ChronoPoints Entry on Piney Croft

This blog post is a mix of previous information I presented earlier in my blog. The following blog is what I delivered to be a part of the ChronoPoints website as the Piney Croft Entry.

 Architect and Design

Clifford William Wright is the architect who built the A-framed home at Piney Croft, Maitland. Wright was born in the hamlet of Oceanside in Nassau County, Long Island, New York on April 15, 1933, yet spent most of his childhood in the Winter Park/Maitland area. He received his Bachelor of Architecture in 1955, received his architect's license, then moved across the street from the Meyer family. After getting to know the Meyer family and being inspired by Mrs. Meyer's artistic ideas, he designed a house for them to be completed by the end of 1959.

Orlando Sentinel, 4 October 1959, Sunday, page 155.

        Wright spent two months coming up with the design for the Meyer residence and was pushed by Mrs. Meyer's artistic demands to create the unique A-framed structure. Wright designed the house to be easily cooled despite the 32-foot overhead since the cooler air would collect towards the bottom of the house, however, this property would also make it difficult to heat the house in the winter. Wright overcame this drawback by designing a brick fireplace to help with Florida's short winters. In designing the Meyer family's residence, he was challenged to anchor the tall 32-foot A-framed structured against hurricanes and other strong winds. The answer to ensuring the structure's integrity came from using steel plates to clamp the support beams in the center structure and anchor them into large pieces of concrete buried underneath the ground.

Undated Photo

             The house was of a modern design in 1959 by following the recent trend of A-framed houses started in 1957 by Andrew Geller and was the first A-framed home in the Central Florida area. It was designed with many modern influences including a sunken living room, wall to wall carpet, aluminum construction and newly prefabricated wooden beams, and thirty-two double multicolored glass windows along the two major A-framed walls however, it is not clear if these multicolored glass windows ever made it into the final build over a more traditional choice. Wright balanced the unique structure with two traditional expansions on both sides of the A-frame featuring additional bedrooms and bathrooms on the eastern side and a three-car garage on the western totaling 2600 square feet. Plans for a seamless patio deck and pool extending south of the eastern wing of the house was drawn but, much like the multicolored window panels, there are doubts if there were ever followed through.

Renovations

            The structure underwent renovations circa 1999 at the behest of a previous owner. An additional wing was added to the south side of the residence to the east of the A-frame where the pool would have been built. Interior renovations also took place which involved homogenizing the tile work throughout the house and adding stonework encasing around the original brick fireplace to match the new stonework fireplace in the new wing bringing the total square footage up to 3200.

 

Orange County Property Appraiser Website, https://ocpaweb.ocpafl.org/dashboard.

Processing the Data - Terrestrial Laser Scanning at Piney Croft

 After we captured the data in the field, I returned to the lab a few days later to get hands-on experience in working with the post-processing component of the Lecia RT 360. Both photogrammetry and laser scanning take a considerable amount of processing power and wait time, yet due to the amount of data available from laser scanning, it takes exponentially more. Once the scans were loaded in, a digital site map is available to manipulate with a series of dots representing each scan that we monitored on the iPad in the field complete with each link we made on the ground.

               Each point on the map comes with a spattering of data creating a partial point cloud of everything the scanner was able to see from its location.  Each link that connects two points is essentially pulling each partial point cloud together in one frame, once every point is linked the point cloud should resemble an accurate depiction of what we scanned. The links also serve as the main way to align each partial point cloud, a similar process when dealing with photogrammetry. Once a link is made between two scans, the main workflow involves inspecting each of the two scans to ensure they are aligned properly and if not, then fixing them.

Figure 1

This alignment process is depicted in figure 2 with a top-down view of the site that has an orange depiction, which is one of the partial points clouds, and the teal depiction, which is the currently selected partial point cloud, which is a part of this link. This particular set of scans had a hard time aligning in the field which results in a clustered and confusing point cloud if left alone. The goal is to pivot the teal scan to match the orange so it sits directly on top of the original. Once the top-down view is aligned, we have to switch the viewpoint to be lateral to the site to best align the floor and ceilings from the orange and teal scans to one another. Upon verifying that both the lateral and topdown views are aligned we clicked “join and optimize” in the lower right-hand corner for the link to be created and for the program to see if it can find more potential links on its own.  The rest of the post-processing mainly involves finding scans that could make good links, verifying the alignment on each one, and letting the program attempt to find links on its own. The result looks like what is depicted on the right screen in figure one, a clean and concise scan.

