The First Facility Management Blog

For those looking for a forest retreat, Swedish architecture firm, Tham & Videgård Arkitekter, designed hotel rooms in the trees. The “tree hotels” are being constructed in northern Sweden, near the village of Harads.

Six of these units are planned for completion this year and will be managed by the Brittas Pensionat (a 21-bed hotel nearby) that will also offer additional services and support. According to the hotel’s Web site, the first unit is slated to open July 3, 2010.

Each unit is a lightweight aluminum structure hung around a tree trunk—a 4m×4mx4m box clad in mirrored glass. The exterior reflects the surroundings and the sky to create a camouflaged refuge. The interior is made of plywood and the windows give a 360° view.

Meant to accommodate two people, the units will contain a large bed, a kitchenette and bath, a living room, and roof terrace. Guest will be able to access the cabin by rope ladder or rope bridge.

Tham & Videgård Arkitekter has noted that the tree hotel concept meets an increasing interest in wildlife/eco-tourism where visitors can experience the pristine nature of Sweden. To prevent birds colliding with the tree hotels, a transparent ultraviolet color, which is visible to birds only, will be laminated into the glass panes.

Competing for business with customer service is not new to the hospitality industry, but three Holiday Inn locations in the UK announced last week an amenity that may be taking it to another level. Holiday Inn management there is trying out a new way to provide guests a good night’s sleep with the availability of human bed warmers on staff.

The free service consists of a member of the hotel staff, dressed head to foot in a fuzzy pajama-like suit, occupying a guest’s bed for five minutes. The aim is to warm the bed ahead of time, so the guest can slip into a slumber more quickly and comfortably. Provided as a trial service, the hotel will gauge customer response to this offering.

While this idea may seem downright weird to some, sleep expert Dr. Chris Idzikowski, director of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, said the idea could help people get off to sleep. “There’s plenty of scientific evidence to show that sleep starts at the beginning of the night when body temperature starts to drop,” he said. “A warm bed — approximately 20° to 24°C [68° to 75.2°F] — is a good way to start this process whereas a cold bed would inhibit sleep. Holiday Inn’s new bed warmers service should help people achieve a good night’s sleep especially as it’s taking much longer for them to warm up when they come in from the snow.”

From New York to Amsterdam to Moscow and Singapore, flies are invading unlikely places: public urinals. Don’t worry, bug lovers, these are not real flies. Instead, decals and paintings are being incorporated into the porcelain bowls in an effort to reduce the mess associated with public restrooms for men.

UrinalFly.com is in the business of “making the world cleaner one bathroom at a time.” This simple product works with a man’s basic instincts to produce a cleaner bathroom and perhaps induce some laughs along the way. According to the company’s Web site, if you “give them something to aim for, you will be amazed by the results.”

In his segment, “There’s A Fly In My Urinal,” Robert Krulwich of NPR explains:

The presence of a fly in a urinal literally changes human behavior—or at least the behavior of human males.

‘Apparently,’ May Berenbaum, head of the department of entomology at the University of Illinois says, in males, ‘there is a deep-seated instinct to aim at targets,’ and having a fly to aim at reduces what she politely calls ‘human spillage.’

When flies were introduced at Schiphol Airport, spillage rates dropped 80%, says manager Aad Keiboom. A change like that, of course, translates into major savings in maintenance costs.

Keiboom in Amsterdam says the original fly idea was proposed almost 20 years ago by Dutch maintenance man Jos Van Bedoff, who had served in the Dutch army in the 1960s. As a soldier he noticed that someone had put small, discrete red dots in the barracks urinals, which dramatically cut back on ‘misdirected flow.’

Two decades later, he proposed to the airport board of directors that the dots be turned into etched flies. According to Keiboom, Van Bedoff decided that guys want to directly aim at an animal they can immobilize. The ability to use one’s natural gifts and achieve victory over the foe while standing is the key, he explained. Guys, he felt, can always beat flies. That’s why flies are so satisfying.

So the next time you gentlemen see a fly in the urinal, don’t forget to take aim…

It can be difficult to start conversation among strangers, which is why RCA designer Thomas Urban Gardner has done his best to help “break the ice.” His unusual invention, the DeLighTable, incorporates pressure sensitive material and waterproofed electronics (which run on 12 volts of power), to transform boring tabletops into a palette of ultimate grooviness.

