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A Dramatic Remodel with Minimal Structural Changes

Orlando Custom Remodel

The Chapin Residence recently underwent a dramatic remodel with minimal structural changes.

The existing kitchen’s cramped walls were removed to open up the space to the new, larger family room with views of the pool. The original laundry room was relocated near the existing garage to provide space for the living room expansion. Additionally, the ceiling in the family room was raised two feet to make room for transom windows above the new French doors, improving the overall scale of the family room.

The kitchen, bathrooms, and bedrooms were also remodeled, including the master suite, complete with walk-in closets and an updated bathroom. The porch was turned into a functional outdoor living space thanks to the addition of a lanai.

For more information on the Chapin custom remodel, please visit the project profile.

 

 

Tips on Achieving Sound Protection in New Homes and Remodels

While at a get-together at a friend’s house, a small group of us were talking in the great room, just outside the guest bathroom. A friend needed to use the bathroom. Our conversation was interrupted by a sudden surprise sprinkle sound—and I’m not so sure it was the faucet. And no, the exhaust fan they depended on could not drown out the sound. When the friend came out, I felt embarrassed for them, for they had no clue it was so audible. Later, I tapped on the door and, as suspected, it was a hollow core door. This is a shame, especially since the house was a luxury home.

I live in a house where the sound from the TV in our family room can be heard through the wall in our master bedroom, even at a modest volume. Sounds easily migrate through metal stud walls and hollow core doors. Normal conversations and sounds can be heard through them; they just simply do not provide enough buffering for sound privacy.

“When it comes to privacy, every dime you spend is worth a dollar.”

Amanda Bowers, The Kearney Companies

Walls and Doors serve three primary purposes: security, visual privacy, and sound privacy. The third purpose is just as important as the first two, yet is often overlooked, or simply ignored for the sake of a cheaper door selection or construction materials.

Home design and building professionals should consider specifying acoustical walls and doors for sound sensitive rooms, with doors and construction materials achieving high STC (Sound Transmission Class) ratings.

 

Control sound and offer more value in new home construction or remodels, using the following construction guidelines:

  • On a floor plan, use a highlighter marker to identify rooms or areas that require sound privacy or buffering, and highlight the doors and walls surrounding all bedrooms, bathrooms (especially toilet closets) and air conditioning/heater closets or any other room that requires isolation from noise. Include a solid core door with a threshold; doors should not be undercut for venting. Therma-Tru noise reduction doors is one brand that provides an acceptable STC rating of 36;
    Sound-proof-floorplan-example
  • Use wood studs for all interior walls, not metal studs;
  • For best acoustic management, finish walls using National Gypsum Gold Bond® brand 1/2″ SoundBreak® XP® Gypsum Board with Sporgard™ or CertainTeed’s SilentFX Noise-Reducing Gypsum Board or similar specialty wallboard. These high-density gypsum core boards consist of a layer of viscoelastic damping polymer sandwiched between two pieces of high density mold resistant gypsum board, providing constrained layer damping;
  • Also fill the wall cavities with Certainteed NoiseReducer Sound Attenuation Batt Insulation, Owens Corning Sound Attenuation Batts (SAB’s) or mineral wool batts. These provide excellent in-place acoustic performance for interior partition acoustic systems. Depending on the construction method used, SABs can improve Sound Transmission Class (STC) ratings by 4 to 10 dBs.
  • One alternative to the specialty drywall is to use Acoustiblock’s soundproofing membrane attached directly to the wood stud framing, before wallboard is applied. The pliable, 3mm (1/8″) thick Acoustiblok membrane is engineered not to stop or even absorb sound, but through a unique thermodynamic process that reduces sound transmission virtually the same as 24-inches of concrete. A typical 2 x 4 gypsum stud wall is usually 33 to 35 STC. Acoustiblok installed in the 2 x 4 wall is lab certified at an STC of 52, better than 12″ of poured concrete (STC 51).

Acoustic Wall Detail

 

 

5 Takeaways from Harvard Design’s Miami Weekend

Last week, my alma mater was kind enough to bring the alumni event to us here in Florida for the first time. The Harvard Graduate School of Design held its Alumni + Friends Weekend in Miami, coinciding with Art Basel and Design Miami. The three-day meeting included a series of presentations, discussions, and site tours led by local and national experts in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. Below, I share the top five takeaways and trends to give you an intimate look into the GSD Weekend.

Miami_Design_District

Paseo Ponti in Miami’s Design District

1. Everyone is passionate about cities.

During A Conversation at Arquitectonica, three of the company’s original founders discussed the ties between New Urbanism, contemporary architecture, and the comeback of cities. They reflected on how their own companies’ shared history mirrors the larger conversation around the future of cities: with both traditional and avant-garde practitioners taking different paths to bring the American city out of negative cycles of the 1960s and 70s. Bernardo Fort-Brescia, Laurinda Spear, and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk talked about creating the modern-focused Arquitectonica and the branching off by Plater-Zyberk (with fellow Arquitectonica co-founder and Congress for the New Urbanism co-creator Andrés Duany) to form DPZ with a focus on urbanism both in cities as well as greenfield towns.  Fort-Brescia discussed how their early projects focused on bringing housing into the city which at the time was viewed as a place for business only. Plater-Zyberk discussed how their work at Seaside led to a much larger conversation about the future of cities. They also spoke about how their differing educational backgrounds at Yale, Columbia, and Princeton influenced their outlooks on architecture.

