Photo: Patrick Gordanier
Architect Roy Ettinger, with his firm Geometrix Architecture LLC, completed a design-build project for a floating house with numerous metal applications for Karen Ettinger, his wife, and himself. Ettinger’s design is symmetrical and balanced, and has a nautical and industrial style.
Geometrix Architecture also completed installation work for the project, located on the Columbia River. All of the materials were selected to withstand its corrosive, salt-spray environment.
It is a two-story, 48-foot-long by 24-foot-wide, prefabricated post-and-beam, steel-framed superstructure building with tube steel columns and wide-flange steel beams. Thompson Metal Fab Inc. fabricated Vierendeel steel beams, and Marx Metal Technology curved them, for the project. Lampros Steel Inc. supplied the structural steel tubes and wide-flange beams.
Geometrix Architecture constructed a curved roof with 2,000 square feet of corrugated, galvanized metal roof panels and composite decking with a Galvalume finish. The same decking was also used to build the second floor. Custom-Bilt Metals supplied the metal roof panels ,and Vulcraft Group supplied composite decking, which is exposed on the underside. The main interior support beams have plasma-cut holes and were left exposed.
For the exterior walls, Geometrix Architecture installed 1,500 square feet of Ryerson’s corrugated metal wall panels with a Galvalume finish.
Round projection windows were built with aluminum checker plate and lined, inside and outside, with 18-gauge stainless steel, supplied by Ryerson. There are also projecting bays clad with metal panels in Kynar Red and Kynar Green. On several interior walls, Arconic Architectural Products LLC’s aluminum checker plate was installed.
To float the structure and attach it to its mooring, it has a pre-cast concrete box with steel beam internal grid at the perimeter supported by large blocks of Styrofoam. The house is attached to floating walkways and pinned to the seabed with large pipe pilings and hinges.
