THINK BOARD
Prioritizing the home entry — not the garage!
Why is it that so many homes across a broad swath of suburban North American neighborhoods have the garage out front and center? Astonishing that homes are built this way. The first thing you see is the garage? This approach says, ” hello this is our garage, and it’s really important to us”. In the process, the homeowner is unwittingly downplaying the importance of the home’s true entry.
To be fair, many towns and cities are packed in like sardines. However, this lackadaisical approach destroys the quality of life. Unfortunately, as ‘modern’ society has grown, we have become infatuated with our machines and technology at the cost of the well being of human beings. In the process, we have created a culture of cheap and skin deep beauty, and lost the art of creating an infrastructure that has human value. Technology is wonderful, however, it needs to directed to work with us not against.
The sketch at the left reflects a preliminary design concept that establishes a basic order. The design begins to set a language of how the home functions in an ideal way. In addition, the ease of the functionality dramatically improves when separating the mundane service areas – like the garage from what should be more formal and noble functions.
Design work can have immense implications not only upon the aesthetics, but upon the overall functionality and establish clarity. Design work also serves to harmonize form, function and aesthetics to provide elegant solutions that interface with human needs; not just bare minimum functionality. In turn, these human centric solutions (when properly addressed) create opportunities for meaningful and inspiring places to live or work. In addition, this serves to create value and meaning to how we live and why.
Applying some creative thought and ideology can get translated into creating pleasant places for human beings; not just a process of mass producing homes because theres a pressing need.
The Rylie townhome project began with a design challenge to improve a builders proposed cookie cutter scheme. However, our work was limited — in response to the commitment the owner had with builder to proceed with the foundation walls. The above noted pic represents a study model we produced showing proposed improvements to simplifying the roof and enhancing the entryway by changing the angle of the garage.
Due to the unusual nature of the project and limited scope, we advanced three main areas of our work to include: 1. expand golf course view at rear, 2. simplify roof plan, and 3. Improve functionality.
Challenging projects like this represent a great design challenge due to the late introduction of our design work. Our ability to improve functionality and create value was limited. However, it does show the power of design to transform and offer opportunities to create value.
The updated design revisions entailed changing the rear of the town-home to allow for a dual view of the golf course. In addition, the roof system was greatly simplified and the entry was redesigned to allow more natural light.
Using a scaled massing model, it was used as a design tool to make design recommendations. In addition, due to complex design issues proposed design concepts could be quickly interpreted and facilitate an effective collaboration with client.
All in all the improvements greatly improved the original town home design and functionality. Ultimately saving on construction costs, while improving the aesthetics and creating value.
The story of this project represents the power of a little design effort, even at this late stage can dramatically improve the overall functionality and aesthetics. This also represents the ability of design to create long term value.
Information Kiosk @ Normandale Community College
The sketch at left depicts a design for a new information Kiosk at Normandale Community College. The design program entailed designing the kiosk to use only a limited number of available materials. The information Kiosk would be built only with ‘spare parts’ that existed on the college campus. In addition, the project was driven by a mandate to be 90% sustainable. (with exception of proposed computer system)
The Kiosk houses a computer terminal and allows a school visitor or student to have access with the campus network system. The elevation side view (drawing) on left depicts the materials that were chosen from available materials on site. (only allowed to use whats was available!) i.,e existing exterior light and pole was incorporated and became a beacon for the Kiosk location, and a type of “Coachella” for school festivities.
The project was designed as way-finding system and crafted as a piece of furniture. With the exception of a new computer system, and applicable fasteners, most all of the materials were harvested and reutilized from available materials on campus.