Pictures of our Final Model
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Process
Final Boards
I’ve uploaded my final boards to googledocs. You can access them here:
Thank you Nancy, thank you Jessy, Jaime, and the rest of the team at FHDC. What a great project to work on.
Snappy Precedent
Thanks to Fai and her recent blog about this Flickr group where people post their presentation boards, I finally found some good precedents to browse through. After flipping through page after page of good looking uploads, I came across this set of four:
(these look best when the width of the page holds all four)
These really drew my eye, and after looking at them for awhile I hope I can tell you why. I really like the way the author combined the 3D images with the 2D ones. The way they overlap, and the way the shapes compliment each other is really great. I also really appreciate the diagrams. The repetition of forms is very appealing to me, and this bit of regularity on the page juxtaposed with the more free-flowing plans and perspectives keeps the pages from falling apart. A small detail I really like is the drop shadow behind the plans. It pops the plan out and keeps it from fading into the background. I also really like the aspect choice the author made. Tall and slim is against the grain, and I like it. It means that she can really fill up the bottom of the page with one great image, and everything else can float around above it. The aspect also roughly mirrors that of the project’s plan, which means it can fit nicely on the board.
Links:
Final project and Thoughts
Thoughts:
Above you will find presentation boards completed by Brianne Johnson and I for our final review. We were both very satisfied with our process throughout the quarter and especially in the last stretch of of our conceptual process and production. Although the initial values we stipulated about our project remained consistent throughout the quarter, our
ideas about execution of those values in the project varied considerably. We had to recognize that there was more than one way to support cultural expression and enable autonomy in residents through the architecture of this project and exploration of many many options made our final resolution far more valid and significant. Going into our final presentation, Brianne and I did a critical analysis of each aspect of our project, relating it back to our major goals and questioning its relevance and performance. Through rigorous studies of multiple facade ideas, options for the structural composition of the bermed promenade and many iterations of site planning alternatives, I believe we were successful in substantiating our ideas and developing our project in a direction that best expressed those goals.
Project Description:
The name of our project is Raising the Grade. This title speaks to our single most paramount goal which is the idea that by creating an attractive and readily adaptable prototype which holds mutual benefit for both farmer and farm worker, that we we might actually set a new standard or ethic for worker housing in the United States. Moreover, we hope to use design to provide new opportunities for growth and learning. In order to achieve these goals, we had to specifically address concepts of identity, affordability and community within our project.
Within the topic of identity, we recognize that the site itself imposes certain constraints on our project. Specifically, it is isolated. It is completely removed from the urban vitality of downtown. One one hand, this could set up a barrier to connectivity and prevent a sense of belonging to the larger Medford community. On the other hand, the condition of the site presents a special opportunity for residents. First of all, the environmental quality and natural state of refuge that is inherent to this beautiful rural site are huge advantages. Furthermore, being removed from the city center sets up the opportunity for the community here to establish its own sense of identity. Residing in its peaceful niche this community will inevitably form a strong internal bond while still being able to participate in the greater community context through school, work and by way of outreach by providing space on site for the larger community to participate in some of the internal communities activity. Most importantly this rural setting truly fosters establishment of a self sustaining, self empowered residential community. This is our greatest opportunity to use design to raise the standard of living and encourage education and personal growth.
Affordability was another element that guided our design decisions at every phase. In order to achieve any of our goals, and in order to encourage farmers around the nation to adopt our prototype, this project would have to be financially feasible. We brainstormed in our initial phases ideas about applying some kind of energy star certification to the farms that chose to adopt this prototype. Similar to Starbucks marketing themselves through their adoption of “fair trade” coffee, what if the farmer that took an ethical approach to housing their workers received a similar rating for their produce? What if provision of ethical worker housing was suddenly the newest trend in farming communities? In terms of the design itself, we focused on passive energy saving techniques, utilizing technologies that would provide significant payback over time (eg solar hot water, composting toilets and thermal mass radiant heating), efficient use of materials, and on ease/speed of construction. By making the initial assumption that this project would be a rapid prototype to be produced on farms all over the US, a pre-fabricated panelized system made sense, so we developed our construction components as a literal “kit of parts.”
Community is the last element that we felt necessary to study with particular rigor. We became aware at the very beginning of the project that this culture of this community has specific habits, values, and traditions to which we would have to be very sensitive and responsive. After a great deal of research and after speaking personally with members off the farm worker community in Woodburn Oregon, we started to discuss organization of our site plan. We felt strongly about establishing three separate levels of community activity/interaction on site. The more public portion of the site would be the northern most part where the community building resides. This opens up onto an impromptu soccer pitch or gathering area then bleeds further south into the medium size community space which would be programmed less intentionally than the public area and would be equipped with seating for watching soccer games. Another medium level of gathering exists at the southern most portion of the site in the edible gardens. The last level of community occurs on the raised pedestrian promenade which connects each residential unit onto a single plane. We felt it was important that there be a specific sense or feeling of coming home from work at the end of the day, and leaving the drudge behind you . Careful articulation of transitions and thresholds on site became extremely important to us therefore. The use of a raised promenade provided us with not only a conceptual expression of leaving the fields behind and being able to stomp off your boots, but it had relevance to the ideas of forming a self sustaining and self empowered community. In practical application, we used it to hold composting toilets and a rainwater cistern for irrigation. More importantly though, we recognized that the like many affordable housing projects, we ran the risk of depriving our residents of a real sense of ownership. Therefor, by making the form and character of the promenade relatively customizable, (we provide a gridded framework of recycled plastic or car tires and the residents infill with as much landscaping or paving as they see fit) we are employing the concept of sweat equity to add a sense of ownership and belonging to the project.
