Location:
Milwaukee Wisconsin USA. I've included several maps to help locate the city for you folks that may not be familiar with my fair town. The neighborhood is in transition and is in the early stages of gentrification.

Project Type:
7 unit rowhouse development

Program:
2-bedroom 2 and 1/2 bath +/- 1100 sq ft. 2 car tandem garage, roof top deck. Each unitis to be self-contatined. Meaning it has it's own front door, acces to private parking and own laundry facility.

Materials:
red=corrugated metal
grey=flush metal panel
tan=fiber-cement panel rain screen system
light grey= cast in place concrete

A little bit more:
The site is a challenge. It's one of those urban sites that could be considered a "left-over". Which made this project all the more interesting. The site is 139' across by 54' deep so the rowhouses fit without an inch to spare. The units sit on a concrete plinth that is partially submerged to create their individual garages. It also creates the front porch. The first floor is an open space with a considerable amount of glazing that overlooks the street. The space will have a raw feel as the second floor structure will be exposed to create the ceiling. Floor two is two bedrooms and two baths. You'll note the baths are entered directly from the bedrooms. The developer expects the potential buyers to be the parents of individuals that attend the neighboring private (read expensive) university that hope to invest in a property and pay a mortgage that would nearly be the same to rent their child an apartment. The bathrooms can however be re-configured to allow the more traditional masterbath/general bath scenario. We've recreated the yard on the roof with a deck that overlooks downtown and has areas on either side of it for a green roof to be planted.

The developer will be breaking ground in spring. I'll post construction images then. Alas my SU images our not really presentation quality. I'm sure most of you that have your own small practices like mine know why ;) . Time is a rare thing.

overview map

closer

and the location

ovreall

prespective

another perp

rear

section

interior concept

interior concept2

typ. garage---Those cars are for your refernce only.... I just put them in for PPBer's scale.

typ. first

typ. second

site

An article about the project
Here it is (http://www.jsonline.com/bym/news/dec05/376724.asp)

ok that's all for now :cheers:

Very tight site & neat design I reckon the unit width to be about 4.2m 14ft ?

What unit cost are you looking at?

Building Regulation Concerns in the UK would be about escape stair access direct into lounge (though I think we could do this as shown because of 1/2 height basement) but I am also told that these regs may change & get tighter meaning stair hall would have to be closed off as well as escape windows provided as a minimum. I am hoping that these regulations will make putting balconies on our houses ( escape balconies) easier with the plannners.

Very tight site & neat design I reckon the unit width to be about 4.2m 14ft ?

What unit cost are you looking at?

Building Regulation Concerns in the UK would be about escape stair access direct into lounge (though I think we could do this as shown because of 1/2 height basement) but I am also told that these regs may change & get tighter meaning stair hall would have to be closed off as well as escape windows provided as a minimum. I am hoping that these regulations will make putting balconies on our houses ( escape balconies) easier with the plannners.

Red,

Thanks for the compliment. You are dead on in your reckoning. The units are 14' wide. We did have to go through some gymnastics to get this design to pass muster code wise. While we don't have to do anything as drastic as enclose the stair, we did need to provided a fire speration between the units and windows that can be used as egress from the bedrooms. The units will sell for about $250,000 US. I can't disclose the construction costs. It's a secret vital to national security ;) .

Brian,
Very clear overall scheme.

Because you are building houses and not appartments stacked on eachother there would be no use making staircases fireproof. The same regulations here in Belgium. I can't understand why this should be done in the UK.

Only one little remark: the garage is big and has an outdoor space attached on the backside. Couldn't you consider to make the garage smaller (one car) and make a room at the back and use the outdoorspace as a terrace?

You make big windows on the streetside so i presume that is the southside, am i right?

Nice presentation: very clear and understandable.Keep it up.
Even though there are just two bedrooms and spaces are not that big you were able to evoke some kind of luxurious athmosphere on the outside. Like it.

About the kitchenfurniture: i am not sure about the formal language you choose, i wouldnt present kitchen details to your client a this stage.

Keep up the good work,

kwisten

kwisten,

Thanks for your compliments. We did look at the option of a one car garage with a space behind it. We quickly came to the conclusion that as the driveway court is below grade the area left under the house would be not so nice. In addition we weren't saving any money as we would need the structure anyway and the developer thought the 2 car garage would be a better selling point. The kitchen study was done at the request of our client as he was having some difficulty understanding the scale of the drawings. The windows actually face East. They will do a lot to warm the place up on our long winter mornings. They should light up the entire first floor living space. I threw that little interior model together in what seemed like a matter of minutes and it helped immensely in our discussions.

Congratulations on a well thought-out and presented scheme Brian.

