In memory of Russell Maggs

Russell Brian Maggs

6 Oct 1961 - 19 May 2013

"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die." ― Hunter S Thompson, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas

The first design dilemma... the only way is up...

Further to the feedback we provided previously to the architects on the latest designs, we had (whilst not exactly a stroke of genius) a thought at least regarding an option for how we might be able to get up to the mezzanine / ceiling height library. Viktoria attempted to scribble her ideas to help explain...

Given that we have no idea what the Australian Building Code says about the minimum diameter of these things, we're not even sure it would take up less room than a traditional staircase...

Some random pictures of spiral staircases & mezzanine access

Fiona-the-architect had planned for a large sliding ladder to access the bookshelves and provide access to the mezzanine, as shown in the following plan:

Plan showing ladder access to shelving & mezzanine

While a sliding ladder would take up less floor space than a spiral staircase, access to mezzanine may be required by less nimble folks than ourselves though, which would make the spiral staircase a ‘safer’ option.  Neal-the-architect also suggested some kind of 'safety cage' on the ladder (stylish, of course). But this presented some other challenges. In random order, here are some of the things we were considering:

·         We both agreed that a plain ladder would not satisfy our safety concerns (particularly in relation to guest access to the mezzanine)

·         We also both agree that having a ladder / stair with a cage-type arrangement (no matter how stylish) will make getting anything up into the mezzanine a royal pain, so we weren’t really keen on the idea

·         The Android likes the idea of the ladder on wheels, which can be moved along the book case and allow access to the mezzanine – however, because we would like the book case to be floor to ceiling height, it would need to be a HUGE ladder or the books near the ceiling won’t be accessible (and there would still be the safety issue as mentioned above)

·         The Android doesn’t like the idea of a spiral staircase because he doesn’t want it to block the high ceiling ‘feel’, nor does he want it to block the view out the big windows

·         Viktoria likes the idea of a spiral staircase with a gangplank at the top of the stairs, which would run along the length of the wall (half way up the bookcase) – and because she can no longer have her revolving bookcase secret door, a spiral staircase would be a small consolation (said with bottom lip poking out)

Hence, the dilemma.  And for two people who are usually in agreement about these sort of things - this is a dilemma indeed!!

So we have handed our dilemma over to Neal-the-Architect to see what he can come up with.

We'll let you know whether we have driven him completely bonkers ...

V&A

Still more feedback to the architect...

Wow... it's been nearly a month since we last posted, which is terribly slack of us.
Lots has actually happened, but not much of it seemed particularly noteworthy... but there have been some more house plan updates which we want to share with you. One of those was, however, that although the revised plans showed the main construction material not as blockwork, we have since crunched some numbers with the architect, and have returned to our original plan of blockwork, but built to the new design.
So bearing all that in mind, here's the feedback we passed onto the architects waaaay back on 29 April 2013....

"The Android & I have finally sat down and gone over the revised plans together. We have a bit of feedback, but overall, we both did a happy dance together when we looked over the plans. We particularly love the mezzanine.

I am now attaching a copy of the floor plan, which has been numbered according to the below musings:



Numbered Floor Plan from 24 April 2013



1.       We played around with some ‘to scale’ furniture for the living room, and don’t think that the current arrangement will really work for us. Mainly, where the desk is cuts our floor width in the living area to under 3 metres (and we won’t be able to sit that close to each other without fighting). So, with out brilliant lack of knowledge about building and engineering, what do you think about having the built-in bookcases along the solid ‘back’ wall (where #1 is), and incorporating a small desk area within that? The desk really only needs to keep a laptop off the floor, so doesn’t need to be that large. We would also like to have room for the TV etc to be ‘housed’ in the bookcase area (ie some of the ‘shelves’ will need to be different shapes). The attached photos kind of demonstrate what I mean & I hope make a bit more sense:

Ugly living room design, but has desk fitted in floor-to-ceiling shelving

More like what we are thinking, but with space for a TV

This one has a mezzanine too!

More like the 'look' that we are after

2.       Can we use the stairs to incorporate more storage too?

Possible 'stair storage' idea

3.       Just out of curiosity…What is this rectangle at #3? And what is the dark rectangle near it? (can you sense our ability to read floor plan diagrams?)

4.       While it saddens me greatly to do this, I think we need to lose the pivoting bookcase-door to Viktoria's studio (#4). I really would love to have one, as you know, but I just don’t think it will work here anymore, and looks a bit more like an afterthought. And if we can have the floor-to-ceiling shelving in the living area, we should get enough bookcase space for my million books there. So if you can incorporate instead a trap door, oubliette, or other eccentricity …. alright, all those things will just have to remain unfulfilled on my wish list L. But along those lines, we thought instead of ‘normal’ doors to the rooms off that corridor (ie bath, bed, Viktoria's studio) we could have sliding doors which would take up less room. Again, here are a million pictures to capture the ‘aesthetic’ we had in mind:

OK, this last one is completely inappropriate – but man it looks cool!!

If you could please let me know what you think, that would be awesome (I hope you don’t mind getting these rambling emails, but we seemed to work well getting the last lot of feedback sorted out together this way)."

And the response from the architects....

"Hi, thanks for the feedback. All is very do-able.

I am a bit sad that we are not incorporating your secret bookshelf, it doesn’t really suit the studio you are right but would be good to incorporate some secret door somewhere.

As for the black rectangles, you don’t have bad plan reading skills, we didn’t note them! The one near the kitchen is your tall storage element which will house fridge, cupboards and potentially storage on the passage side as well. The one between Viktoria's studio and the kitchen is the “cat fun house” which we envisaged as a play structure and cosy space between inside and the external courtyard. We can translate this to some additional storage if you would prefer. Anyway Luke is currently working on the changes and we hope to have them to you in the next few days."

We have since thrown another one of our 'brilliant ideas' at Neal-the-Architect, but as this post is getting a bit on the looooong side, we'll update you all with that a bit later.

We haven't heard tale of Neal beating his head against a wall over our constant input (yet)....

V&A