Urgent Care Clinic
The Urgent Care Clinic at The Pointe offers the first local medical care to Aberdeen MS. The clinic is a 4,730sf medical clinic with 11 exam rooms. The lobby is day-lit and the reception area features a circular layout that draws the patient into the area in a welcoming and comforting way. See A1.02 in the Design Drawings below for the plans.
Passive-Solar Home
The Westervelt Residence, under construction, is an 334m^2(3,590sf) 4 bed / 3 1/2 bath home in Purvis, MS, with engineering by Hough Power Consulting. The design used "passive-solar" and "passive-building" strategies for utmost energy efficiency. The passive-solar strategies allow natural solar gain in the winter with awnings to prohibit direct gain in the summer, while allowing natural light and views to the south over the artificial lake. Passive-building strategies involve semi-impermeable spray-foam insulation, premium windows, and a liquid-applied continuous air-barrier with drainage plane as part of the exterior wall finish to create a super air-sealed, highly insulated building envelope.
Passive-Solar Home Addition
The Wedge Residence is an 82m^2(880sf) back-yard addition which actually lowered the utility bills through passive-solar design strategies. The original home was not insulated adequately to handle the summer heat gain on the West-facing rear facade, and the original windows were not sufficient quality to manage the winter heat-loss. The pasive-solar addition acted as a buffer zone, capturing daytime heat in the slab and radiating it gradually at nighttime as the ambient temperature is falling. In the winter that provides much-needed heat to the main home to mitigate heat-loss, and in the summer that shifts the peak cooling load to the evening allowing the HVAC system to be dramatically downsized. The addition is bathed in sunlight year-round and the wall of glass allows views of nature while actually enhancing energy efficiency.
Passive-Solar Home Addition
The Fox Residence is a 152m^2(500sf) passive-solar master-suite addition that solved a number of issues, including accessibility, daylighting of the main living area, and energy efficiency of the home overall. A funny anecdote: the heating system was accidentally not turned on during construction, and the problem was not detected until mid-February– a testament to the success of the passive-solar strategy of "design-with-nature."
Super-Insulated Passive-Solar SIP Home
The 5 bed / 3 bath Swain Residence is a passive-solar structural-insulated-panel (SIP) home in Oxford MS. SIPs are continuous expanded polystyrene foam sandwiched between plywood or OSB to create a super-insulated home. First floor wall panels are nominally 20cm(8") thick, second floor wall panels are 14cm(6") thick, and the roof panels are 25cm(10") thick. Specialized south-facing windows with sheltering overhangs allow direct solar gain only during wintertime when the sun rides lower in the sky while daylighting the home year-round for substantial energy savings. The 250m^2(2,700sf) home operates on less than 3 tons of HVAC and has utility bills averaging less than $120 per month.
Seafood Restaurant
"Juicy Seafood" is a 345m^2(3,700sf) restaurant and bar in Southaven, MS. Sustainable Architecture PLLC handled the permit and construction documents and oversaw the engineering for the project.
Grocery Store Commercial Development
The Piggly Wiggly Development – under construction – is a 2,960m^2(31,800sf) building in Aberdeen, MS, which houses a grocery store as the anchor tenant, with an urgent care clinic, a shoe store, and a local value (dollar) store. Sustainable Architecture designed the site plan, the building shell, and the grocery store and clinic interior spaces. Each tenant space has a daylit passive-solar entrance, and there is a clerestory (windows up high in the South wall) to maximize natural daylighting and enhance the retail and grocery sales performance with specialized product display areas. The developer and City negotiated a grant on site for EV charging stations and a city park as part of the project.
Smock Residence
The Smock residence is a passive-house type residential design, which means it is super-insulated with high-performance windows. It has to be specially detailed with active ventilation and special thermal and moisture protection detailing to ensure not only energy efficiency but also healthy indoor air environment.
Missionary Baptist Church
New Prospect Missionary Baptist Church is a 608m^2(6,540sf) classroom and new sanctuary addition on an existing church. Sustainable Architecture PLLC designed the new building to agree with the existing building and handled the construction documents, including overseeing the engineering.
Container Home
The Belton Jr. Residence is a 6 bed/4 bath 260m^2(2,920sf) passive-solar container home (intermodal steel building unit "ISBU"). It uses 4 containers on the ground level and stacks 3 containers transversely, infilling on both floors to create a 2 1/2 story volume in the middle, for a light, voluminous space. There is a sunken living room to achieve almost 3 1/2 story space. Mixing finished and exposed surfaces creates an interesting ambiguity as to whether the containers are still shipping containers, living units, or part of a larger residential post-modern construction language. It was a fun project to design, and hopefully a fun project to live in.
