Frog Up or Down

One of the more interesting things about Walter Segals detailing, is the use of a Tartan Grid, thats alined to the size of materials as well as the structural needs of the building. If you take time to have a look through the Excellent AJ article on Walter Segal , you might want to take time and review his explanation of this grid. It’s not the usual grid you might expect to find on a house or for that mater any other Architectural project I have ever worked on in 45 years, and consist of a smaller tartan grid fitting within a master grid. Walter segal houses were, or are, made with as little waste as possible, materials used are fitted whole, not cut, hence the tartan grid, which is used to control the main materials and they are intended to fit between the main structure grid. Lets start with the smaller tartan grid, which is made up of a 600mm wide larger spacing with a 50mm wide space between. The 6000mm wide space being the width of a plaster board . The 50mm spa...

I have just added an old 1966 television program from Youtube to the first post in this set of articles on Walter Segal , this time however, I thought I would separate Walters work with this video looking at his designs from a different perspective. This link will take you to the Google Map, there is a lot of tree cover, but the site is there to be seen.

Building the Walter Segal Way, takes you into a minimal foundation design. Its simplicity itself, yet works as well as a strip foundation, and the steeper sites lap up the method. So whats involved, simply a paving flag sitting on the earth, with perhaps a small circular concrete pile below, the paving flag following the contour of the natural land. The load from the timber structure loading direct onto the paving flag at its centre. The AJ Article has this in depth, which I will send or give a link out for, if for research,  and the films particularly the Grand Design film explains this in a little more detail. The impact on the land from the house is minimal. The video below bottom helps to understand it all, its not great and uses concrete posts rather than paving flags, but you get the basic principal, but I downloaded a sketchup file of a very good 3D Sketchup model part finished, and made the video immediately below.and the jpg to the left, I think it shows the co...

Grand Designs produced this program in 2014, its an up to date view of construction the Walter Segal Way, the construction, but more the people involved, and the problems. But excellent all the sane.

If you have followed my blog for the past few years, it will come as no surprise to learn of my fascination with the Architect Walter Segal . I first came into contact with him and his method of timber frame building as a Tech guy in Dow Construction Products, we got involved with making a new updated version with Styrofoam as the loose core insulation not quilt, at the centre of Alternative Technology mid wales. The Architect Jon Broom was the designers at the time, he worked with Walter, and although runs his own practice in London, he still has strong ties to the method Walter devised. The AJ at about the same time printed a booklet attached to the AJ, it looked at the way he viewd materials, the method of layout, and his tartan grid that aided layout design by looking at the material sizes. I still have a copy and if you want a pdf for research, please let me know I send a link to down load it. Recently I recieved an email from the the AA about an affordable Housinr ...

It's so hard, how to teach the basics of Foundations in less than an hour, so this presentation set is my stab at introducing the subject. There is a load more to teach, so this is meant as the opening salvo. I have one on Piling, water tables and an intro into Walter Segal , and his pad foundations, plus more on the Building Regs Part A, and more on the effect of trees. Its also a chance to see if I can import my presentation into Blogger from google Docs using the link code.  Which I am please to say seems to work well. One of the benefits of using Google Slides, is that as I see more info on the subject, I can add it to the slide set, and my students will see it, as the link as in this case is direct to my account. I am also using this as a test to post date this blog, so although your seeing Wednesday, I wrote it late Tuesday afternoon. Related articles Walter Segal Video Architectural Technologist - Walter Segal and his Tartan Grid Architectural Technologist...

Image by eversion via Flickr Ideas sometimes come thick and fast, some days they just don't come at all, so I now constantly carry with me my iPhone for the camera and notepad, and my moleskin for jotting ideas that I can't put into words. Currently I can't get the environment out of my mind, its like everything I see has a connection, from material source, to running costs, to maintenance, why oh why do we build houses with such deep and expensive foundations,  the innovation is to develop a simple foundation that allows minimal contact with the ground, I want all of the materials manufactured in a factory and brought to site ready for installation, now you going to say that this is tried and tested technology, and your right, so were is the innovation , simple its in the ground, think of the major building problems, and you think of damp, so if the house is supported on simple piles , and the piles are connected to a lattice of beams, around the perimeter ...

Image by eversion via Flickr Ideas sometimes come thick and fast, some days they just don't come at all, so I now constantly carry with me my iPhone for the camera and notepad, and my moleskin for jotting ideas that I can't put into words. Currently I can't get the environment out of my mind, its like everything I see has a connection, from material source, to running costs, to maintenance, why oh why do we build houses with such deep and expensive foundations,  the innovation is to develop a simple foundation that allows minimal contact with the ground, I want all of the materials manufactured in a factory and brought to site ready for installation, now you going to say that this is tried and tested technology, and your right, so were is the innovation , simple its in the ground, think of the major building problems, and you think of damp, so if the house is supported on simple piles , and the piles are connected to a lattice of beams, around the perimeter ...