This past week, the DesignBuild students were each tasked with creating an individual “concept design” based on our site, the clients, the dimensions constraints, as well as our creative instincts around designing a small home. Understanding the site, its opportunities, and issues was the first step. Building on our site research and preliminary design for the location and placement of the building on our site we were able to craft floor plan layouts that complimented the site plan. Considering pedestrian access, solar gain, and the clients wishes gave structure to these concepts as we looked at the design from different angles. Presenting each of our individual ideas to the class allowed us to find common themes in our designs and ultimately form groups of four to develop our designs into more mature proposals.

Our next step is to work in groups to refine 4 different schematic designs to bring to the client at midterm review. We are examining site plan, floor plans, elevations, materials, and even roof structures. There has been excellent teamwork thus far, and students are looking forward to presenting their hard work to the clients when we meet with them in Holyoke next week.

Teamwork and collaboration have been – and continue to be – a critical to the DesignBuild project. By analyzing each of our individual concepts and incorporating the best ideas from each approach, we have not only strengthened our designs but also our skills as collaborative designers.

This week began with the introduction of 8 small home precedent studies which are successful examples of sustainable, affordable, and diverse housing types. Our class was grouped in pairs, (one architecture student and one building construction technology student) and assigned to complete informational presentation boards to discuss and highlight each precedent, providing information on topics such as: what are other successful projects completed by the builder?, What features are unique or innovative? How does this project achieve energy efficiency? And what key aspects from this project can we use to influence our own work in this studio?

Our precedent studies additionally asked us to create a drawing set of each small home using AutoCAD. This set includes a floor plan, two elevations, building section and wall detail section. Our class chose to use AutoCAD in order to allow partner groups to work simultaneously on separate drawings that could be referenced into one another via XREF command. Our working class days allowed us to troubleshoot in order to ensure that referenced drawings were updating timely, allowing additional drawings to be as accurate as possible. Later in the week, our class learned how to export our digital drawings as printable PDFs that utilized a print layout that accurately translated line weights according to layer.

On Monday, groups gave a brief presentation on their respective precedent study, including their drawing set. This session was highly engaging, as many of the precedents directly reflected strategies and solutions that can be directly applied to the work we are doing in the studio. Presentations included a variety of construction techniques, sustainability strategies, affordability approaches and massing/plan layouts. By using and creating drawing sets in AutoCAD, each group was able to further understand each precedent, and the building methods used.