Intro to Rhino

We were introduced to rhino at the beginning of this semester.  Below are two renderings of an art gallery I designed in rhino.

perspective one.

perspective two.

Final Hospital Design.

Women's PCU reading nook

Women's PCU bedroom

Women's PCU activity room

Children's PCU bedroom

Male PCU Nurse Station

Male PCU Activity Room

Children's PCU Visitation Room

Entrance to PCU

Central Regional Hospital Design

In studio we were asked to help redesign the Central Regional Hospital located in Butner, NC. This hospital is a psychiatric hospital where they have some long term, and some short term patients.  Our main focus in the facility were 3 specific patient care units, the children's pcu, and adolescent male and female pcu's. After visiting the site, I understood better what the clients needed.  The space before redesigning it was very cold; only having cmu walls and plain white floors.  The environment of the hospital isn't very warm at all, it doesn't encourage the patients to get better, and to grow but it actually may be hindering this growth. Images of one of the PCU's:

Nurse stationActivity room view from nurse station

Activity Room

Visitor Room

Visitor Room

 I developed the concept of nesting, which would make for a much more warmer atmosphere, comforting, and an atmosphere encouraging growth, development, and change.  To go along with my concept I wanted to use a lot of wood, and wood paneling, as well as to bring the outside in I decided to have greenwall installations to add variations of texture throughout the space.

Each of the PCU's will have the same layout and furniture within the space.  The difference between all of the PCUs would be the color schemes, which will also help the clients with way finding.  

Female Adolescent PCU:

Individual Bedroom

Detail of Activity Room Nook & Greenwall Installation

Activity Room

Male Adolescent PCU:

Visitation Room

Nurse Station

Activity Room

Children Adolescent PCU:

Elevation of Activity Room

Visitation Room

Entrance to Activity Room

Activity Room view from nurse station

Final.

The images below are the final renderings of my redesigned women's correctional facility single cell.

Auto CAD furniture&dimensioned floor plan.

Above is a model of the space.

view from the hand-washing station

view from hallway entrance

view from desk

view of outside zen garden

view from zen garden entrance

Communal Library.

Our group wanted to focus on enriching the atmosphere with fresh, crisp colors to help encourage the educational aspect of the room as well as to make a small closed in space seem more open  As shown in the above floor plan.  There are 4 main tables each seating two people.  The media center when referencing the floor plan is located all the way to the left on the back wall of the library.  This area is where inmates can come and have limited internet access.  

When designing the space we had a very limited amount of space to work with, and they key was to do as much as we could without making the library overwhelming and overbearing.

The following images of the fully designed communal library was a collaborative design :

  Greg Hickman and Kristen Willis

Above: This is a view of the check in, located at the entrance of the library. 

Above:  View from the check in desk

Above: Reading nook 

Above:  View from main seating and tables

Above:  Detail of the seating and table.  Tables custom designed by Greg Hickman

Library Floor Plan process work.

My first attempt at designing the layout/floor plan to our communal library. When designing this layout I was focusing on trying to seat as many as possible, however this completely went against the intentions of keeping the space open and welcoming.  The space isn't big enough for 8 tables. As a group we decided to change the 8 to 4, which in turn allowed for us to make the tables a whole foot wider.  This new floor plan is seen in the next post.

REthink REdesign REhabilitate Cont.

REthink.REdesign.REhabilitate.

In studio we have started our last and final project of the semester.  Redesigning a prison.  

I've chosen to focus on the rehabilitation aspect of prison.  The reason that people are

 sentenced to a specified amount of time in prison is because they need to make some changes; because what they have done or what they are doing is not a positive way of contributing to society. However with that in mind, is it necessarily right or helpful to place the people in a concrete cell with metal bars, absolutely no privacy and strip them of their dignity?  It's hard to say whether this is right or wrong.  Because then you start to think that maybe it should depend on the severity of the crime, or if they are a habitual offender.  

Keeping all of this in mind, I have decided to design my cell for a very  minimum security prisoner, and mainly focused on rehabilitation, meditation, and contemplation.

process sketches.& precedents.