It looks like you did everything in SU, is that right? If so, excellent use of the software (if not it's still clever integration). Your interior shots look good, although with no envelope I found it a bit distracting - especially the kitchen. I think it would benefit from showing exactly how it fits into its surrounding space.

The main facade is well designed - lots of connection through to the street, but elevated to give that needed separation. A good balancing act there.

The use of materials is excellent, and the form is a right balance of inventive/progressive whilst still being pleasurable and acceptable to the eye.

My suggestions are:

If the number of bathrooms is flexible, I would get rid of one of them on the first floor, as it not only takes up valuable floor space, but it also adds a huge cost (proportionally) to the expense. You could make the one bathroom a dual-access bathroom.

The rear facade looks like it could do with a bit more thought - but maybe not, depending on context. Are there yards? What are the surrounding buildings like, and how close are they? etc

It would seem from your site maps that the complex faces west/east - is this right? Have you responded to the path of the sun in any way i.e. skylights, shading considerations? Also are climatic considerations for winter and summer extremes (I have no idea what they are like at that location).

All in all, I like it - a good scheme. Well done. :cheers:

I agree, nice and neat. I would have considered alternatives for more privacy from the street, although I do not know the site and you may not need it or want it. But the article refers to a higher crime rate than the rest of the city.

Just consider if you would like more privacy that you can change the railing to a solid low wall instead of an open railing. I would prefer it if it was my house, and it should be cheaper. You could also use a combination of a low solid or semi-solid wall and railing on top.

The stair to the roof is what I would call the head of a spear. It leads to people eventually building or trying to build another room in the third floor. It is a condo, which may deter this from happening.

I'm thinking of end user market .. Young couples / Empty Nesters?
Will there be any pressure from buyer / occupier or even developer for a third bedroom?

Clients always ask me for another bedroom (regardless of how many they have) just to improve the value & saleability
so I wonder if you have another scheme in your backpocket for a studio guestroom on roof terrace & how this would look (especially if added on piecemeal)

Also how were these plans drawn up SU only?

Cheers

really nice work!!! how big is the lot?
My only critic is, on the corner units you have windows where the bed should go ...personally, I don't like beds again the window.

Lots to respond to here. I'll try and do my best. If I miss anything I apologize.

Bruce:
The developer thought the first floor bathroom was an important selling point. The second floor bathrooms can be rearranged to have more of a traditional master bath and general bath scenario. The rear facade has had a little more refinement since the model but, not that much. It faces a lot that will potentialy be redeveloped in the future. So we did want to put too much emphasis there. There aren't any yards and the buildings are in close proximity to each other. I'll post a few pics of the site if I have a chance. It's very urban. There isn't much concern about solar gain/ loss although we are hoping that the large bank in the front will allow for some winter light in. The site is bounded by taller apartment blocks. It appeared from our initial study that the angle of the summer sun and the surrounding buildings would really mitigate the summer solar gain.

Fran:
Privacy is an issue. Hopefully the level of the first floor above grade will mitigate some of that but, your solid railing idea is a good one. I'll take that into consideration. The development is a condo and so I'm we're not worried about anyone putting an addition on the third floor.

Red:
It's geared mostly toward parents of students from the local university looking to invest what would be there monthly rent check into a mortgage rather then throwing it into the wind. The other market is young proffesionals. The 2 bedrooms work well for first-time home buyers. The shceme actually started out as a 3-story plus garage with a master floor that had a larger bath, a bedroom and a study among other things. The developer wanted to move to the smaller units though.

All:
This project was indeed taken very far in SU. We've been finding more and more that we can add more information to our models withougt much effort. We typically generate all evelvations, basic floor plans and sections from our models and then import to Autocadd LT to prepare CD's. We take each project a little further and learn a little more.

Thanks for your comments!!!

Flino,

The windows are Clerestories. So they would be well above the bed. The lot is 58' deep by 139' across.

Brian,

will the next step be super maxwell renderings?
I sure like to see what comes out when cooked in maxwellrender.
I ask this because i am curious about the facade materials and how they will present themselves.

Well, there won't be any Maxwell Renderings. I did purchase Beta but the whole "RC" thing has really soured me and I simply haven't had the time to really learn the software to produce the great images i've seen here. Not to mention I'm totally swamped with stuff to do.

Hey Brian! I've seen in your website that you have a different version of this project. Any news on that?

That was actually an earlier scheme that was 3 stories. We really need to update our website. This project is in a second round of bidding as the first contractor was way over on his numbers as it is a "contemporary" project. Hopefully I'll have some people construction photos in the next few months. I've got a few other exciting projects I'm working on that I will post soon.

Cool.
Actually I like the scheme from the website better than the one posted here. It looks less symmetrical and not so repetitive. The corner building is a better proposal for the lot.

