#projectre_

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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.

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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.

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.