EDAI
Earth Design Analysis & Innovation
Design: Building | Community | Interior | Landscape
Energy & Resource Efficiency Elegance of Structural Elements Sensitivity to Place Informed Inviting Inhabitable
Architectural services are more than just construction drawings. An architectural designer represents your interests in adhering to the intent of the project. Hearing your desires and ideas, EDAI develops a design to reflect the owner's intentions, applying knowledge of materials, construction, holistic consideration to the site and the goals of the project, to create buildings and landscapes that are pleasing and hold value. Design services provide the very important function of guiding construction to insure that your intentions for the project are maintained, serving to protect your interests.
Energy and resource conservation - "green building" considerations are at the core of every project.
A high degree of attention is placed on design: the functionality of spaces, details, and integrating themes of buildings and places. Materials, proportions, and patterns are considered carefully. You have the opportunity with your building project to create a piece of art, a landmark people admire and recognize, all while making it affordable, and EDAI can make that happen for you through thoughtful design.
Historic District Auxiliary Dwelling +
Garage
This auxiliary dwelling unit with a ground floor garage is in the Historic District of Salida, CO, meeting Historic Commission requirements of design features. To meet the needs of the existing historic building, this ADU has a cantilevered living space to allow for more room for parking in the dense downtown area, while allowing for a 2-bedroom, full kitchen and full bath apartment on the 2nd floor. A new exterior stair accesses this ADU as well as a 2nd floor apartment of the existing historic building. Passive solar is also featured in this building with substantial south-facing glazing in the open living area and metal awnings sized and positioned to prevent solar gain during the heat of summer. This building is presently under construction.
Live-Work Residential Community
The New American live-work development is designed for Bozeman, Montana, a small city that possesses a distinctive character that is, as many places are throughout America, threatened by rapid growth and change. To give new construction a sense of place, the questions must be asked, “What is the history here? What makes Montana what it is?”
The New American House has a clear identity comprised of historical influences of traditional form and material, the theme of the rugged individualist of the Rocky Mountain West, and is designed in response to analysis of the dry, cold, sunny climate in Bozeman.
The New American House and community is flexible and provides for a variety of needs for living and workplace. It is close to and within Community, it is accessible to business yet provides a private refuge. The New American House is also grounded by the character of its place.
Passive Solar House
Maximizing south-facing glazing and minimizing the depth of the interior space, this 1800-square foot home is able to optimize heat from the sun in winter, yet remain cool in the summer with an appropriately-sized overhanging roof, cross-ventilation, and thermal mass. This home is designed for a location west of Salida, CO, with spectacular mountain views, sunny but chilly winters, and some windy days. This home is designed to create a more-inhabitable outdoor space, with a courtyard created by the shape of the house while still having ideal proportions for passive solar heating, passive cooling, effective south-facing windows and thermal mass of materials. This rendering and plan are representing exterior walls constructed of insulated rammed earth.
Interior Design
Creating and enhancing interiors allows for the greatest improvement to a building for the least cost, and an interior design professional can help make the most of your space.
EDAI offers expertise in color scheming, lighting, acoustics, and material selection, with sustainability in mind.
Rooms can be dramatically and affordably transformed by alteration of the flooring, countertops, cabinet handles, ceiling surface, broadening doorways, and rearranging walls. A balance of color, contrast and coordination of elemental materials ties these spaces together.
Environmental Education Center
This education center in Washington is designed to augment K-12 science education, with spaces for laboratory classrooms, an interpretive gallery, with an attached sun-space. The sun-space functions as a source of passive heating in winter, as well as a greenhouse and indoor fish-rearing area. A secondary campus building contains additional staff offices and labs.
Urban Design: Transforming Streets, Highways, and Communities
The look and feel of our communities and cities can be created and changed through design. What makes a place desirable, attractive, a place you want to pause within?
Streets and highways can be adapted to be more friendly to people, not just cars while enhancing efficiency and commerce.
Playground Design
This playground was designed for an alternative play space within a city park that principally functions as a baseball facility.
This playground provides opportunities to suit age groups 2-5 and 5-12, and is not only Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant, but also strives to enable integrated play among children of varying abilities, incorporating the principles of universal design, particularly with the slides accessed by ramps (instead of ladders) and the spring platform, which can be enjoyed by children of all ages and abilities.
The design utilizes component materials from the old playground at this same location that were intended for demolition: The design prevents approximately 2 tons of steel from entering the waste stream by creatively and adaptively reconfiguring previous playground pieces.
Residential Landscape
This outdoor area was conceived from the home-owner's desire to create an inviting outdoor space on the sunny and sloping south-side of an exquisite Colorado mountain home. This installation now provides a large terraced patio with built-in stone seating, stone paving and native and drought-tolerant plantings designed to transition the indoor space to the natural high-mountain desert surroundings.