Yeah I liked that scheme too. The 2 corner units posed some logistical and code issues and therefore had to be abandoned. The design as it is now is a little repetitive but, I think it's small scale mitigates that somewhat. I promise the next one won't be.

First of all congrats to a well thought-out scheme. Straight forward, clever, no-bulshit, I like it a lot. :cheers:

I like the scheme here better than the one up on your site.
In this scheme East facade looks better proportioned than three story scheme, but I understand your concern
about strong symmetry... I thought about flipping Northern three units about E-W axis so that
you will have more privacy toward North street and more light in the unit facing to the slope.
The change will make the overall scheme more repetitive, but I would rather work on the facade more
to go with repetitive scheme (Arne Jacobsen was a master of repetitive housings...
his housing units often seem to repeat tself to infinity!) than keep the symmetry.

Another thing I might do if I were you is, not knowing how hot or cold Milwaukee really is,
to have a big window facing South on the roof level, and make the second level-to-roof stair more transparant (some kind of grill?).
This will really light up the whole apartment throughout the day, and during summer you can open up the window
in order to let hot air out and get some chill... if the window pane is insulated enough it should help during winter too.

However I never built anything in Milwaukee so you might have gone through these ideas and discarded already...just my two cents.

yeah looks godd brian...

i must be so unfashionable... cos i look at new developments and i wonder why there are so many toilets/bathrooms.

i suppose that is what the market wants..

good luck with it all.

thanks for the 5 star status!!

Takesh:

I'll take some of your advice on the next project. They're going to start excavating for this project as soon as it starts to get above freezing. (above 0 for that matter, it's -7 degrees Fahrenheit here right now). The door to the roof deck is going to be a full-lite so we'll get some daylight there. We actually had to cut some of the glazing out in order to get this thing built. Nothing noticeable though. I'll try and post some updated images as I have to prepare some for the marketing materials.

so Brian, this means the market responded well to this proposal? (from what the article said) congratulations then!
please keep us updated when works beguin.
-7 F is like -27 C !!! it is +27 here right now! water freezes at 0 C (32 F) :eek: :eek:

We've always believed the market could handle this project. Milwaukee is going through a huge rennasance right now and thus the "not so nice" areas of the city are begining to see some gentrification. It took the developer a little time to get comfortable with it but he came around eventually! That project has spured a few more we are working on in the same neighborhood. I'll post some images as soon as we get further along.

Here's a sneak peek :D

sneak peek 2---and yes it is miserably cold here!

just make sure you start them as new threads... looking forward to seeing them!

what's the software you've used for the rendering ?

what's the software you've used for the rendering ?

hi kamyarf, welcome to the forum.

what he used = SketchUp Pro (http://www.sketchup.com)
it's not really a 'render', it's just how it looks in the program.

I see these rowhouses everyday when I'm on the train.

I see these rowhouses everyday when I'm on the train.
So you finished the thing and never told us!! Shame on you Brian. How did it come out? Can we see?
Congratulations!!

Well, No one is seeing this project from a train. Unfortunately, along with several other projects we were working on it was shelved by the devloper. We spent a lot of time and in turn a lot of money working on projects that never came to fruition. This has had the unfortunate side-effect of putting my small practice out of business. I've been thinking about a informative posting of pitt-falls and things to watch out for when going out on your own. I'm still hoping to do so. I'm always looking for a little extra work if anyone is interested in some long distance collaboration!

Oh, I'm sorry for the bad news. I hope you have better luck with what you do next.
The project was really nice, why did the developer put it down?

Brian,

I feel for ya bro. Sorry to hear about your business. Feels like we've been close to out of business several times because of clients owing us lots of money. Ever think about re-locating? Ever consider joining another Studio? If you are ever in Washington DC, come by our office Inscape Studio. Keep us posted on what you are thinking.

Good luck
Ypnos

Although this has not happened to my own practice I have worked at a few where this has happened (one of the reasons & causes I now work for myself ) so I know it's difficult in these circumstances but keep fighting & believing in yourself. Your advice would be appreciated.

Well, No one is seeing this project from a train. Unfortunately, along with several other projects we were working on it was shelved by the devloper. We spent a lot of time and in turn a lot of money working on projects that never came to fruition. This has had the unfortunate side-effect of putting my small practice out of business. I've been thinking about a informative posting of pitt-falls and things to watch out for when going out on your own. I'm still hoping to do so. I'm always looking for a little extra work if anyone is interested in some long distance collaboration!
Damn. I had not read this thread in a long time and this makes me sad. I am sorry this put your small firm out of business. The way to look positive about this situation is this: you should look into purchasing a piece of property in the near neighborhood and get a business proposal wrote up and look for investors. You know the design inside and out. It would be very easy for you to purchase a similar lot and to make these designs become a reality...come on Brian, be the Jonathan Segal of Milwaukee...you can do it!!!