Harmony House: Completed

The time has come to post our projects!

Harmony House Design Brief

The concept chosen for the Harmony House is “Strength of Metamorphoses”. The concept conveys the strength needed to transition from good to great, a positive concept the youth staying at the Harmony House need. The primary colors – red, yellow and blue – are the chosen color scheme. The primary colors fit perfectly with the concept because the colors all have the meaning of strength. The patterns, textures, and lines were all chosen to portray a caterpillar’s metamorphosis into a butterfly. The concept incorporates design principles such as rhythm, unity, and variety in a beautiful way that relates well to the concept. The style of the Harmony House is traditional with small contemporary hints throughout the spaces. Creating a traditional space will help the youth feel more at home and comfortable. They will enjoy relaxing in spaces other than their rooms; it is bright, fun, and positive, which is exactly what the youth needs.

There are two entrances to the first floor of the Harmony House: the main entrance and the alley entrance. The main entrance is where the sandwich shop will be located. It was necessary to place the sandwich shop near the main entrance because of the existing elevators providing access to the kitchen located below. The building’s traffic flow is designed to be smooth and easily navigable when busy.  The location of the menu and cash wrap and design of the counter create flowing customer circulation for easy navigation. By placing the Harmony offices on the opposite end of the building the design creates more open spaces and eliminates an unnecessary, long hallway.  The open feeling on the first floor creates a wonderful team aspect for the youth that will be very beneficial for group meetings and a positive enforcement of relationships. The restrooms are located in the center of the building for easy access to both the Sandwich Shop and the Harmony House Offices. The only hallway on the first floor is a privacy hallway for the restrooms. The group meeting room is completely open with the offices and mentoring rooms, creating a more comfortable and less intimidating environment. The youth bedrooms, common area, counselor’s station, restrooms, and showers are located on the second floor. So that all activity outside of the bedrooms is visible from the counselor’s station it was necessary to create a long corridor. In order to have natural sunlight and views in each bedroom, all of the bedrooms are located on the windowed wall. The common area is directly adjacent to the elevator in the space near the windows. The bathroom and showers are also located on the opposite wall of the bedrooms near the center of the building for easy access from the six bedrooms. Two additional rooms, a gym and art room was added across from the bedrooms.  The gym and art room provide spaces for healthy and productive stress relief.  The gym has access directly into the shower room, which also has direct access to the bathroom. The direct access to the showers and bathroom allow the youth to avoid walking in a public space in order to access the private spaces.

           

The furniture used in the Harmony House is very family-oriented. The spaces are close knit, providing togetherness throughout all of the spaces. This type of furniture enables the youth to create relationships with one another, rather than secluding themselves. The tables in the Sandwich Shop are communal dining style and the furniture in the common area and offices are very traditional and cozy.  The traditional family style produces a feeling of home and will help the youth feel more comfortable.

The design for the Harmony House was very deliberate and tailored to the needs of the youth who will be staying there. Every room placement, color scheme and furniture piece was chosen to maximize the concept so that it can be a healing and positive environment. The more social areas (common area, group meeting, sandwich shop, and bedrooms) are located near windows for exposure to natural sunlight.  Studies show that natural sunlight is associated with greater focus, productivity, happiness, and health. The colors are vibrant and uplifting, the atmosphere allows for socialization, and the youth will have access to activities promoting a healthy lifestyle. The design is intended to be a positive influence helping the youth resolve their problems. They will be offered opportunities to work in the sandwich shop. They will have meetings with peers, counselors and family members to discuss feelings and discover solutions. They will have access to learning resources in order to gain knowledge. The design provides a variety of positive ways to alleviate stress. In this way the design of the Harmony House works together with counselors and loved ones to alleviate the problems of the run-away youth. The design helps the youth address their family issues and create closer familial bonds.  Focused on family, strength and metamorphosis the Harmony House is designed to change life situations from bad to good and good to better.

            The design chosen for the Harmony House will be extremely successful in healing and helping the runaway youth. The design surrounds them with happy and uplifting colors, open spaces, and places to express them artistically and alleviate stress. The design is a constant promotion of building and creating relationships; building trust with each other as well as themselves, minimizing time spent alone, socializing, working, and participating in other activities. Combining the design with help from counselors, relationships with their peers, and hard work, the youth will improve their abilities of self-expression and resolve their issues.

Sandwich Shop (Monarch Sandwiches)

Common Area 

Bedroom

Commercial Hotel Project

 For our Commercial II project we were required to design a hotel from a chosen concept. My inspiration for my concept was the music band, The Beatles. 

Concept

The Abbey Hotel

The concept chosen is three different, yet similar ideas, all put into one. Each idea belongs to one of the three public spaces in the hotel. They include: the hotel lobby, restaurant, and boutique. The idea of this was to come up with a creative idea to pull things from, not to make a theme in any way. I wanted to achieve this by making my idea fun, yet somewhat obvious, but in very subtle ways.

