Perspectives 1

Below are pespectives for 6 areas on the site.  I am going to start with the top row. 
Top Left is an image of the community gardens, the closest part of the image has raised planters- i chose to use raised planters because i am a person that has back problems and i do not like to have to been all the way to th eground to pick vegetables, with the raised planters my self or even the older generation could sit on the edge and reach in to pick their peppers or carrots instead of having to bend over or even sit on the ground to pick them.  i have also included an area righ behind the raised planters for gardens that are placed on the ground that could be tilled up for bigger gardens. 
Top Middle-
Is view looking at the corner building, which is mixed use and could have a restaurant like Mugshots, where they have the balcony for people to eat on or even like Bin 612 where they have the patio for outside eating
Top Right
Is a view looking at the arbors and seating arear located between the community gardens and the playground area.  These are round seating structures that could have public art display in the center of the circle to draw attention to this area. 

Second Row
Bottom Left
Is a view looking to the south in the private community area, looking at the sunken turf stormwater retention area located next to a seating area.  The seating area is providing two things: 1 is that is provides seating and 2 is that is breaks up the space from the parking lot to the well water feature creating its own space.
Bottom Middle
This is a view of the splash fountain and the playground area.  The splash fountain would utilize capturing stormwater runoff and filtering and reusing it for the kids to play in.  The playground is all recycled material, and the reason for this in the design, is so that while the parents are over in the community gardens the children can be outside with them playing on the playground. 
Bottom Right
This is a view of the well water feature.  It has seats with a planted wall behind the seats to create some contrast and create conversation

Enlarged master plan

In the image below i have labled some things on the  image, but there are some interesting things that i would like to point out on top to draw your interest to.  In one of the first posts that i put on this blog was about a solar tree.  I thought these were really interesting because they were completely off the grid by using solar panels on top of the leaf and led's underneath to create light in the evening.  I have included two solar trees in my design and they are located right next to the playground and splash fountain.  This allows the playground to have plenty of light in the evening for children to come out on the hot summer nights and play on the playground and enjoy the water from the splash fountatin. 
I have also included community gardens, seating area next to the well water feature, and next to the parking structures.

Master Plan

Oh the master plan, it was fun completing and seeing how things worked out.  If you were to click on the image, you can see the labeling a little more clearly. 

From the preliminary plan to the master plan i realized that having the turn around lane, which was going to be one way with a playground and a communtiy garden in the middle of it, needed to change.  I was asked why i was designing a playground where children would have to cross a road to get to it.  It was a great point and i was able to adjust some of the buildings around to make up for the parking i was going to have to change.  I moved half of the parking spots up on to the other side of two of the buildings which made the existing parking area bigger and function bettter.  The other parking section i moved out to Scales Street and created 60 degree parking coming from the east. 

The plan turned out great i think and i am very happy with the project.

Preliminary Plan

You may be asking why there are not conceptual plans in this blog before preliminary plans, and that is because there are none.  I have found that i need to keep all my drawings in a safe place in my desk and not in a recycling bin underneath my desk, because the good people around me that like to recycle, kindly empty the container once it gets full.  I forgot that i was placing my drawings in there instead of keeping them, so i did not throw them away, i recycled them.  At least i was helping out the landfills, but at the same time i was hurting the grade, OH well.  Actually i found one drawing  and here it is. 

To the preliminary plan.  I actually changed my conceptual plans alot to come up with this design.  In the image below one can see that there are two entry points.  One on Scales Street and one from Whitfield street on the northern end of the site.  I changed the road layout from the functional plans a little, by taking out one of the entrances on Scales Street, i ended up creating a turnaround located close to the community center. 

The plan has quite a few houses on the the site with the majority of the housing being two story.  There are four buildings that are single story. At first i thought this would add some change in perspective as people walked throught the site, but after making a 3d sketchup model i realized that it would be beneficial to have all of them the same height to close in the space. 

The plan has some great things in it but a few things that need to be changed which i will address when i post the master plans. 

Functional Diagrams and Matrix

 Below are my three functional plans.  I have them in order of 1 (just below and to the left), 2 (just below and to the right), and 3 (is in the second row). 
As you can see from the three plans that i was playing with different entrance points and road layouts and those are symbolized by the black dashed lines.   I was also looking at different locations for the community center and how they would work out the the corner view from Whitfield and Scales Streets. 
Below in the second row on the right is a matrix and i will describe how i came to the conclusion on which functional plan i used below. 

Matrix

This matrix may not look like it compares much except that i like drawing stars, triangles and circles.  It actually compares the program elements that i thought were the most important.  It may look like that there are not much differences but i by looking at the functionals, i started to like one more than the others. 

I ended up choosing functional plan #3 because of the road layout, but with one minor change.  i would remove the road that leaves the site to the west.  I was not set on this entrance because across the street is another road entering Whitfield, and i did not want to have to add a stop sign here. 

Concept and Diagrammatic relationships

Concept

•Regenerative

–The ability to use green technologies on the site to help the residents financially and environmentally

–Conversion, Distribution, Filtration, Assimilation, and Storage

•Examples are:

–Distribution

•Collecting Rainwater runoff into cisterns to be reused as irrigation, filtered and used in the water features and even used to wash vehicles.

–Conversion

•Capturing the suns power through solar panels on the roof and in the solar tree will cut down on the homeowners utility costs.

–Assimilation

•Through the community garden residents can plant what they want and all that is asked is that all of the organic waste from making dinner be contributed back to the composting area to help grow the next years crop.

 

 

Below is an image of my diagrammatic relationships which is just saying how i relate some of the program elements, that i posted on the previous blog, to each other

 

 

Whitifeld Design Program

The pages below are lists of program elements that i have broken out with an idea and how it would work on the site.  There is categories of housing ideas, stormwater and parkming structure on one page and on the other is a list of design ideas i had for the community area, streets and private areas.