After the “first scrape” cleared out the surface material and verified that the dirt was good, the grading team set out to really find the best “finished floor elevation”. From the start, the vision for the building was to integrate it with the land. The topography of the location helped to dictate the size of the buildings, and also their shapes: hilltops are rarely square! Here are some photos showing the ground after “cutting in” as planned.
We’ll start with a tour of the site from the perimeter, starting at the garage entrance:
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Walking counter-clockwise we go from North east to North to Northwest:
We continue on to see the views from the West Northwest and the South:
Now for some details. Here we see “The Cut”:
The depth of the cut gives us some interesting landscaping possibilities. One is to slide the slope northward, making it steeper, and then retaining the wall with blocks. This will mirror the structure of the building, and make it appear even more integrated with the land.
This detail shows the many points of the building that must be aligned with the grade and with each other:
Here we see a pile of rebar for the footings—the shape of things to come:
