Syracuse, NY -- The defining exterior feature of a “green” home being built on Syracuse’s Near West Side is taking shape in a Syracuse University workshop. A computer-controlled router at The Warehouse, in Armory Square, is carving hundreds of holes in panels of half-inch-thick plywood. The panels will form a screen covering the north and west facades of the...
Chris Prior, a shop technician at Syracuse University’s design workshop in The Warehouse, carries a panel of medium density overlay plywood with holes that were cut by the computer-controlled router behind him. The pattern was derived from a photograph of light shining through trees. The workshop is cutting 67 sheets of plywood into panels of varying sizes. No two panels are alike.
Syracuse, NY -- The defining exterior feature of a “green” home being built on Syracuse’s Near West Side is taking shape in a Syracuse University workshop.
A computer-controlled router at The Warehouse, in Armory Square, is carving hundreds of holes in panels of half-inch-thick plywood. The panels will form a screen covering the north and west facades of the Live Work Home house at 317 Marcellus St.
The hole pattern is an abstraction of light filtering through a canopy of trees. It’s an example of how the design embraces the concept of biophilia: “the idea that humans have evolved through a close relationship with nature, and still have a strong need to feel connected to the natural world,” wrote architect Richard Cook in an essay about the Live Work Home house published last September in Green Central New York magazine.
Cook, a graduate of the Syracuse University School of Architecture, is a partner of Cook + Fox Architects. The firm’s Live Work Home design was one of three chosen to be built on the Near West Side in an architecture competition called “From the Ground Up.”
The competition was sponsored by the architecture school and its interdisciplinary design center, UPSTATE; the Syracuse Center of Excellence and Home HeadQuarters, the nonprofit housing agency. Home HeadQuarters is building the Marcellus Street house and two more winning designs in the 600 block of Otisco Street, R-House and TED, as part of the Near West Side Initiative.
Rendering of the Live Work Home house designed by Cook + Fox Architects, New York City. It's being built at 317 Marcellus St.
The Live Work Home house employs high-tech building materials and mechanicals to minimize heating and cooling costs and to maximize the indoor air quality. The interior fixtures and furnishings are made out of sustainable materials.
It’s built with structural insulated panels and has a heat recovery ventilator to pump in fresh air. Interior finishes are being made with sustainable materials, including floorboards cut from pieces of the house that once stood on the site and kitchen cabinets fabricated out of wooden timbers reclaimed from the Lincoln Supply warehouse nearby.
Bringing in light was a priority of the architect, who knows firsthand how dreary Syracuse winters can be. In addition to tall glass doors and windows, the house has skylight tubes in the ceiling.
The screen’s pattern of holes comes straight out of nature. A black and white photograph of sunlight shining through trees was enlarged to house size and “pixelated” to a matrix of black, gray and white dots, said Pam Campbell of Cook + Fox Architects. Through a combination of computer programs, the white areas became small holes, the gray areas became medium holes and the black areas became large holes. Sunlight shining through the holes looks dappled.
To cut a multitude of holes into 67 sheets of plywood, the design was loaded into the computer-controlled router at the workshop of SU’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, on the first floor of The Warehouse. Shop technician Chris Prior attached a 4-by-8 sheet of plywood to the machine and then stood back as the router noisily plunged in to carve the holes. About 10 minutes and 70 holes later, Prior collected the discs left over from the process and ran gloved hands over the holes to smooth their rough edges. Each panel is numbered for installation.
“All the panels are different. No two are alike,” said Jacob Brown, a fellow at UPSTATE, the architecture school’s interdisciplinary design center. “So it would take a lot of time for a person to go around with a drill or a router and create all the panels individually.”
The screen panels will be mounted on a wooden frame built two to six feet away from the exterior walls. Some of the panels will swivel so the home’s residents can adjust them for light and privacy.
The screen’s exterior will be painted an earthy brown color to protect its durable paper covering from the weather. The interior will be painted white, to reflect light into the house at times of day when there isn’t any direct light. Campbell said the reflective screen especially will help brighten the north-facing front porch by “borrowing” evening light from the west side of the house.
The screen also fulfills another principle of biophilia: prospect and refuge. That’s the feeling of security humans get when we are able to survey the landscape from a sheltered, high place, such as a mountaintop or skyscraper, Cook said in a speech to the international Healthy Buildings Conference last September in Syracuse.
The house’s raised front porch is set back from the street. A hangar-type bifold door can be left open to engage the neighborhood or brought down to create a private “outdoor room” for the homeowners.
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Contact Marie Morelli at mmorelli@syracuse.com or 470-2220.