2. Miami21 is making buildings more urban.

It’s one thing for skyscrapers to promote density, but it’s an entirely different hurdle for them to embody urbanism. This was another central theme discussed during A Conversation at Arquitectonica. Fort-Brescia noted that previous versions of the city code often negatively influenced the design of buildings and projects. He discussed how elements of Arquitectonica’s iconic Atlantis project in Miami responded to the codes of the time, which required suburban-style setbacks and landscaping. He credited Miami21 with giving architects the opportunity to design urban, city-supportive architecture. The Miami21 Code resurfaced several times during the conference. Architect Carie Penabad mentioned the potential for the code to help Miami rediscover the “Missing Middle” of housing typologies.

3. A renewed focus on cities and sustainability could narrow the divide between traditional and avant-garde architecture.

The comparisons of traditional and contemporary architecture carried over into the final symposium of the weekend, called Coastlines: Architecture, Landscape, and the Construction of Waterscapes. During the Saturday afternoon architecture session, Chad Oppenheim spoke about incorporating the techniques of Miami Modernist architecture, more popularly known as MiMo, into his contemporary architectural style.

There are many lessons that can be learned from the MiMo style, including the way it handles the area’s relentless sun exposure and resulting heat gain. Carie Penabad discussed how initially much of the downtown skyline was populated by steel and glass contemporary buildings in styles imported from the Northeast that do not take climate into account. Oppenheim and Penabad showed how the focus on climate adaptation has helped identify common ground between avant-garde and classically inspired architecture.

4. Water: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

A major theme of the weekend was water: engaging with water in a positive way, as well as dealing with the inherent vulnerability to storms and flooding both in Miami and around the world. We toured the one-of-a-kind Miami Marine Stadium that has a storied history of hosting boat shows and floating concerts including acts like The Who and Jimmy Buffett, but has been closed down now for two decades. Currently, local citizens are rallying to bring back this unique water-based resource.

Miami_Marine_Stadium

Miami Marine Stadium

During the Coastlines symposium, speakers discussed the steps taken to deal with increased flooding in Miami Beach, as well as big ideas to keep buildings above water in even worse storms. With the increased potential for Sandy-esque superstorms, resilience planning that targets water intrusion will shape future development trends. While conventional engineering methods focus solely on hardening (building walls to stop water in its tracks), new mitigation strategies promote a mix of hardening and softening. Softening methods included preserving and enhancing natural systems as well as building new landscape solutions. Natural and manmade strategies include barrier islands, wetlands, sunken parks, and break-away walls, both natural and manmade.

In the most eye-opening session of the symposium, Kunlé Adeyemi discussed his work with the African Water Cities Project, which creates architecture in the floating world of low income communities in Nigeria where walking or swimming are the only forms of transportation.  These communities represented both a poetic interdependence where water is both home, creation, transportation and food source as well as the challenges of dealing with fluctuating waters, sanitation, and often a lack of legal legitimacy. Adeyemi proposed a classification of water-integration in communities ranging from a water independent locations, to hybrid cities like Venice and Amsterdam, and finally to the completely water-dependent communities on the Nigerian coastline.

5. City infill should focus on the missing middle.

Carie Penabad talked about Miami’s missing middle: the gap between expensive high-rise condo developments and the historic stock of mostly one-story dwellings. Much of the focus for the afternoon had been on those high dollar, luxury projects which can typically afford exotic architecture. When the topic of affordability came up, several of the architects expressed how much they would love to do affordable housing designs and said “bring us a project!” Penabad proposed filling in the missing middle as an important strategy to bridge this gap.  Miami21 has the potential to fill this need both physically and economically by allowing for more medium-density buildings that better match the city’s median income figures and to help smooth the transition between existing neighborhoods and high rises. The “Missing Middle” idea has been gaining steam for some time. The term was coined by Dan Parolek of Opticos in California and we have been busy generating new missing middle typologies here at Canin Associates.

Eliza Harris Harvard Graduate School of Design - Miami Alumni Weekend

Eliza Harris, second from the right / Photo courtesy of the Harvard Graduate School of Design

 

At Canin Associates, both Brian Canin (MAUD ’68) and Eliza Harris (MUP ’07) are graduates of the Harvard GSD.

 

 

Retro-Renovation: How to Bring New Life to an Outdated Floor Plan

Florida Mid-Century Modern Architecture - Update and Renovation

Florida has a rich architectural history when it comes to mid-century modern buildings. While the style has become a mainstay in sun-kissed cities like Miami and Orlando, some original features have not stood the test of time. Luckily, a skilled architect can revamp an existing structure to fit today’s needs without losing its historical charm. One example of bringing new life to an old building is 3107 Ardsley Drive, which is featured in this year’s Orlando Parade of Homes.

Photo by Hardwick General Contracting, Inc.

 

Elements of a Mid-Century Renovation

 

What makes the Ardsley Drive renovation especially successful is that the designers salvaged many of the original buildings blocks. For example, the keeping of specific walls preserved much of the building’s initial shape. Within the walls, however, an open floor plan accommodates the family’s contemporary lifestyle. Other vintage elements, such as the fireplace, add to the building’s history.

 

Updated Mid-Century Modern Floorplan

At 3,800 square feet, the four-bedroom, four-bathroom home offers an expansive everyday living space. The house’s size and open-concept layout easily meet today’s needs. Additionally, spacious closets and an oversized garage offer smart storage solutions.

 

To further the feeling of openness, architects removed visual barriers for a floor plan that now blurs the separation of indoor and outdoor spaces. This seamless transition is supported by natural light from an abundance of clerestory windows. Furthermore, all living spaces (and even the master suite) now feature stunning views of the adjacent lake.

 

Lastly, this complete remodel afforded architects and builders the opportunity to implement energy-efficient design standards and construction practices. From new windows to energy-saving appliances, the home takes “being green” to heart.

 

With its sleek transitional-contemporary design and energy-conscious implementation, this retro renovation creates a strong connection between Florida’s vintage architecture and today’s living needs. Having breathed new life into a stagnant design, it’s safe to say that Ardsley Drive is ready for another 50 years.