               This leaves us with an accurate point cloud ready to be showcased on the Chronopoints website, yet this data can be further developed for other ends. Everything around the structure including the front and back yards can be cut from the point cloud to reduce the need for unwanted data. Then the remaining structure could be meshed in another program to create a 3D object that could then be 3D printed similar to my previous internship. Texture can also then be applied to that mesh to get a very accurate and eye-catching model that can serve as a great addition to a video game engine like Unreal or for a detailed form of digital storytelling. 

               

Figure 2

Scanning Piney Croft

                 As mentioned previously, this project was delayed into the summer semester due to COVID-19. The face-to-face portion of this internship hinged on meeting together with Dr. Walters, Dr. Michlowitz, and Dr. French at Piney Croft to scan the building using the Lecia RT360 terrestrial laser scanner. Working around some weather delays we were all able to convene on Monday, July 28^th to scan the residence early in the morning to avoid the Florida heat.

                My site map that I constructed at the end of the spring semester was not used to direct the location of the scanner, for that we used Dr. Walter’s on the ground direction to ensure the best scan. Instead, what my site map allowed me to do was to compare the scans we took and problems we encountered to what I surveyed a few months prior.  Overall, we took roughly 30 scans of the building’s exterior which is very similar to the number of scans on my site map and the probable difficulties I encountered turned out to be the exact difficulties we encountered later on.

                Vegetation was the largest concern since a few trees and bushes grew close to the residence at the front of the house as well as near the rear of the A-frame structure and other than scanning behind the bushes, there is not much that could be done to scan the obscured portions. One concern I did not foresee came from scanning the house at a distance, since this is a residential area, we could not traipse through neighbors’ yards for the sake of unobscured data that could only be viewed from far away. While these two difficulties presented concerns for the final product, not much could be done, however, this illuminated the limitations present in the field that the articles I read previously in the spring semester echoed. Barring expensive scaffolding and roof access to other buildings, these limitations just have to be accepted and this project gave me a greater appreciation and understanding with these present limitations of terrestrial laser scanning.

                The scanning process itself was not too difficult, the scanner is easy to move around and is connected to an iPad that is running an app that allows us to start the scanner remotely and monitor each scan and link them to one another all while in the field. We enabled the Lecia RT360 to take photos in addition to each scan in order to get color mapped onto the point cloud, while it raises the overall scan time to about 1 minute and 15 seconds, it is still much faster than the older Faro terrestrial laser scanner which takes approximately 15 minutes for scans.

                I was surprised on how easy the process was, trying to replicate the work done with photogrammetry definitely would have been very time-consuming and nowhere near as accurate. The drawback to the laser scanner is its obscenely high cost. The Lecia RT360 costs approximately $80,000 with a proprietary $750 USB stick, when contrasted with low-cost photogrammetry the difference is astounding. This difference will be evaluated later in the internship by comparing the laser-scanned point cloud to that of a photogrammetric point cloud. 

Site Mapping

 

My next task for this project was to construct a site map for Piney Croft before we are scheduled to do the scanning of the site. The goal for this stage of the project was to create two separate site maps with one being done from a distance using only google maps to discern where to scan which is to replicate the scenario of a far away site that we cannot visit before scanning. The second was done with the benefit of living nearby the site in mind by visiting the site physically to plan where the scanner would go.

                The first site map in figure one was completed before I visited Piney Croft with the white markers denoting where the scanner would go. There are a few concepts that influence where I placed the markers which include avoiding or scanning around trees and other obstructions, scanning on corners, scanning at a distance as well as up close, overlapping scans, and scanning underneath or behind columns or overhanging eaves. From a distance a few different problems were already prevalent such as the number of visible vegetation and trees prevalent around the property especially along right-hand side. Some of the problems associated with distanced site mapping include the date of the google maps photography as the topography may be different with new obstructions or the removal of the previous one.

