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

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

What Happens When You Move to New England

     So you were expecting Design 5 right? Well, when you leave a two year program for a 4 year program with the added engineering aspect, you gain 3 more years of fun gen ed's and accumulations of architectural engineering classes. 

     
     I decided to move away. And if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me "why the hell did you move to Connecticut", I wouldn't need to be studying to have a good job. I was so sick of Florida. I could tell you everything about every single street, and destination, and I was tired of that. I didn't want to see the same people from high school, I was over the tourists, and cast members are the devils. To summarize it, I moved because I moved. 

     The first day of class I was given a warm welcome to New England, and their educational system. From design 1 thru 4, we weren't supposed to have a base on any of our models/designs, excluding windows, doors, and wall-like additives. DAY ONE of design 4 (design 4 at my new school is on par to Valencia's design 5) I was expected to know what an elevation was, understand codes for buildings, meanings of egress, etc. I was so lost, but so happy I was where I was. I like to learn when I am under pressure. No negativity towards Valencia, but the amount of information on realistic architecture and sustainability was at a loss. One thing I can say is they are so lenient on deadlines here at UHart- I was terrified to not have my axis/models ready for Baldwin. I like have a strict timeline, and if you're not done, you are DONE. I am so very blessed that my professors at Valencia kinda forced us to hand draw/design most things, because it gave me a great upper hand. So many people in the program started off using Revit and other programs to execute ALL of their assignments. Sorry but rectangular building with the paint bucket tool for "bricks" isn't enough. Baldwin would ask you to come back next semester when you're ready to work.




     So I will leave you with my first task in "new Design 4". We were asked to design a multi-use building including retail on the first floor, incubator space on the second, and finally residential on the third. I wanted to tie together each floor with similar details even though we were told to define each different space. I wanted the building to still read as a working unit altogether. This was a very fun first assignment to do since I'm not at all used to how Northern multi-use building look/work. 
***Fun fact, not many know what mylar is up here***

     For my materials and methods class, my professor should get an award. Its probably the most informative class I have ever taken, and it saves my ass for anything I need to know code-wise, or with means of egress. The textbook has EVERY building code (northern standards), material cost, egress requirement, etc. 

     The real majority of the semester within "new design 4" involves a master plan, and building idea that is still in the works, so stay tuned.



Thanks for keeping up with me! -M