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October 23, 2006

Design Crunch

We're on our last week of the design portion of the San Francisco internship program. For five weeks we do an intensive design studio, then for six weeks we work at a firm while doing lectures at night.

Our project for design is an affordable housing project in the Tenderloin, and we could choose between family housing and senior housing, or a mix of the two. I chose senior housing. This week I am working on elevations, having just finished the floor plans for my residential levels (the lower level is commercial space). Wanna see?

Technorati Tags: design, drawings, school

Here's a typical floor plan: the second through fourth floors have this plan. The red areas are egress stairs, the light yellow are common spaces, and the light blue is the laundry room. Sorry it's so blurry: the original is on Arch D paper, 24x36 inches, and it does not like to reduce to something this small.

Anyway, the plan is fairly simple, but things to note are that while there are plenty of units in there (19 per floor), there are lots of open spaces to sit and socialize. That is because the units are teeny-weeny (even though they are entirely accessible).

For example, this is the typical unit, 350 square feet. I've designed it as a "split studio," with the bathroom breaking the space into a kitchen/living area, and a bedroom with a sliding panel. That's because a lot of seniors babysit their grandchildren, and need a place for them to take naps. Or couples might want to have some time apart. I think it makes a very small space more livable.

On the ends, I can let light in from two sides, so I do. This unit ends up at 380 square feet, largely because of the bay window in the bedroom. Same split-studio design, too.

On the top floor I deleted three units and put in a roof garden with benches and planters, so people can grow vegetables or just sit in the sunshine on the few nice days a year. One of the complaints seniors have about their housing is not having good places to exercise, protected from crime. This roof is one of three exercise spaces I have created (the other two are on the ground level: a courtyard walking path, and a long exercise gallery for inclement weather).

I think the second floor will also have roof gardens above the commercial spaces on the first floor, but I haven't finished drafting those yet so I'm not sure how they're going to look. Right now I have to work on doing some more elevations for a conference with my teacher tomorrow afternoon.

I'm going to be buried in this for the next four days. But I'm enjoying it immensely.

Posted by ayse on 10/23/06 at 12:24 AM