Medical Clinic
The 158m^2(1,700sf) medical clinic addition and renovation under construction in Batesville, MS is a passive-building and a passive-solar building, meaning it is a) air-tight and super-insulated and has premium windows for maximum fossil-fuel conservation and, b) it is designed-with-nature to allow natural light year-round, but only allow direct solar gain in the Wintertime. This is accomplished with awnings over South-facing windows, which receive direct gain as the South sun rides lower in the sky during the Winter, but not during the Summer when it is positioned overhead. This combination of comfort and daylight gives a sense of health and communing with nature that has been shown to enhance health outcomes.
Suburban Home
The Adams residence is a 6 bed/4 bath 380m^2(3,920sf) passive-solar, energy efficient home in a suburban neighborhood, so it was designed to blend stylistically with the surrounding homes. It features a 3-story great room, with the glass solar wall facing the back yard for privacy. The goal is a modern larger suburban home with the ecological footprint of a much smaller home– an experiment in combating climate change.
Metal Building Home
The 360m^2(3,860sf) 4 bed / 3 "barndominium" in Warrentown, VA is an energy-efficient design combining residential comfort and daylighting with the strength, spaciousness and stability of metal building construction.
Mountain Airport Home
The 294m^2(3,160sf) 4 bed / 3 1/2 bath home, under construction, backs up to a private airport with its front drive on the taxiway. The home features a full basement and a large two-story great room. The rear of the home faces South with a two-story glass wall that is sheltered from the Summer sun without compromising the view of the airport. The basement construction is insulated concrete form (ICF) for enhanced strength and extreme energy efficiency. The above-ground construction is also super-insulated with premium windows for comfort and energy-efficiency.
Modern Farmhouse
The DeLaPaz Residence is a 3 bed / 2 1/2 bath 220m^2(2,370sf) passive-solar home using an indoor pool as a sunspace. The "endless pool" captures excess solar gain and releases it gradually at nighttime to level out the daily temperature profile. This helps add warmth in the Winter, and shift the peak cooling load in the summer to the evening hours when the sun is going down. The sunspace also acts as a buffer zone for the main house if it is allowed to be too warm when it is not in use, and the pool helps temper that excess heat. The home is a typical open-plan passive solar home that gets Southern solar gain into the far reaches of the Northern part of the house. The heavy timber construction also adds some thermal mass that helps with energy performance in addition to the structural strength and majestic soaring ceiling height.
Passive-Solar Home
The Giese Residence is a passive-solar home in Quitman MS. Passive solar design allows strategic large areas of glass without negatively impacting energy-efficiency. The two-story volume is designed to receive solar gain in the wintertime and prohibit it during the summer using sheltering overhangs. Inexpensive windows and interior finishes allow the winter solar gain to warm the interior gradually through the nighttime hours and reduce utility costs throughout the year, bathing the interior in natural light and allowing uninterrupted views of nature.
Missionary-Baptist church
Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church is a 600m^2(6,480sf) church in Greenville MS. After their original building burned down in 2015, the bid for replacing the church with a building that would meet their needs for worship, education, food service and fellowship were above $500,000. By designing with metal building construction, we were able to provide an inspiring architectural solution that met all those needs within their $315,000 budget, with future balcony space to grow as their congregation rebuilds in new hope.
Passive-Solar Farmhouse
The 5 bed / 3 bath, 204m^2(2,300sf) Carter Residence is a modern passive-solar home on the Holston river in New Market, TN. The twp-story volume at the rear allows the solar gain from the South to filter down to the back of the home to warm the interior evenly in the Winter, providing natural light and views, and giving a sense of openness and oneness with the land as it slopes gently down to the river from any place within the living space.
Missionary-Baptist Association building
The Mt. Olive - Bethel Harmony Association building is a 923m^2(10,000sf) multipurpose building in Louisville MS, which serves as a gathering space for more than 30 Missionary Baptist Churches. The original assembly building was built in 2009, and carried off in a 2012 tornado. Working with Webco Enterprises LLC, we were able to construct the new building for the same cost as the original but as a multi-purpose building that met the Association's needs much better in their desire to minister to the beautiful community that rose again with them as they rebuilt ... together.