The Experiment

We bought a large piece of land ten years ago on a very busy road just a few minutes from the beach. We subdivided the land and built a studio to house our operations on the back portion of the property. It was designed to operate as an apartment in the future, but we have since sold the property and moved our operations to an office in downtown Wilmington.

The building is sited in the back corner of the property facing just east of due south. Built on a raised slab for thermal mass, the super-insulated wood frame walls support southern yellow pine girders upon which a “butcher-block” floor is crafted to support second floor loads. A six-foot deep balcony provides just enough overhang in the warm months to cut off the direct sun, yet let in the warming rays during the colder seasons.

Many of the materials are recycled from overstocked and salvaged windows, culled-out lumber from stock yards, and various items from the local “Habitat for Humanity” home store. Roofing materials are a non-toxic latex rubber. Walls are clad in “Homosote”, a material manufactured from recycled newspaper. All of the lumber and trim is Southern Yellow Pine, a resource found right here in North Carolina. Guard-rails are made from galvanized welded wire mesh, a material used for reinforcing concrete slabs.

The entire building is heated and cooled by a ¾ ton heat pump, which is in use only six months of the year. The rest of the year we make a conscious effort to ventilate the heat at night and lock in the cool air just after mid-morning. The clerestory lighting in the center of the building allows for the heat to escape on warm days, and washes the building with light year-round. A planned natural daylighting scheme allows us to rarely use electrical lights in this building except on the darkest winter days. All of the windows are carefully planned around the tasks they serve, including the big, red “slide-up” garage door used when projects grow bigger than the building. A large white square on the side of the building is intended for use as a projection screen for the outdoor movie theatre.