The hotel lobby is the “sprinkling “ of the famous songs from the 1960’s band, The Beatles. Seen in the lobby are songs such as, Penny Lane, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Yellow Submarine, and I Want to Hold Your Hand. A few of these designs are seen with the pennies on the floor of the hotel lobby, giant chandeliers on the ceiling for Lucy in the Sky with diamonds, and stained glass above the concierge desk resembling a Kaleidoscope, etc. Everything that was placed in the lobby space had an exact meaning that went along with the lyrics of The Beatles songs. The names chosen of the three spaces are song/album titles: Abbey Hotel, Obladi Restaurant, and Tall Sally Boutique,

The restaurant, Obladi, concept comes from the Abbey Road in England that is seen on one of the Beatles Albums. The space is very Urban with a great nightlife scene. In the front of the restaurant there is a space for a stage where they can hold concerts or karaoke night for guests.

The Tall Sally Boutique’s concept is Hippies from the 1960’s.  Everything in the space is raw and organic/sustainable. The color-scheme of the boutique is very light as opposed to the restaurant that is very dark. There is greenery and flowers scattered throughout the space as well. The idea of the items that are sold in the boutique are 1960’s inspired clothing, books, home accessories, jewelry, and shoes. 

Harmony House Common Area FF&E

For my common area I wanted the space to have a homey feel, but I also wanted a fun area where the teenagers would enjoy relaxing and socializing with each other. With my color scheme - Red, yellow, & blue - I decided to make this room extremely bold by contrast from the rest of the space. Mind you, this is an attempt to create a room where the teenagers will want to flock to rather than hunker down in their bedrooms.  In this room you will definitely see all of the colors to their max.

Above is a collaged slide of all of the fabrics and finishes for the common area. All of the furniture in the common area will be upholstered, so as you can see, I picked fun, youthful fabrics for the space that compliment each other beautifully. The walls will be a combination of blue wood paneling on the lower half of the walls with red paint above. 

*Accessories that symbolize metamorphoses will be displayed in various places throughout the room. 

Harmony House - First & Second Floor

The first floor of the Harmony House consisted of the Sandwich Shop and the Office spaces, as well as  a Group Meeting room and Reception area. I found this to be very challenging to find a successful way to layout the spaces - the building is very narrow and the required square footage of each space was fairly large. To avoid skinny rooms with long corridors that took up much needed space, I decided to locate the sandwich shop near the stairwell with the elevator so that the kitchen that is located below would have easy access to the sandwich shop. I located the Harmony House office on the opposite side of the building. In doing this, I have successfully created an open floor plan and limited the use of corridors that would eat the space.  The one hallway that is used on the first floor is to give the bathrooms privacy.

The second floor  consisted of the bedrooms, bathrooms, and common area. We also had the option to add additional rooms if we had the extra space. 

For the second floor I located all of the bedrooms (6) against the wall with the windows to allow for natural sunlight. On the opposite side of the hallway I located the bathroom, showers, and counselor station for easy access. I had extra room on the second floor so I created two additional spaces for a gym and an art room, which I think will be of great value to the teenagers living on the floor to relieve stress in healthy ways. 

Harmony House

Project description

Harmony House

This semester in Residential Design II we had the opportunity to register for the Bienenstock Furniture and Interior Design Competition. Our class is completing the Interior Design portion, which is a residential and commercial combined project, and the winner receives a 10,000 dollar scholarship. Harmony House is a Foundation located in Seattle, Washington that houses runaway youth. 

We are required to design two floors of the Harmony House: the first floor is a Sandwich Shop and the Harmony House offices and the second floor is living spaces for the youth. 

There are minimal dimensions and furniture-types/sizes that we are required to follow, which have made this project a little challenging. 

Our instructor had us come up with a design concept to implement in our Harmony House projects. I decided to go with one that, to me, seemed inspiring and encouraging. After doing some research, I discovered that the Primary Colors all of the same meaning of Strength. I decided to use  those colors for my color scheme and also decided to use metamorphoses with butterflies to imply a feeling of change and transformation. 

Commercial Project

     For our first Commercial Project we were assigned to create/expand on the American Heart Association Corporate Offices, which is based in Houston, Texas. We were also asked to create the very first Go Red Clinic in the United states. The Go Red Clinic focuses solely on women's health and was requested to be adjacent to the Corporate Offices.

 

  Floor plan of the Go Red Clinic and the Corporate Office. 

 Inside the God Red Clinic: exam rooms, doctors offices, restrooms,break room, lobby and reception area.

Inside the American Heart Association Office: work stations, Offices, bathrooms, conference room, collaboration area, CPR training room, and lobby with reception area.

Both of these buildings use an extensive amount of natural sunlight so we learned about the benefits of natural sunlight as well as learning how to space plan in an area with windows. 

In my buildings I included some architectural details such as, fish tanks (as seen on the floor plan in the AHA lobby, sky lights, and interesting curved walls and desks).

Below are my perspectives that were made in SketchUp and rendered in Podium

Work Stations in AHA Building

 Break Room in Go Red Clinic

 

AHA Lobby

This project was a lot of fun and was our first big commercial project so far in our program. I learned a great amount in this class with space planning, commercial textiles, AutoCAD, SketchUp, and Podium. 

French Inspired Room

For my Presentations class we were assigned to design a room and once the fabric and furniture was picked out we were required to draft it out and color render.