Figure 1

                This past weekend I was able to travel to Piney Croft to create a new site map to get that physical element in understanding it. Figure 2 is the site map that came from this visit. A few differences include the shifting of most scan points, the inclusion of more scan points, as well as the inclusion of scan points for locations that I could not recognize on google maps. The overhanging eaves, columned patio in the back, and bushes lining the front meant that I had to adapt the map to accommodate these formations to construct a more complete scan without the allowance of blind spots to develop. One of the biggest benefits of constructing the site map in person was finding that the vegetation situation was different then I both imagined and could perceive from a distance. Trees prevalent on Google Maps are no longer there, likewise, open areas previously devoid of obstructions now had new trees in their place. Additionally, visiting the site in person allows me to see the vista for each spot I would place the scanner which gave me a better idea of the quality of scan I would be getting.

Figure 2

                Another benefit of visiting the site was meeting Christine French whose name popped up a few times in researching local Maitland and Winter Park history in reference to some of the historical homes in the area as well as the interviews with Clifford Wright. She was able to show me around the house and give some great contextual information that can be incorporated as annotations on the final model to create an immersive experience.

                The next step for this project is to actually conduct the laser scanning and photogrammetry at the end of May and then, work to process the scans into a 3D model that can live on the ChronoPoints website. I already complied a photo profile of a bird bath on site, once the model is built it can be used as a comparison of laser scanning and photogrammetry by the end of the internship.

Looking back into 1950s and 1960s Maitland

 

The Piney Croft A-framed home is located in the historic town of Maitland, Florida. As this project seeks to capture the home in 3D using a variety of scanning techniques, it becomes important to contextualize the town of Maitland to better understand the circumstances of its creation within the town’s historical trends.

Maitland was founded in 1838 as Fort Maitland and was primarily a military outpost for U.S soldiers in the Indian wars yet this military outpost would be later decommissioned. In the 1870s, individuals started to move to Maitland and grow citrus, this was further expanded upon with the completion of the railroad stations cutting from Jacksonville south into the Maitland and the central Florida area. The central Florida area experienced a great freeze in 1894-95 which damaged much of the citrus production, yet the area continued to slowly grow over the next few years.  By 1900 the population of Maitland reached 136 people which expanded to 463 over the next forty years. However, in 1950 the population of Maitland almost doubled to 889 and exploded again in 1960 to 3,570. Businesses like the Martin Marietta Corporation moved into the central Florida area which led to the increase of population and architectural development that ballooned to match the rising population.

At this time, many architects would make their name in the central Florida and greater Florida area. Nils Schweizer, a representative of Frank Lloyd Wright who worked on and expanded Florida Southern College also built modernistic houses in Maitland and in the central Florida area throughout the 1950s including the Orlando International Airport, Loch Haven Park, St. Luke’s Episcopal Cathedral, and Orlando’s downtown library. One of Schweizer’s Maitland homes , 829 Nicoma Trail, was built in 1960 and features similar design points found in Clifford Wright’s Piney Croft home, such as the exterior design, sunken living room, central fireplace, and use of 27 feet of glass to let in natural light. Yet, many of Schweizer’s houses are not limited by this trend and many are unique in their design such as Schweizer’s personal home in Maitland built in 1960, his Goldberg house in 1955, as well as the Goldman House in 1965.

Yet, this central Florida boom in construction was not just limited to the likes of Schweizer, but also the likes of James Gamble Rogers II who designed the Florida Supreme Court building but also many Winter Park residences such as the 160 Glenridge home and Barbour residence. Many other architects threw their architectural designs into the central Florida and Maitland stew that brought the countless homes and churches with many different architectural designs into creation including Clifford Wright’s own Piney Croft.

 

"Census of Population and Housing". Census.gov.

“829 Nicoma Trl, Maitland, FL 32751.” Realtor.com. Retrieved March 12^th, 2021. https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/829-Nicoma-Trl_Maitland_FL_32751_M59326-96020.

“About Maitland.” The City of Maitland. Retrieved March 12^th, 2021. https://www.itsmymaitland.com/339/About-Maitland#:~:text=Maitland%2C%20one%20of%20the%20oldest,1838%20by%20the%20U.S.%20Army.

