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 

Pleasant Pizza Digital Development

Sometime back in March 2016 a friend of mine who owns a pizza shop in Willimantic, CT expressed his interest in expanding his shop. He had goals at the time of opening new spaces for catering, another location in general, and also a patio space. During this time, he was mainly focused on the patio space since Spring was right around the corner. This pizza shop had been around for over 20 years and had created a wonderful base with the community. Their goal was to extend that community to their very own backyard- which is where they wanted the site for their patio to be. The owner had his ideas of what he wanted, how many people he would want to fit, etc. but it was easier said than done. 

I started walking around the space in their backyard, measuring, sampling, and just getting a good idea/site analysis. 

One thing needed to be planned for was the fact that the pizza shop was commercial, but there was residential above. This being said, the surroundings around this patio-to-be space were also all residential. The town's code for building commercial-use into a residential zoned area deemed for a 3' gap between the sidewalk and obstruction (which I learned after my digital work).

Just looking at the backyard space available before actually measuring it, you would assume there was no space at all. But the 70' x ~22' space available said otherwise. 

I started designing a mass model of their property on SketchUp immediately. The accuracy of size, and different tools you can use on this program really help the messy part of the design development stage. 

Thus, the visuals were created. 

Once the owner was able to see just how much space he had to work with, the rest came and went. I was not present for the construction part of this project but they had many people helping from around the town which is exactly what they wanted to do for the community overall- bring people together. This project's construction probably took around 3 months total. Navigating through codes for a residential/commercial-use site was a daily obstacle for them during construction. But, the final product finished outstandingly. 


Construction Phase

  


















End Result

 

 Thanks for keeping up with me, 

Michelle C Harter