#weareudbs

[cmusoa-udbs]

Throughout the year, we have been working to revise our first HOME assignment as our knowledge grows and our perceptions shift. Recently, I have been working to reimagine my own experiences and associations with home in the context of East Liberty, where RE_CON 01 and RE_CON 02 are being designed. While my home in suburban/rural NJ is very physically different than those in urban East Liberty, some experiences, like reading a book in a cozy window seat, are universal.

[cmusoa-udbs]

Home

In continuing to develop ideas of the Home assignment, I began channeling more fundamental aspects of the places where I grew up, what made them special, memorable, and a place to call home. In doing so, I recalled the safety of learning how to ride a bike on grass, looking up to the moon shining through the trees as I washed the dishes, and waking up to the noise of my family partying downstairs. While these examples may be overly specific, I hope to continue developing these experiences and extracting other crucial aspects of home architecture to contribute to the discussion of designing housing in Pittsburgh.

[cmusoa-udbs]

Here is another iteration of my last post. This time I moved the brick interior to the side of the house and incorporated a sliding glass door in the front.  This would allow for the living room to open up to the porch, and a breeze to pass through the first floor.  

[cmusoa-udbs]

As others have been posting, I’ve also been developing montage images exploring the concept of HOME.

The living room space that is shown is a double height space that allows light in from up above and in the first level as well. The glazing on the right side of the room opens up the corner of the house and provides a view out to the street, possibly to allow for some one to watch their children playing outside while watching TV.  This relates directly to the idea of Refuge that Lana brought up in her post about House as a Mirror of Self.

I wanted to try including reclaimed brick as an interior detail.  The material, in my opinion, has an opportunity to be celebrated on the inside as well as on the outside to bring warmth and texture to the living space.

[cmusoa-udbs]

As Lana illustrated in the previous post, a significant focus of the UDBS this year has been exploring and representing the ideals we value surrounding the concept of HOME. We have been tasked with using our recollection of significant spatial memories and experiences from our past to craft images of our ideal HOME environment. In developing this work, I read Swiss architect Peter Zumthor’s book Thinking Architecture. Zumthor emphasis the importance of memory in creating and designing architectural spaces. “Memories like these contain the deepest architectural experience that I know. They are the reservoirs of the architectural atmospheres and images that I explore in my work as an architect.”

I tend to think of HOME as more of a series of feelings than of spaces, specifically the feeling of safety, comfort, and warmth. I have been struggling to represent these feelings graphically. The four images displayed are the most recent spatial iterations where I’ve focused more specifically on the use of light and shadow in daily living as a way of characterizing comfort and warmth. Like Zumthor and many other architects, I hope to use memories of HOME as my reservoir, as we continue to refine the RE_CON 01 and RE_CON 02 housing proposals.

[cmusoa-udbs]

Looking Back

I recently came across this photo that I took at the close of one of the days of deconstruction work during the DE_CON 01 project. It reminded me of the calmness and time of reflection that came as the project wrapped up. The experience undoubtedly taught us numerous invaluable lessons in technical documentation, systems and building processes, logistics planning, and teamwork and communication. Working alongside our partners has been a tremendous experience, with opportunities to learn from John Folan, RYCON, CMU Facilities, Construction Junction staff, LandForce members, and other outside consultants. The DE_CON 01 project was a great first experience for me in the UDBS that helped set us up with the skills and sensibilities for approaching the RE_CON 01 housing prototype work that we are working on now.

[cmusoa-udbs]

During the DE_CON 01 project, material reuse came in an unexpected way: Crane Day Shirts!

Our studio was vey excited for the arrival of the crane on site, and had expressed an interest in making matching shirts to celebrate Crane Day. While cleaning out the Solar Decathlon House on Day 1, we found a box with dozens of blank teal and pink tee shirts, in the spirit of reusing materials, we decided that we would use these shirts to make matching team shirts. We designed a series of stencils, and Gargi, Alex, Jay, and I work on fabricating the stencils and painting the shirts. We distributed these to our teammates the morning of crane day, so that we could commemorate the arrival of the crane together in solidarity.

Although this is obviously a silly anecdote, teamwork is a very important part of the work that we do, and having a little fun together can go a long way in helping us work together in more serious aspects of these projects.

[cmusoa-udbs]

Dealing with SIPs

Following up on Lana’s post, this slow-motion clip shows how the Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) were processed after being dismantled and placed on the ground. The chunks were too bulky to be transported and thus had to be cut up into smaller pieces for easier handling and sale-ability, as Lana mentioned. The clip shows Brian from Construction Junction at work with a chainsaw. Once he finished, we helped load the pieces into the truck for them to be taken to Construction Junction.