Bryan Versteeg - Foothills

[lyle_kyle]

Keep it up!!!!great start.......

[Visualator]

Here are a couple of schematics for my general ideas.
These suggest:
-how the orientation of the house helps to capitalize on the predominant wind direction as well as help to shelter some of the more delicate garden plants from the wind.The Turbines will be on a swivle base so regardless of where the wind is comming from they will be able to direct themselves.
-the garden will have a combination of native plants that will use little irrigation and maintence interspersed with an edible garden of vegatables, berries and the limited fruit that will grow in the area. The native plants will also serve to attract the 3 b's (birds, butterflies and bees).
-the rainwater will be collected and stored in a large sistern (not shown yet) and used for the toilets as well as the garden irrigation.
-the blackwater (from the toilet) will be processed (solids removed) and be treated in a wetland/creek that will run down the property. The solids can be further treated and used as fuel to run the furnace when needed.
-the warm air from the green house can be used year round to help to heat the house. As well, small vents on the roof can be opened in the summer to allow a breeze to cool the house on the hottest days.

[Russell L. Thomas]

Very cool, reminds me of a friends house growing up, the dad had laid out all the garden/flower bed areas so that he just turned on a hose at a high point and it watered the whole yard minus the lawn. I always thought that was pretty cool, to do it with natural rain fall even cooler!

[Visualator]

Im starting to block out the textures and tones to figure out what type of materials I wll use on the final model and where they will go. The actual wood and stone I use will probably be matched to the environment once I start adding the vegatation.

[Russell L. Thomas]

Looking good.

[sodrifi]

Love to see your progress! What kind of software do you use?

[jtraylor]

Looks good, I like your concept too!

[Visualator]

Thanks, Glad you like it so far.
I use 3ds Max for almost everything with V-ray for my renderer.

[AubreyM]

I like the house design, very cool looking.

[Visualator]

I really wanted to start looking at the building within a more defined context so I spent a while today just working on the environment around the area. I used GeoControl to create the geometry for the hills in the background. I'll probably fiddle with the locations of hills and valleys so that I have some better compositions in my vistas.