Fabrication – Moonstone House

http://archrecord.construction.com/residential/unbuilt/archives/2007/07_moonstoneHouse/ default.asp

Moonstone House was originally going to be built at Moonstone Beach, Rhode Island in USA. Moonstone house was designed to maximize solar exposure as well as keeping the house well ventilated.

The architectural firm (WORK AC, based in New York), understood how to design a sustainable house by capturing the sun to warm the house and wind to cool the house down. WORK AC had perfected sustainable design with the Moonstone house by designing the house with an L shape design. This L shape design is 2 stories in height with separate private and public function area. The clients conducted extra research into solar exposure and requested that rooms should face east and west and have circulation areas facing south. As well as the design, the article has stated that the clients wanted to use ecologically conscious material that was local to the area as to keep with the environmental theme. The local materials the clients requested was cedar, which grew in abundance in the local area as well as using natural stone for the base of the house.

With high consideration for sustainable design is something that architects fail to realize its importance to architecture today as everyday living expenses increase.

Unless you pay high prices in architectural fees, homes are not usually designed to suit the local environment and use the weather to its advantage with most housing designs being generic and placed on a site. This can cause problems because heating and cooling costs could be through the roof because of impractical designs. With Moonstone, it was design with local conditions in mind to make heating and cooing costs non existence. This is what sets Moonstone house from the rest.

I consider that Moonstone house with its design to lower living costs and take advantage of the local condition, is the most important factor in architectural design as most architects either fail to understand this principle, are lazy to consider this design or don’t recognize it. Overall sustainable design is of great importance either built or unbuilt design, however in terms of unbuilt design, even though it isn’t officially built the principle is important.

Finally, had trouble finding UT3 yesterday in Liverpool, but my search will go on. On Sunday, looked at a new computer, but discovered that it is out of my price range for the moment. My sister has a new computer, so i can only hope it works on hers.

Craig