Project 1 - Exploration of Dwelling Space

NARRATIVE:

Design a tiny home for a groundskeeper at the Giving Garden on the Farmingdale State College (FSC) campus. Develop the design and justification for the site. A tiny home is defined as a house that is 400 square feet or less. The homes will house one or two persons. The home will be reserved for the groundskeeper as a permanent residence. The home should provide the basic needs of shelter and comfort, while, to the greatest extent possible, promoting one's sense of place among the community of which it is a part.

Each unit is required to have the list of spaces as follows:

• Sleeping Space

• Living Space

• Cooking Space

• Bathroom space, including sink, shower, and toilet, should be at a minimum that will permit a wheelchair user to access and use the water closet (toilet) and lavatory (sink). Please reference ICC A117.1 regarding design requirements and consider the minimum space requirements to allow for each home to be converted into a fully ADA-compliant home if needed

• Spaces to accommodate storage needs

CONCEPT: HONEYBEE

HoneyBee is a concept where it creates a home reflecting the intricate and purposeful life of honeybees, emphasizing community, efficiency and sustainability.

META IDEA: HONEYCOMB

The design of my home focuses on a hierarchy just like how bees are established in their life. The queenbee is the most important of all in a bees environment, in this case, the livingroom/area is my primary hierarchy. The shape of the overall house and its rooms are hexagonal shapes mimicking the honeycomb shape from the bee's home. To establish my hierarchy clearly, I made the living room/area, not only bigger in size but in height as well, to showcase from the outside view that the important room is the biggest. I also decided to have the living area in the middle and its surrounded by the rooms, indicating that everything comes back to the living room/area (it's circling around the main room).

PROJECT SITE:

The project site is located at the Giving Garden on FSC campus. The garden is a 50′ x 100′ parcel of land in the Fred Harrison Service Complex that Island Harvest uses to grow vegetables for food insecure Long Islanders. The students are encouraged to engage the entire property (i.e. approximately 200’ x 100’) within the boundary set by the existing fence

PROCESS:

Hierarchy: Family Room

PUBLIC VS PRIVATE

PUBLIC

Kitchen
Personal Garden
Living Area

PRIVATE

Loft Bedroom
Bathroom
Storage Area

Preliminary Design:

1st & 2nd Floor Plans

The circulation of the floor plan and the width and length of each individual rooms was created with ADA compliance in mind, the bathroom area and doors are wide enough to accomodate wheelchair accessibility. Curtain walls in the living area, storage room invites natural sunlight in the rooms throughout the day as it is positioned in the site to capture enough light from the east and west sun positions. When natural sunlight is gone, there is LED lights throughout the home to accomodate during the night. The personal garden area is its own greenhouse created by curtain walls to capture how a greenhouse is structured.

Elevations

East Elevation
Scale: 1/4"=1'-0"

West Elevation
Scale: 1/4"=1'-0"

Site Plan

The site's design is intended to showcase a hierarchy through the implementation of the "honeycomb" (hexagonal) grid system. With the use of a grid system, a large area can be created by merging the hexagonal shapes. In the site, the main hierarchy is the community area, it is believed that bees are very communicative and establish a great community in their group, so it is interpreted to have the community area to be the largest area at the site, and in the middle. It is then connected with paths leading to the tiny home, and a small storage area, giving garden area, where it has multiple small areas within its boundaries in the site