Smart Framing and Red Cedar Cladding
The Harris Residence, located on a beautiful wooded site south of the Blue Hills outside of Boston, is nearing completion and the crew from MCR Construction continues to do thoughtful high quality work.
The single-story house, designed to hug the natural topography of the site, takes advantage of prevailing breezes and solar orientation. In addition, the design utilizes Smart Framing, a technique that was adopted and advanced by Michael LeBlanc, Utile Principal, to both reduce lumber costs and thermal bridging in the exterior walls. This dimension-efficient system reduced the costs of the hidden components of the structure, allowing for the reallocation of money to the Douglas fir windows (by Dynamic), Western Cedar cladding, and high-quality interior finishes.
The wood cladding is a rain screen held off the sheathing by furring strips. This system sheds water more effectively than conventional cladding because the large air space is less likely to create the negative pressure that can cause water to be drawn through the small cracks that are unavoidable in typical wood frame construction. Furring strips were installed on a diagonal to ensure that water would drain and convective air movement would occur behind the rain screen cladding.
Profitability Workshop
On Thursday, April 2, Billy Craig and Michael LeBlanc presented a workshop at the Residential Design and Construction Convention in Boston on profitabilty in architectural practice. They focused the workshop around Utile’s experiences managing its business and projects. The setting was informal, discussion was lively, and many thoughts and ideas were shared. Attendees ranged from hopeful start-ups to 30 year industry vets. While Billy and Michael didn’t come with a silver bullet for the audience to achieve their profitability goals with, they aimed to arm the room with a comfort in talking about money and marketing matters. For additional information, please contact Billy Craig.