected environment will facilitate a nice slow cure.