The next level of Community transition occurs within the unit itself. Our major strategies with regard to unit design were as follows: 1) To blurr boundaries between inside and outside living spaces in order to enable connections with neighbor, 2) to maximize a very small, low impact space with built-in furniture, lofted beds and applying double uses to as many architectural elements as possible, 3) to optimize natural daylight and cross ventilation through the units’ orientation, 4) to maintain a sense of “eyes on the street’ so that the shared courtyards between units are activated by residents’ constant visual and physical connection.
Reflection
Design Concept:
Throughout the term, the word dignity has been in the back of my mind. At the beginning of the term I was thinking about why low income housing was so important to me, and I think that it comes down to the value that all people have inherent dignity and worth. All people deserve to have their basic needs met; all people deserve to have housing. I was also inspired by Teddy Cruz who writes that marginalized populations are more able to succeed when supported by a community, working together for grass roots social change. These two concepts: the dignity of the individual and the importance of community for opportunity became the drivers for my scheme – houses surrounding a common heart-space where community would be celebrated and upheld.
How you addressed the Design Considerations such as community support, ecological sustainability, affordable construction.
- Community support: I generated a wild central plaza space, a rich, mural-filled space that speaks to the vitality and resiliency of the community that lives there. There is a community garden, adult conversation space, children’s play space, sub-courtyards, as well as a community center with a commercial kitchen and classroom spaces.
- Ecological sustainability: There are rainwater catchment basins for irrigation, many of the roofs are angled to provide opportunity to place pv panels, there is community garden space, units have light on two and often three sides for cross ventilation, modular construction is possible.
- Affordable construction: The houses can be constructed out of modular components. If they’re to be stick-built, their dimensions readily accommodate typical lumber dimensions. I selected basic materials: concrete floor on the main level, wood and gyp the rest.
How what you learned this term will shape next steps in your education
It seems like every term offers a wealth of learning and ideas for the coming terms. I realize that this education is really just a starting place – I will have a lifetime of continuing education as I learn more and more about the art and act of building things. Specifically though, I think that I’m more able to navigate Revit and look forward to future applications. I’m also much more able to talk about the values that drive my passion for this work — that has been invaluable.
Thanks Nancy,
Ben
Final Review Boards
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
Final Project
Check out my final project on the “Final Project” page and see how Rachel and I approached our design for farmworker housing in Medford, OR
Final Presentation
What follows are my presentation boards for our final studio review. We had a very productive quarter and produced a lot of work. My formal scheme was based on the idea of semi-enclosed spaces that have a permeable face that allow movement and connection to the next scale of community. This is reflected on three scales. On the site level this is two shapes a V and C facing each other. In the cluster it is 3 or 4 units pinwheeled around a common outdoor space. On the unit level it is three wood faces with a metal panel face that is more open and permeable. It also serves as the technical wall for the unit where all of the services are aligned and easily accessible. This cluster scheme removes cars from the center of the space and creates a space for people to use for children’s play and community gardening as a means to supplement their income or decrease food costs by providing 30% of their annual demand. By removing the cars from the centers of these spaces they are aggregated in one space and separate the two clusters from each other in an undesirable way. Tuck under parking could resolve this, but is questionably achievable while maintaining affordability.
Affordability in this project is viewed in the traditional sense of minimizing first costs in the development to ensure lower financing costs and therefore rents, but additionally it is desired that there be an awareness of creating affordable lifestyles for the residents. Minimizing first costs comes through the use of modularity and pre-manufacturing. The 40 units of 3 sizes are composed only of two floor plans that can be augmented in many ways by flipping, rotating, or adding on to. The entirety of the site can be transported and craned into place compressing construction schedules and lowering costs. The units are laid out to optimize the use of 4′x8′ sheet stock. I’ve capitalized on the interior to exterior assembly technique that prevails in pre-manufacturing by using spray in aircrete which can create a continuous air, vapor, and thermal barrier around any interior penetrations. This addresses the problem of air infiltration, the largest cause of loss of energy (about 40%) through a buildings envelope.
