Shelter- New Haven

This next project was the big one of the semester. I ended up dropping my class because of personal reasons but I did get quite far in this process regardless.

The site is located on the intersection of Orange street and Chapel street in New Haven, CT. 

The project program was to "design a mix-use space which included transitional housing and residential support in a city center" which was in terms a homeless shelter.



So to jump right into it here were the building specs we needed.

So like any project you need a site analysis.

NOISE AND ACOUSTICAL 

WEATHER

MORE WEATHER

And then you gotta have precedents for your site.

My main intention for this building was to emphasize on the connection of the people and the city. I love utilizing green space as a way of connectivity. It not only draws the building into the skyline of whatever is around it, but especially for this project, it draws the people it's being designed for into it as well. Meaning, these people have been living outside homeless, so anything with a small similarity gives them that much more to feel comfortable with in this transition. "Transitional housing"

This brings me to the precedents of how the design was going to be.

Now we get to the fun stuff, where I start putting it all together.

Hey there Sketch Up, nice to see you again.
So here we have some rough rough elevations. As you can see this is where my semester ended for me. I didn't finish adding windows and such.

Then I played around with how I would want the circulation to pan out for public vs private spaces of the building.


The bottom two floors consisted of public space where you'd find coffee shops, a little convenient store, mailroom newspaper stand, clinic, etc.

The idea of adding these spaces specifically was one because there was a bus stop right on the corner so a coffee shop, new stand, etc. would be beneficial, and also because adding places where jobs were needed to be filled allowed the homeless people to be able to transition to the work force. 

This last render is the last of what I completed in this project. This angle showcases the ideal of green space and how it connects the whole building and doesn't give a harsh skyline addition. 

Thanks for keeping up with me,

Michelle 

Micro House- Temporary Living

SO, it's been a while hasn't it?

Well I wasn't taking a lot of design or architectural classes for a while, and it sucked. So I dived right into it last semester. But it hit me like a bus. I learned at this new school (U of Hartford) I was very behind in the technology. I'm a hand drawing person completely and the rendering level these kids were at made me feel VERY old.

So Studio/Design 5 started off with a "Micro House" project. We got to decided whether we were designing for emergency shelter use or temporary living for the homeless. The idea was so it could be constructed quickly in a small space (parking spot).

So I decided to design for emergency use but in the end it changed to temporary living. But we'll get to that.

Fist off, here's my site I chose. This was on the intersection of Church street and Ann Uccello street in Hartford, CT. There is a homeless shelter and an excess of homeless people in this specific area. As for emergency use (Winter blizzards when shelters are full and we need coverage asap) the parking lot behind works perfectly for overflow. The lots will be empty as well due to the fact there will most likely be a road ban during this time.

Some process drawings-

For some reason half of my final section cuts and plans look semi similar to the process work.  

As I began presenting this my professors helped me come to the conclusion that I didn't need to change the project- just the usage. So that's how this became a temporary living space vs emergency space. 

As you can tell, I love sketch up if you haven't caught that drift yet. 

This project was super quick, maybe two weeks tops so there wasn't much time for development or tweaks but it came out pretty swell. 

Thanks for keeping up with me, 

Michelle

Design 4- Uhart Edition Project 2 (Solo)

By this point in time, we've reached halfway through the semester of our 4th studio. The next part of our semester involved taking the first part of the semesters group research and implement it into a solo project. Out of the entire Sheldon Charter Oak site we were able to choose a site within the community to build on. Our peremiters remained to multi-use buildings including residential and commercial. 

 Site location

One of the major concepts I wanted to implement into this project was the use of green space. I was fixated on gaining community circulation through the use of these green spaces strategically placed within conjoining blocks. 

Community Circulation Green Space Plan

Another thing extremely important for this project was to keep the communities culture intact. Sheldon Charter Oak is famous for the Colt Armory, a building that has been around since 1855 run by Samuel Colt where the first firearms were manufactured. This building not only holds American history involved in the industrial revolution, but helped brand Hartford and this community. To this day the Colt Armory employee's living spaces are still standing, renovated with new occupants. "Coltsville" harnesses the rich culture that stamped them many years ago. 

With the history in mind I wanted to keep all shut down buildings relevant with renovations, along with keeping the urban New England architecture style alive within the new buildings- specifically the multi-use building. 


Urban Hartford Multi-use Precedents

 

Green Space Precedents

 


Residential Layout Precedent

 

With all of this information in regards to sustaining the communities culture along side connecting all the blocks/spaces, I wanted to create an individual community within the multi-use site. A community set up through open outdoor spaces creates an obvious connection and flow, where as adding individual community spaces within exemplifies the many cultures bounded in a community. 

 Commercial (Level 1) Floor Plan

Residential (Level 2 & 3) Floor Plans

Hand Drawn Perspectives 

Renderings

West Facade

East Facade

Design 4- Uhart Edition Project 1 (Group)

The last post I left you with my reasoning on why I moved to New England, and how my schooling was different than Florida lessons and everything else that comes to moving.
Now the beginning of Design 4 Uhart edition (D4UH) began with picking our brains on what we thought a functional multi-use facade looked like.

Week 2 of D4UH (Recap)

After we did process after process of something that seemed easy as pie, we started thinking completely opposite- not the building or the look, but the people and culture of the community. These facades are famous in New England, but why. That was the the new thought process direction we took. We started researching community demographics, cultures, things that made this area the way it was. 

Before I get ahead of myself, our site was in Sheldon Charter Oak- a neighborhood in Hartford, CT. The whole idea of using this site was to take an average community, on the not so average economic levels and add life to the community without hindering the original culture. 

 Demographics

Site Analysis

 

Once we studied enough of the site, we came to a few conclusions. There were a lot of empty parking lots, and not a lot of people to fill those spots. Adding retail shops and restaurants would bring more people to this part of Hartford, which would accomplish bringing life to this community. But, after studying the communities demographics and basic cultural aspect of this neighborhood, we concluded that adding big name brands and chains to this area would inevitably break the culture and make this yet another 9-5 community. Having chains and big brands come in will add the possibilities of job, which we intended to keep in mind, but the demographics show that these people living here and mainly families, and a lot of which are on lower salaries/fixed incomes. This neighborhood would greatly benefit from the addition of stores and restaurants on the smaller business scale. This would add job opportunities, still bring in the 9-5 Hartford population, but it would also keep the culture of the community intact by creating a bond with the neighborhood. 

Precedent Pictures

Proposed Site Additions Layout

After we gathered all of this information and presented it as a group, we were each broken up for a solo project to execute a multi-use building on our actual neighborhood site. 

Thanks for keeping up with me, 

Michelle C Harter