Ideal for bars, restaurants, and nightclubs, the surface illuminates when any glass object placed on it. People can draw or write a message on it, which fades away in seconds. DeLighTable can be ordered in the following formats: Coffee Table, Dining Table, Standing Table, Table Top Panel or Shelf Panel (custom inquiries are also welcome).

Here are some unusual tidbits about traditions associated with the Christmas tradition.

In the Middle Ages, Boar’s head used to be a traditional Christmas dish. This custom started when a bear attacked a university student and he saved himself by ramming a book of Aristotle’s writings down its throat. The bear choked to death and then he cut off its head and brought it back to his college.

Christmas Eve in Japan is a good day to eat fried chicken and strawberry shortcake. (Obviously, I need to live in Japan. These are two of my favorite foods.)

Although many believe the Friday after Thanksgiving is the busiest shopping day of the year, it is not. It is the fifth to tenth busiest day. The Friday and Saturday before Christmas are the two busiest shopping days of the year.

New York City’s Empire State Building’s world famous tower lights are turned off every night at midnight with the exception of New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and St. Patrick’s Day, when they are illuminated until 3 a.m.

Saint Nicholas of Myra, the original Santa Claus, was the patron saint of children, thieves and pawnbrokers.

53% of Americans plan to “re-gift” this year.

1 in 3 men will wait until Christmas Eve to finish their shopping; additionally, 1 in 6 men would like to get rid of all the “gift-giving nonsense.” (Gee, I wonder why?)

On Christmas Eve in 2001, the Bethlehem Hotel had 208 of its 210 rooms free.

Based on a 1999 estimated population count of North America and Europe, on Christmas Eve of that year Santa Claus had to visit 42,466,666 homes in a 12-hour period — that’s 983 homes per second.

Is it true that Christmas only became a legal holiday in England and America late in the nineteenth century? Before then people were expected to go to work on Christmas Day. Find out the real answer by taking the Christmas Gullibility Test.

One strategy in the design of more sustainable buildings is to orient structures so they benefit from the sun (for both natural daylighting and interior temperature purposes). A family in Australia, with the help of numerous sponsors, built a house several years ago that would maximize the benefit they glean from the sun—they did this by building a rotating house. The octagonal structure, completed in March 2006, was designed to rotate in order to take advantage of sunshine and shade at different times of the day and year.

Windows and glass doors constitute a large part of the exterior walls. Additionally, the house is heated and cooled with a geothermal energy system, which supplies a constant 22°C (71.6°F) to the house through the central core.

Exterior of the Everingham house

Luke Everingham, who owns the house with his wife, Deb, says on their Web site: “The idea was born when our neighbours were expounding the virtues of their new home and commented that if they could start again they would orientate the house 15° more to the north. Deb said, ‘Wouldn’t it be handy to have a house that could move?’”

The design concept was based on the following principles:

• The cost must not exceed that of a conventional house of the same size and level of appointment; the owners says the house cost A$700,000 (USD$641,000).
• The layout and finish must be highly functional
• The end result must require very little maintenance
• The house must be white ant proof
• The rotating aspect must allow the occupants to maximize exploitation of weather conditions, seasonal conditions, and 360° views.
  

  Touchscreen control panel

Set atop a turntable-like mechanism, which is powered by an electric motor, the house can rotate a full 360° around a central core of plumbing and electrical systems. A touchscreen control panel in one of the rooms enables the Everinghams to change the positioning of the house. The speed can also be varied—say company is coming and a certain view is desired, the family can speed up the change (at top speed, a full rotation takes about 30 minutes). If time isn’t an issue, the house can be rotated on a slower speed, which takes approximately two hours for a full rotation.

Stan Munro of Syracuse, NY has an unusual profession: he builds with toothpicks. We’re not talking about school project or Boy/Girl Scout merit badge caliber, but entire recognizable architectural monuments from around the world.

Munro can spend up to six months to create a building, and each of his creations is built to 1:164 scale. His work can be seen at the Museum of Science and Technology in Syracuse.

Look at the amazing works of one of the most patient men in the world.

Note: before making large toothpick structures for a living, Munro was the “wacky morning guy” on 13WHAM-TV, in his hometown of Rochester, NY.

Casulo, a new concept for mobile living originated in June 2007 as a part of the dissertation of Marcel Krings and Sebastian Mühlhäuser at the Köln International School of Design in Cologne. So what is it? Pictured at left, it’s a complete furniture set which can be set up in less than 10 minutes and later disassembled and repacked like a standard pallet. No tools are needed in the process.