Creating an affordable lifestyle comes in the form of providing ways in which residents can grow, capture, or produce capital. As previously described there are many community gardens. Many units have attached greenhouses for food production in the winter, and are appropriately sized and arranged to operate as a space for a family members or friends to use during the growing season as a sleeping space. Water catchment from rooftops can provide ~40% of the communities needs. Additional catchment can occur on the ground level to increase water neutrality, but something more expensive than a sand filter would be needed for that and more detailed cost estimating would be required. The design provides for enough space with good southern exposure to outfit the development with a PV array that could meet 98% of their energy demand. Food, water, and energy are the three areas I focused on to lower living expenses. Additionally provide though are spaces in the master bedrooms for spaces for entrepreneurial means of production. This can vary by the residents needs and I have shown several options in the floor plans, from increased greenhouse sizes to, a space for a home office, or craft space for producing things to sell at a craft fair or farmers market.
In evaluating my project I feel that I have dealt well with the aspects of affordability/sustainability and the idea of creating a flexible kit of parts that offers an ability to personalize and create variation from repetition. I have not dealt adequately with the particulars of creating lively community spaces that are fully programmed and defined. If I were to continue the project I would further explore these activities and architectures.
Backyard Communities
(click to embiggen)
The concept for our design was to build a sort of substrate that would foster both community building and individual growth, and hopefully work as a template for future farmworker housing wherever applicable. In order to function as a template we thought our project would have to do four things: 1) be of good design, 2) create strong community spaces between the units, 3) be replicable and economic, and 4) be successful in post-occupancy.
On our boards, we decided to highlight three areas in which we felt we had the most control in this model to template project. The first is called “Layers of Community,” wherein we lead the observer across the thresholds between the spaces. We spent a good amount of time rendering the images of the front and back yards, as well as a couple of private porch shots, to try to convey a good 3-D understanding of the spaces. The next area we dealt with we titled “Kit of Parts [Dynamic Implementation].” Here we dealt with the construction process, parts of which are modular and built off-site and other parts of which would be site-built. The last area, “Integrated Local Responses,” shows how we propose to ground our theories in reality. We include environmental responses, a detailed site plan, designs for a community center, a site section, and a diagram of the community spaces.
I really feel that the challenges of community support, ecological mindfulness, and economic feasibility were all met head on in this project. As we were working in both Medford and theoretical space, Jeff and I decided to focus primarily on community support and economic feasibility and include the sustainability features as site-specific side notes.
Our community building really began with the unit itself. We thought that the more flexible our unit design, the more options we would have at the site level. Most reviewers we talked to told us that it was all in the site plan, all in the extra-building and interstitial spaces, and so we wanted to maximize our arrangement possibilities. All along we had the idea of having the community actually help build the buildings, too, as we felt that would strengthen relationships, keep costs down, and even teach some skills. A key piece to the whole thing was the idea of reapplying program space from the private zone to the public, similar to many collaborative housing projects. So we programmed some outdoor space for dining, some community outbuildings for laundry, and a larger outdoor/indoor space for larger functions like daycare, formal and informal meetings, weddings, birthdays, holiday celebrations, and innumerable other options.
We went into the midterm with some ideas for a panelized system, but not knowing quite what it would be. After the midterm we looked into it more, and declared it not viable due to cost. We did however decide to stick with a modular core, containing all the wet walls for two units. The prevailing thought is that the rest of each unit (bedrooms, living room, kitchen spaces) would be stick framed after core delivery, and could be of flexible size. If John and Jane are planning on having a big family, they can build out three or four bedrooms and have a larger living area then Bob and Sally, who have only one daughter and plan on keeping it that way. When we looked at harvesting rainwater, sunshading, and adding an arcade, this other module came into play: the robot-spider finger (RSF). The RSF is really just a half moment frame that is further “bent” down to function more appropriately on the site. The RSF would probably only be economically feasible if mass produced (we planned for about 1 per person for the Medford site), but something similar could be crafted on the prototype site.
And this gets us into the idea of ecological sustainability. The RSFs, since their deployment is situational, are already site specific. They can be used to carry rainwater to cisterns, or to protect residents and building interiors from sun. This means that more can be used for sunshading in sunnier spots, more can be used for water conveyance in wetter spots, and less for less. We nicknamed the RSFs the Specifier for these reasons. As a side note, we also planned all the buildings for maximum solar capabilities and put a Trombe wall in the community center.
I think one of the troubles we had in this project was our heavy use of Revit. I think it was somewhat constraining in the early design process, and very constraining when it came time to develop our boards. Since we also used Revit to render our final images, I think our buildings came out as more mechanical and suburban than we would have liked, rather than the weathered and farm-y look we were going for. That being said, I am quite glad that I did my project in Revit, because I know the program much better, and for the next time I have a choice of what to use during design development I can make a more informed choice. I also reaffirmed a long-standing belief of mine: I need to draw more. Not only that, but I need help with my drawing. Jeff was a great partner to work with because his interactions with me were very non-judgmental and he encouraged me to draw a lot. I am glad to be taking both a drawing class this summer and a studio that focusses on drawing and sketching. I had Bill Tripp as an instructor a year ago for an Aalto seminar and he is both a terrific sketcher and an affable teacher, I think it will be very good for me.