Blog #3: Narrowing Down Design

 Today I worked on narrowing down my final design for my house. After some consideration, I decided that I wanted to focus my efforts on creating a single story home which incorporated a outdoor front area which could be used by the people living there. I started by first drafting out an initial, large scale design of what this area could look like with square footages included.

From this initial design, my mentor and I discussed what could be changed about this design, the first order was downsizing. This design was very spacious, in fact it had too much room for my project. This was because my project was supposed to be affordable. Along with that, some rooms were just bigger than they needed to be. Take for instance the utilities room and bathroom, which had more than enough space. This would create kind of an empty feeling to the space, one which I think we can all agree is not wanted in a house. After discussing this along with some other design choices, such as creating one long hallway along the bedrooms instead of a large open space near the top, I moved on to rapid drawing some alternatives which included dimensions as well as layout changes to the previous design.

These designs all sought to tweak and alter the initial design bit by bit. This involved a process of making one drawing, discussing it with my mentor, and then drawing another one in 20-30 min intervals. Through this process, each design had its own problems. The first three on the left all sought to find a good way to arrange the rooms. I was pretty successful early on with the righthand side of the building, as that design remained fairly consistent, but what challenged me was the left side, which houses the main social areas as well as the utilities areas. Finding a way to balance these two very different spaces was key in creating a good design, which I was able to accomplish in design four, drawn in the bottom right. I then took this design and brought to the same scale as the initial drawing.

This design sought to create a distinct social and utility space. The social space, which consisted off the dining, kitchen, and living areas, is one large open space as to create cohesion between the three areas. The utility area, which is pictured in the bottom right, consists of the garage, bathroom, and laundry/utility room. The main entrance is a double door which is pictured in the middle right and in the back of the outdoor entrance space, as to create this welcoming feeling as one enters the house. The bedroom area is in the top of the image, which has three bedrooms, two for children and one master for the parents. Also included is a two bathrooms, the one near the laundry room more of a powder room as it consists of just a bathroom and sink. Now this isn't the set in stone final design, as things are definitely going to change the further into the project I get, but I think this design really works for what I am trying to go for: a sustainably built, affordable housing unit.