floorplanner house | marijnhoekstra

The process of getting to my final project

Step 1: Drawing

The very first step of this process was to draw a 14 by 14 cm cube on a piece of paper. You had to 'cut out' pieces and then put them back in another spot. By doing this you created a floor plan for your first floor. My paper got lost somewhere but I used the exact same outlines as seen in the pictures.

Step 2: Floorplanner

After you were done with the drawing/outlines of your walls you had to make a house in Floorplanner. I used the sketch as a housedesign plan. After I finished with the walls I started thinking about what room could go where and how I would furnish the house. It took me quite some time to get to the final design (a fully furnished house, garden and garage) but I really liked the process of furnishing my house and I'm really happy with the end result.

Below is a slide show of all the rooms inside the house.

Step 3: Building

The third and final step is building the house that you created online (others made houses in Minecraft, Sims or Tinkercad). You first had to draw all the walls with doors or windows in them. After you did that you got a piece of very thin carton and you had to measure all the walls and you had to cut them out. I was sick for one lesson so I could skip this part and just cut everything while I was building. I wrote down all the walls in my Blackbook and then one by one I cutted them out and glued them with wood glue on my base. This was a bit messy because the glue was white but it would dry up see through. For the windows you had to cut out the window and then put a kind of plastic in it so you can look through it.

Why is my house sustainable?

A sustainable house is a house which is energy efficient by itself, environmentally healthy, respectful for the natural environment, comfortable for family life, in other words to be sustainable designed, built of green or recycled materials, and this house should use alternative energy resources.

How is my house energy efficient?

- I have used solar panels on my roof to provide my own energy for electronics such as a washing machine, dryer, vacuum cleaner, to charge phones and other electronics, lights and basically everything that uses energy. All these things cost a lot of energy so in the scullery there is a storage place for all the energy that isn't used.

How is my house environmentally healthy?

- As you can see, my roof is made of grass and kitchen gardens. This doesn't produce any harmful gases. The entire house is made out of recycled products. The walls and floor are made of reclaimed wood. Inside I also made a smaller garden. You could use this as a garden or as another kitchen garden for the plants that can't go outside.

How is my house respectful for the natural environment?

- This house will be located in Egypt (Egypt has approx. over 3000 sun hours per year). Because the sun shines a lot, it will be a bit more difficult to start a kitchen garden but there still are plants like the Egypt onion etc. In Egypt the climate is really warm with little rainfall so every drop of water that isn't used will be saved in a water storage located under the house to keep it a bit cool. Under the house I also have a water cleaning system.

How is my house comfortable for family life?

- I just created a normal house for a normal family so there are no exceptions on how to live a normal life in this house.

The listing price for this house is 1 million euros.

Reflection

Opinion on my work:

I am most proud of my work in the site Floorplanner. This is because I spent a lot of work on it (5 hours) but I also thought it was really fun so I made it more as a hobby than just for school. I don't think I need to improve anything in Floorplanner.

As for the real building there are some points of improvement. The first point is that I worked to quickly. I missed one lesson (so two hours) and because of this I was stressing that I wouldn't finish it on time. I rushed with cutting all the walls so some are a bit higher and some a bit lower. My roof also isn't the best. I thought I cutted everything perfectly but then one side was too short and then I started cutting more and more things and in the end it didn't really fit anymore but we didn't have any time left so I just had to use this roof.

Opinion on my work ethic:

I do think that even though my house is a bit messy, I still worked pretty good. I talked a bit during the lessons but I still managed to get my house done in time with everything that I wanted on it done.

What would I like to change?

I think that I want my walls and roof a bit more precise so that when it rains the people living in the house won't be drowned. Behaviour wise I could talk a little bit less but I still think that I improved my behaviour compared to the last projects.

How would I grade myself?

I find this a really hard question because I don't know what is good and what isn't but if I compare my work to those of my classmates I would give myself an 8 for my Floorplanner, a 7 for my building, a 7.8 for my website and a 7 for my work ethic.