A packed Casulo can be transported and stored at nominal expense by any carrier and shipping agent. Not only can a disassembled Casulo unit be packed with one’s personal items, the Casulo itself is sturdy and thus no additional packaging materials are necessary when it is ready for transport.

The Casulo can then either be sent to a prearranged address or delivered directly. Two people can lift, carry, and assemble each piece of furniture within the Casulo. The unit is constructed of durable, long lasting materials.

Each Casulo unit includes all the essential furniture for setting up in a new place: wardrobe, large desk/table with a separate desk cabinet with locking drawers, a revolving, height adjustable desk chair, two stools, a single bed and mattress, and a tall set of shelves. The stools and the drawers of the desk cabinet also serve and double as additional storage containers.

When disassembled and packed, the Casulo becomes a crate. It can even fit in the trunk of a medium sized vehicle.

When the furniture has been disassembled and prepared for transport, the Casulo is safe and sturdy; additional packing materials are not required. An additional feature of the Casulo is that when packed, half of its volume becomes space for storage and at least 440 pounds can be safely placed atop it. See the video below.

A variety of features makes each unit an innovative solution–particularly when temporary living space or student housing is necessary: there are invisible locks on the desk drawers; a magnetised clothes rack system; and safeguards for computer cables and electric wires. The Casulo ideal for those in job training, students, and people in the service industry who have to change their location frequently. People who must move frequently and rent empty rooms need no longer accumulate sets of inexpensive furnishings whose transportation costs are higher than the value of the furniture.

Still in its prototype stage, Casulo’s designers look forward to going into production as soon as possible. For more information, visit this link.

With the growing interest to “bring nature indoors” into buildings and homes, increasingly we see measures like expansive natural daylighting and an abundance of plants inside new and existing structures.

A real estate developer incorporated a less common natural element into his home in the Catskill Mountains in New York State after harboring his idea for several decades. He just had to find the perfect rock… if that’s what it can be called. In fact, the bluestone boulder that graces his living room is 8′ high, 15′ wide, and 22′ deep.

Inspiration for a dream house?

Among other construction issues, a major question was: Would they be able to waterproof the house against the stream of water than ran underneath the boulder’s edge?

To address the water issue, workers waterproofed the rock against the stream before building the house. After completing a foundation that reached half the height of the boulder, a concrete slab was poured at the base of the boulder. Then workers applied a sealant over the slab and the rock. Radiant heat tubing was installed and a second concrete slab was poured. Thus far, according to the owner, the boulder has not leaked. It also maintains a temperature of 68 degrees throughout the winter, which the homeowner measures using a thermal imaging camera.

With some ingenuity (and a healthy project budget, no doubt), you really can bring Great Outdoors in! A New York Times story on the house can be found here…

Photograph: by J Muckle

With the holiday season just around the corner, many folks are struggling to come up with the perfect gift for the geek who has everything. In the June 2009 issue of Popular Mechanics, Glenn Derene explores the ideal toy (uh, I mean tool) for those with a passion for the latest gadgets and gizmos: the Quad-Core, 1-kW, Liquid-Cooled Desk.

So how does it work? Here’s the explanation, broken down into 10 (not so simple) steps (see diagram below):

1. The desk surface was constructed by DangerDen of two sandwiched, laser-cut layers of clear acrylic bolted to an aluminum frame.
2. A half-gallon of glycol runs through 15 feet of Tygon tubing and a radiator, cooling the processors.
3. To support our Times Square lighting, we used an Antec TruePower Quattro kilowatt power supply.
4. Two 300-GB 10,000-rpm VelociRaptor hard drives handle storage.
5. Synaptics engineered us this one-of-a-kind, flush-mounted touchpad with an integrated proximity sensor and light.
6. At the heart of our system is XFX’s 790i Ultra SLI motherboard, outfitted with 4 GB of Kingston HyperX DDR3 RAM and a 3.0-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor.
7. This worthless 15-inch custom PCI-E cable did not work—so we replaced it.
8. We cooled our PaLit GeForce GTX 280 graphics card with Danger Den’s Tieton water block.
9. Seven fans circulate air within the desk—and 13 bright-blue neon lights blind the user at the desk.
10. Ejecting up from the desk surface is a Sony BDU-X10S Blu-ray drive.

Photograph: by J Muckle