Here is my final post about my presentation with a link to the boards at the end.
My focus for phase IV of Nuevo Amanacer was to create a community-oriented development that promotes interaction between its residents and the community as is well connected to the first phases of the project. Some of my goals and concerns were:
- addressing back lot boundaries for safety
- pedestrian movement through the site/front door circulation
- creating usable public space
- connections to existing context
- taking advantage of solar orientation
- harvesting rainwater
- exploring modular design
On the site plan the turnaround became the main connection node to the past phases where farmer’s markets and other community events could take place. Smaller outdoor spaces, like a community garden and child’s playground, draw people through the site to promote interaction between residents. I chose to keep the parking towards the outside of the site to allow for clear front and back entrances. The back yard, facing the parking is more private with clear boundaries of ownership while the front yards, facing the inner community spaces are shared and more public. The site also has space for a community building next to the garden for storage and community kitchen, an open shelter next to the turnaround for extra market space or communal gatherings, and a shared laundry facility for clothing that shouldn’t be brought into the house. The site plan also tries to better connect the site to its surrounding context by connecting to nearby roads and providing a pedestrian path to front street for bus stop access.
I wanted to try and use modular or prefabrication for this project and ultimately decided on doing a mixture of the two. The unit has a prefabricated core that contains all the plumbing for the unit. The rest of the unit will be site built using SIP construction with a wood slat rain screen as the finish material. Other sustainable features within the unit include:
- South facing windows that have a wood slat screens to keep out summer sun. A light shelf with large overhang on the south side to protect the kitchen from overheating. And a double set of operable windows that enclose the sun space off of the kitchen that could allow for passive heating in the winter.
- Operable clerestory windows on both the north and south sides of the unit to allow for natural cooling. Operable clerestory windows in stair corridor to bring in daylight and allow stack ventilation.
- Rainwater is collected on the flat roof and piped down to a cistern in the utility closet section of the prefab core to use for washing clothes and one below ground at the front of the unit to use for irrigation. Calculations on how much potential rainwater can be collected and how much each unit would use showed that using a rainwater and greywater system would save about 10% in amount of water used per year.
After presenting this project I got some really good feedback from my reviewers. Some of the things that were suggested were extending the stair corridor higher to allow for roof access and using a few more vernacular elements like shutters could have given the architecture a softer feel and added another possibility for customization. If I had more time to work on this project I think I would explore a little different aesthetic and look at how the units could have slight variations in their exterior appearance to break up the monotony of large clusters of identical units.
My boards can be viewed here – board layout