green homes

There are only four Frank Lloyd Wright -designed houses in the state of New Jersey. One of them- located in Millstone, in Somerset County and dating from 1954- was purchased by architects Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino back in 1988. The couple’s restoration work on the house was recently featured in the New York Times after the house won a merit award for preservation in the AIA-New Jersey’s 2008 design competition. In addition to restoring the house’s kitchen pursuant to Wright’s plans (the original kitchen was destroyed in 1999 by Hurricane Floyd), the Tarantinos also installed a historic barn from Vermont on the property that will serve as a design studio.

We hear and read a great deal about the promises- and potential pitfalls- of BIM in the context of its use as a tool for sustainable design. Accordingly, we were interested to read in the most recent issue of Dwell about the Suburban Prototype Home in Bergen County. Designed by Hoboken-based Nastasi Architects for clients in the New York City suburb of Woodcliff Lake, the designers used a BIM model to successfully execute the curves and angles of a steel and glass addition to a traditional suburban ranch residence. Essentially, BIM is colloquial for advanced computer modeling design programs that allow designers to create 3-D models of a project that are loaded with extremely detailed information, at a level of precision that reduces construction time and waste and assists in the type of integrated design necessary for a truly sustainable project.

For the Suburban Prototype, Nastasi was able to transmit electronic drawings to its detailer and fabricator that set forth both geometric dimensions for the project and details on the strength of materials. The firm was also able to build a model of the property’s energy consumption by loading data on the angle of the sun, prevailing wind speeds, and average temperatures for the exact coordinates of the project site. The drawings sent to the fabricator were extremely precise, allowing it to manufacture the addition’s structural elements at comparable cost to conventional construction. John Nastasi told Dwell that he hopes to install similar types of additions on hundreds of homes, calling BIM modeling “more flexible and adaptable than other prefab methods that rely on mass-produced components and materials that are put together the same way over and over again.”

The premise of BIM- a 3-D design model that can be transmitted from architect, to client, to fabricator- offers sustainable designers an unprecedented level of control over their projects.

In testimony yesterday before the House Small Business Committee, the National Association of Home Builders emphasized its belief that voluntary energy efficiency programs and tax incentives remain the best approach for reducing residential energy consumption across America rather than blanket federal mandates.