Designs

Stand­ard Kits

am‑cor inc. of­fers a range of pre­fab­ric­ated, preen­gin­eered Ferrocement building Kits. You can also find out about the architects & designers of the standard Kits.

Are you an ar­chi­tect or de­sign­er? Would you like to sub­mit a design for a Kit? Contact us for more in­form­a­tion.

Cus­tom Designs

Mac­don­ald Ar­chi­tec­ture & Tech­no­logy designs and house plans can all be built us­ing the am‑cor Sys­tem.

BY­OD

Bring Your Own Design! Do you have an ar­chi­tec­tur­al set, or floor­plan in mind? We can price it for you, and help you es­tim­ate con­struc­tion cost. See our Getting Started sec­tion for de­tails.

If you would like an es­tim­ate for your cus­tom design, please contact us with:

• di­men­sioned sketches or plans
• di­men­sioned el­ev­a­tion/sec­tion
• gen­er­al pro­ject de­scrip­tion & wish­list

If you're not much of an artist, don't worry; we can gen­er­ate a 3D BIM from just ba­sic di­men­sions. Give us a rough out­line of your build­ing, and we'll work with you to flesh it out. You can email us graph­ic files (pdf, dwg, tif, jpg, etc.) or even take a di­git­al photo of your draw­ing.

Also don't for­get to see our Pricing sec­tion.

Design Ser­vices

If you need modi­fic­a­tions or cus­tom­iz­a­tions to a plan, we can:

• add/re­move doors & win­dows, change ceil­ing/wall heights, modi­fy roof slopes, etc.
• sug­gest ex­ist­ing ar­chi­tec­tur­al designs cus­tom­ized for the am‑cor Sys­tem
• design for hur­ricane, earth­quake, and tor­nado spe­cif­ic re­gion­al cir­cum­stances
• ana­lyze your plans, from whatever source (as long as the ne­ces­sary in­form­a­tion is in­cluded), and sug­gest changes that will:
  • strengthen and stream­line your design for the am‑cor Sys­tem
  • re­com­mend whatever Op­tions may be ap­plic­able for your en­vir­on­ment, re­gion, and taste

Make sure to see if your pro­ject falls un­der our current Promotions!

Design Notes

If you have an ex­ist­ing design or wish to cre­ate one, please con­sider the fol­low­ing.

En­gin­eers, ar­chi­tects, and de­sign­ers may eas­ily ap­ply am-cor™ struc­tur­al prin­ciples to their pro­jects. am-cor inc. provides ex­tens­ive design sup­port through con­sul­ta­tion dur­ing the pre­lim­in­ary design phase, and sealed struc­tur­al draw­ing sets for build­ing per­mit sub­mis­sion and bid­ding upon place­ment of or­der. Stand­ard light gauge cold rolled steel fram­ing, nor­mally used as non-bear­ing par­ti­tions and ceil­ings, when im­bed­ded in ho­ri­zont­al con­crete dia­phragms and coated with a uni­fy­ing con­tinu­ous re­in­forced thin am­cor­ite™ skin, be­comes ex­tremely ri­gid and cap­able of act­ing as the main struc­tur­al frame.

The am­cor­ite™ con­tinu­ous ce­ment skin ex­pands and con­tracts at the same rate as its frame­work and is bon­ded to the en­tire frame sur­face, where­as stand­ard de­tail­ing em­ploys vari­ous types of of­ten in­com­pat­ible ma­ter­i­als at thresholds, sills, eaves, bal­conies, beams, columns, floors and found­a­tions. The vari­ous prop­er­ties of stand­ard ma­ter­i­als make each in­ter­sec­tion a pos­sible loc­a­tion where change of tem­per­at­ure or am­bi­ent mois­ture can cause long term de­teri­or­a­tion. Ar­chi­tects of­ten joke that cur­tain-wall build­ings are held to­geth­er by the "goo". In fact, the life of these build­ings is de­pend­ent upon the dur­ab­il­ity and res­ist­ance to ul­tra-vi­ol­et sun­light of ex­posed plastic, sil­ic­one and rub­ber based seal­ants.

De­tails and joints, nor­mally com­plic­ated and prob­lem­at­ic in tra­di­tion­al design, are sim­pli­fied when trans­lated in­to am-cor Sys­tem con­struc­tion. For in­stance, in the design for a ter­raced build­ing where the roof of one level acts as the bal­cony for the unit above, such as in a ski lodge situ­ated on a slope, sev­er­al prob­lem areas in­crease the cost and com­plex­ity of a stand­ard struc­ture:

• Wa­ter­proof­ing the vari­ous re­tain­ing walls and floor to wall joints where each level meets the ground
• Struc­tur­ing the re­tain­ing wall sup­port mid-slab of the unit above for dif­fer­en­tial set­tle­ment
• Spe­ci­fy­ing a traffic-res­ist­ant fin­ish to the bal­cony sur­face
• Joint de­tails between bal­cony wa­ter­proof­ing and the struc­ture at:
  • Door threshold to the up­per unit
  • At bal­cony edge
  • Rail­ing at­tach­ment

These are areas in nor­mal design where flash­ings, back flash­ings, wa­ter­proof­ing, bal­cony and sur­round­ing wall sur­faces, rail­ing posts, cop­ings, para­pets, scup­pers are all usu­ally of dif­fer­ent ma­ter­i­als with vari­ous coef­fi­cients of ex­pan­sion, re­ac­tion to mois­ture, and ex­pos­ure to weath­er. Fur­ther­more, slope of the bal­cony and step up in­to the unit above may re­quire a lower ceil­ing in part of the lower unit un­der the bal­cony. In­su­la­tion of this ceil­ing area is also prob­lem­at­ic. Such a con­fig­ur­a­tion be­comes straight­for­ward when de­signed us­ing am-cor™ unibody struc­tur­al cells sur­faced with con­tinu­ous am­cor­ite™ skins (and as an op­tion­al weath­er­proof­ing: sur­faced with ceram­cor­ite™ co­hes­ive ceram­ic ce­ment traffic res­ist­ant wa­ter­proof­ing).

For more in­form­a­tion on design­ing with the am-cor Sys­tem, see our Architects & Engineers sec­tion.