“James Gamble Rogers.” Casa Feliz Historic Home and Venue: Winter Park’s Community Parlor. Retrieved March 12^th, 2021. https://casafeliz.us/james-gamble-rogers.

“Maitland.” Viva Florida 500: History Happened Here. Retrieved March 12^th, 2021. https://vivafl500.org/cities/maitland/

“Mrs. Nils M. Schweizer and Architect Jerry Uhran Special Guest Speakers At Orlando Remembered, January 2020.” Orlando Memory. February 1, 2020. Retrieved March 12^th, 2021 http://orlandomemory.info/events/mrs-nils-m-schweizer-and-architect-jerry-uhran-special-guest-speakers-at-orlando-remembered-january-2020/.

“This 1960s mid-century modern home in Maitland just hit the market.” Orlando Weekly. June 7, 2020. Retrieved March 12^th, 2021. https://photos.orlandoweekly.com/this-1960s-mid-century-modern-home-in-maitland-just-hit-the-market/?slide=1&2298cede1cdcb493b199bb71548164d2l-m121360711xd-w1020_h770_q80.

Candelaria, Michael. “Maitland Neighborhood Guide.” Orlando Sentinel. June 21, 2018. Retrieved March 12^th, 2021. https://www.orlandosentinel.com/classified/realestate/neighborhood-guide/os-et-maitland-neighborhood-guide-2018-htmlstory.html.

Central Florida Modern. Retrieved March 12^th, 2021. https://www.centralfloridamodern.com/residential.

Larson, Brittni. “Maitland Cheers at its birth.” The Orange Observer. July 8, 2010. Retrieved March 12^th, 2021. https://www.orangeobserver.com/article/maitland-cheers-its-birth.

LeBlanc, Karen and Randy Noles. “60s Chic.” Winter Park Magazine. Retrieved March 12^th, 2021.  https://winterparkmag.com/2019/07/08/60s-chic/.

Shanklin, Mary. “Hidden Treasures of Design.” Orlando Sentinel. December 24, 2000. Retrieved March 12^th, 2021. https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-2000-12-24-0012220039-story.html.

Clifford Wright - Maitland and Winter Park's local architect

 

    Clifford William Wright was born at in the hamlet of Oceanside in Nassau county, Long Island, New York on April 15, 1933, yet spent most of his childhood in the Winter Park/Maitland area. He received his Bachelor of Architecture in 1955 got his license and moved across the street from the Meyer family where he would then build a house for them completed in the end of 1959. Clifford Wright’s career focused around the Winter Park, Maitland, and larger Florida area with other buildings being the expansion to the Ortronix Plant completed in 1960 in Goldenrod, the Schroeder Warehouses in Winter park in 1959-1960, a shop in Pine castle in 1959, a food store building in Orlando in 1961, an Apartment building in Sarasota in 1961 and the residence of Allan Hickok in Winter Park 1961 as well as condos in the Maitland and Winter park area around the 1960s.

    Wright spent two months coming up with the design for the Meyer residence and was pushed by Mrs. Meyer’s artistic demands to create the unique A-framed structure. Wright designed the house to be easily cooled despite the 32-foot overhead by allows cooler air to collect towards the bottom of the house, however this property would also make it difficult to heat the house in the winter, so Wright designed a brick fire place to help for Florida’s short winters. In designing the Meyer family’s residence, he was challenged to anchor the tall 32-foot A-framed structured against hurricanes and other strong winds. The answer was using steel plates to clamp the support beams in the center structure and anchor them into large pieces of concrete buried underneath the ground.

                The house was of a modern design in 1959 by following the recent trend of A-framed houses started in 1957 by Andrew Geller and designed with a sunken living room, wall to wall carpet, aluminum construction and newly prefabricated wooden beams and thirty two double glass windows along the two major A-framed walls. Wright balanced the unique structure with two traditional expansions on both sides of the A-framed featuring additional bedrooms and bathrooms on one side and a three-car garage on the other.

"New Home Will Offer Refreshing Taste in Design; Modern Thought Used in Dramatic A-Frame,” Orlando Sentinel, Oct. 4, 1959, p. 3

Interview and House Tour with Piney Croft Architect Clifford Wright, Sunday, April 29, 2018.

