Storage House

London, United Kingdom

Wind direction: West high-school kids, and students visiting site, cafe visitors.

Sun direction: Sunrise in the east, sunset in the west.

Highest point of the sun in winter in London is 15.5 degree celsius (January and November).

Highest point of the sun in summer is 62 degree celsius in summer (June).

The sun travels in an arc, reaching it’s highest altitude in the South (for the Northern hemisphere.)

Sound pollution: low, across the Thames, and on the walk to the site.

Materials: Mostly brick, recycled shipping containers

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Le Cabanon

The brief was to design a cabin that is environmentally sustainable, similar to that of Le Corbusier’s, Le Cabanon built in 1952. The design must be suitable for a person to live, work, sleep, and play in throughout the year. The project is to be designed for a location at trinity buoy wharf in London, then redesign to adapt to a second location in Louisiana, swamps.

Site Survey

Trinity Buoy Wharf is a former buoy manufacturing site that has now become the center for the arts, and creative industries. Located in London’s Docklands area, about one mile east of Canary Wharf, the site is composed of modern unique buildings.

Before I began my design for my Cabanon, I was inspired by images of storage, space saver and multi-purpose furniture. Based on the limited space, I wanted my design to emphasize on maximizing storage.

The interior of 260cm by 360 cm is made from various 26cm by 26cm plywood blocks stacked on top, left, and right to create the walls for the cabin.

The interior consists of shelves in between the walls. The plywood blocks can be used as furniture for sleeping, eating, lounging, working etc.

The cabin is separated into sleep and work areas, arranged around the bathroom and kitchen. To increase natural daylighting in the cabin, the design includes 100cm glass walls on the east and west wall, and surrounding skylight windows on each wall before the sloped roof.

For natural ventilation and extra natural light, the blocks can be easily removed to create spaces in the walls for windows.

Plywood block construction

For the cabin to be livable in the Louisiana’s swamplands there are some minor changes to the structure. Due to Louisiana’s abundant rainfall and mild climate, it has 14 million acres of hardwood and softwood forests that support a large pulp and paper industry, as well as production of pine, plywood, and lumber for construction. The cotton industry is another pillar of Louisiana’s agribusiness. The first of two major textile mills producing cotton yarn was completed in December 2009 in Southwest Louisiana by Zagis USA.

Relocation design changes:

Flooring changes: The cabin’s building envelope would still be made predominantly from engineered timber frames and plywood. Wood piles would be made from recycled trees from the swamps, Wood piles are 1m long. The therma-fleece (sheep wool) insulation would change to cotton insulation (cotton batts).

Louisiana’s existing agricultural and energy industries make the state a natural location for biofuel research, development, and production.

Environmental strategy changes: The biomass Stove/cooker would be replaced with a Bio-ethanol stove/cooker. Bioethanol is an alcohol made by fermenting the sugar components of plant materials and it is made mostly from sugars and starch crops.

Foundation changes: the ground is swamp water; therefore the foundation of timber frames would become longer to hold rainwater and the compositing toilet tank.