It’s that time of year – the 2011 ORIX Parade of Playhouses benefitting Dallas CASA.
The Parade of Playhouses, hosted by NorthPark Center, provides an opportunity to help abused and neglected children realize their dreams of finding safe, permanent homes. In its 14th year, the event raises public awareness about child abuse, the plight of children in foster care in Dallas County and ways to help.
During the two-week Parade of Playhouses, visitors to NorthPark purchase raffle tickets for chances to win one of many extraordinary, custom-built playhouses. The playhouse drawing is held during the event’s closing ceremony. I have participated in this event 3 consecutive years and I have had a great time with it.
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The concept for this years playhouse is that it’s a entomologist’s scientific station for examining bugs (because that’s what entomologists do). Maybe this is because I asked for some input from my daughter and she had just spent the day collecting and sorting bugs that we discovered in our backyard while planting bushes. I still have my personal rule for designing follies like this – it has to be something that I would want in my backyard and not a disposable building.
All in, I have spent about 60 hours coming up with this design, vetting the construction details out in SketchUp, and creating these construction drawings. I was able to put together the drawings for last years design in about 4 hours … these took twice as long (uh-oh). I have a great deal of interest in expressing the design of this playhouse through how it is built.
Scale is another very important item for me. Just like last years design, I think that is you look at these drawings without paying attention to the dimensions, you would think that this is a full size building, rather than the kid sized version. Not to toot my own horn (too loudly) but that’s a lot harder than it sounds. With that, here are the construction drawings:
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So there you have it – the construction drawings for my playhouse design. It seems laughable to say that there is a lot of information not decided or indicated on these drawings looking back over them. I still have to work on the final materials and color scheme, plus I know that I need to remain flexible with the design considering the contractor I have tapped to help make this design a reality is donating everything it will take to build this playhouse. That contractor is none other than Barry Buford with Buford Builders, Inc. I have worked with Barry on several of my residential projects over the last 8 years and this will be the 3rd consecutive year that I have “forced” him to build my design. Considering that this is my 3rd consecutive year to do this … well, you do the math. Barry is a good guy and asked to work on this project – I didn’t have to force him to do anything.
The delivery date for this playhouse is August 4th so there will be one or possibly two more posts on the construction progress in the coming weeks. Let me apologize now if you get sick of seeing these playhouses – I think this is a great cause and I wish more architects would get involved. I’m not going to get up on my soapbox (I did that Tuesday) but anyone who is in the Dallas/ Fort Worth metroplex, I am going to expect you to come up and say hello, maybe even buy a raffle ticket or ten. I’ll let you know the particulars as soon as I know them.
Cheers.
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