"WRIGHT, CLIFFORD W(ILLIAM). AIA 57. Mid-Florida Chapter." AIA Historical Directory of American Architects.
https://aiahistoricaldirectory.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/AHDAA/pages/20677106/1962+American+Architects+Directory

"Ortronix Inc. Building Storage Space for Overflow." Orlando Evening Star, Feb. 9, 1961, p. 7

"Campus Would Rather be 'Wright'." Miami Herald, Mar. 18, 1973, p. 231

A-Framed Houses

    This past week I investigated the architecture of the A-frame house design. As the house that we are capturing in 3D on Piney Croft lane in Maitland later this summer is an A-frame house, it is worth studying the historical significance of this architectural design.

    A frame houses have been around for quite some time cropping up across the world in places like Japan, Polynesia, and Switzerland, yet the first instance applying this architectural style here in the U.S was done by Rudolph Schindler, a former employee of Frank Lloyd Wright, in 1934 when he built an A-framed house in California. However, it was not until after WWII that the popularity of the A-framed house soared in tandem with a movement to have a second, vacation styled, home. In 1957, however, is when Andrew Geller built an A-frame house along the beach for approximately $7,000 for a client and achieved some acclaim in a New York Times story on May 5th 1957. A-framed houses have since climbed in popularity before falling off in the 1970s with a rise in popularity once again in recent years.     

    It was around the A-frame’s original rise in popularity that Clifford Wright built the A-framed Maitland home in 1959 just two years after the New York Times article featured Geller’s beach project.

    The general structure of an A-frame house features two angled walls that meet together at the top of the house forming a triangle where the ceiling and walls are continuous and lead into the ground where they are generally supported into an anchor. A cross beam cutting the triangle in half horizontally is generally present inside the structure and is used to not only support the household but create additional useable space. A benefit of using A-frames is the unique view points they have as well as the lower construction cost associated with them, and many A-frames use glass facades to not only let in natural light, but maximize the view outdoors.

    Wright’s Piney Croft structure follows a few of these norms by using the cross beams as support for what was described as a master bedroom and using glass to maximize the natural light and views. However, Wright does not limit the space of the house to a traditional A-frame as he expanded on the structure with standard house extensions centered around the tall central A-framed structure. However, Wright’s use of lateral space is different then some of its predecessors or contemporaries. While other A-framed houses are either short in stature or make use of lateral space to support two lofts or an entire second floor, Wright uses the 32-foot height to support a sleeping loft in the front of the house while keeping a high, uninterrupted ceiling in the central and rear portions of the A-frame.

A-frame designed in 1934 by Schindler. https://www.archilovers.com/projects/202445/gisela-bennati-house-in-lake-arrowhead-ca-rudolf-schindler.html

A-framed designed by Geller in 1957. https://www.fieldmag.com/articles/history-of-aframe-house-modern-design

The 1957 Geller house. Notice the cross beams and loft. https://www.fieldmag.com/articles/history-of-aframe-house-modern-design

The 1959 Wright house built in Maitland, FL. Notice the more traditional styled housing extensions. The photo itself is undated.

The design of the 1959 Wright house. “New Home Will Offer Refreshing Taste in Design; Modern Thought Used in Dramatic A-Frame,” Orlando Sentinel, Oct. 4, 1959, p. 3

References:

"Andrew Geller, Modernist Architect, Is Dead at 87." New York Times, December 26, 2011.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/27/arts/design/andrew-geller-modernist-architect-is-dead-at-87.html

"In the Summertime, Living Becomes Even Easier at New Long Island Beach Cottage." New York Times, May 5, 1957, p. 324. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/05/05/90802087.html?pageNumber=324

“New Home Will Offer Refreshing Taste in Design; Modern Thought Used in Dramatic A-Frame,” Orlando Sentinel, Oct. 4, 1959, p. 3

https://archive.curbed.com/2017/9/22/16346810/a-frame-homes-architecture-rudolf-schindler

https://www.archilovers.com/projects/202445/gisela-bennati-house-in-lake-arrowhead-ca-rudolf-schindler.html

https://www.fieldmag.com/articles/history-of-aframe-house-modern-design

https://alastairgordonwalltowall.com/2011/12/26/andrew-geller-architect-of-happiness-1924-2011/