Our second week of studio was insightful and busy. We had a visit on Monday from Professor Vanessa Rosa to discuss the history of housing in Holyoke where our building will ultimately reside in collaboration with OneHolyoke. In working through the design process, site considerations are as important as any. Our round table talk with Vanessa helped to lay out the history of Holyoke within a broader context and the social and housing shortfalls as a result of urban disinvestment, the commodification of housing, and various zoning regulations. Getting this insight into Holyoke spurred further discussion on Wednesday helping to understand the challenges within the Flats and other Holyoke districts. As a team, everyone took away something valuable from these discussions and is thinking about how we can collectively make a change. Students are each looking into a different facet of present-day Holyoke’s socio-cultural and economic fabric. This research will provide a more involved understanding of Holyoke today.

Over the past week, students have been immersed in research to analyze a range of Small House Precedents to learn about spatial strategies for these homes for our upcoming design.  Groups are analyzing affordability, constructability, occupant comfort and strategies for low energy and low carbon buildings. This research will come to define the goals and help guide the DesignBuild team on our journey over the next several months. Model making of the precedents has begun!

Throughout the rest of our week the teams continued to work worked with together with Professor Darling to detail the precedent analysis projects. Learning from what others have done in the past, both good and bad, is the key to this project. Slowly breaking into our new studio, the whole team has found a common home, and we will be looking forward to collaborating here throughout the rest of the semester.  

Next week students will present their findings on Holyoke site research and the groups will present precedent analysis projects!!