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.

"Golden-Ratio" Box

For our final project in our Principles and Elements: Color Theory class we had to design a box using the Golden Ratio and this time we were able to use color.

Cupcake Shop

For our Introductory class we were assigned a new project: Design a Modern Cupcake Shop.
I went with a Scandinavian theme and designed a cupcake shop that was simple and that would please (hopefully) both genders.

Perspective

2-floor Elevation

Pool House

I have been excited to do this post. For our Introductory class for Interior Design we were assigned our first big project for the semester. It was a very detailed project that required many hours of hard work.

 Last month our instructor gave us a written out packet of rules and guidelines for the project. We were required to design and make a 3-dimensional pool house for a mock family named the Smith's. The most interesting part of the project was that it had to be made out of a 30ft. Metal storage container. We soon found that it was very difficult to find a successful floor plan with such a long and skinny space, but it was a good experience.

 Steps: sketched out countless floor plans, found our furniture, drew our elevation sketches (all done at at 1/2" scale), color rendered our elevations, and then created our 3-dimensional models that were made out of foam boards and pinned together with flat head sewing pins. I was so excited to see it all put together.

Front exterior view

Interior furniture: L-shaped sofa with pillows, cheiftain chairs (2), book case, occasional table, lamp, light fixtures (2), raw wood slab for bar, rustic steel bar stools (4), and paintings by Vincent Van Gogh (2). 

Interior side view

Bar is on the front wall (right). Also has a skylight above the book case

Roof view

Grass with trees, plants, etc. lounge chairs (2), and solar panels

Floor plan

I wanted it to be really open so I used as much wall space as I could.

There is a deck that has a fireplace, love seat, dining table, and bbq.

There is also a stair case that wraps around the building to the roof.

I found it essential to make the roof accessible as well as having a deck, which tripled the size of the living space. 

Another interior view (better view of skylight).

I am really happy with how mine turned out and I loved the project because it gave us a good challenge and will be something that will stand out in our portfolios. We also had to make a presentation board and present our project to the class. I will be posting a picture of the board soon.

Fall 2011 Semester Recap

Since I am now just starting my blog after completing one semester at RCC, I decided to post some pictures of my projects I did last semester.

My first two projects were apart of my Principles and Elements of Design class. Basically, we learned all of the principles and elements of design (scale, balance, color, proportion, texture, etc.) In order to learn these - and since color is a whole other matter - we were only allowed to work with black, white, and gray for our design projects.

Project 1

3-dimensional & non objective on 3 panels

"Robin"

Project 2

3-dimensional & non objective on 6 panels

"Commute"

My last project was for my Products class where we learned about types of finishes for furniture, flooring, countertops, etc. It was an online class and for our last project before the semester ended we were assigned to create a new, unique piece of furniture, light fixture, or accessory, etc. I chose to reuse an old Apple Crate that I found from a farm and turned it into an Ottoman.

Products Project

"Gala Ottoman"

Trends and Designs for Home Furnishings in 2012

Color Trends

2012 has brought a fun year for Interior Designers, as well as anyone looking to redecorate or start anew.

The colors that we see this year range from many different colors all over the color wheel and are used in a wide variety of ways. You will also notice that the Fashion and the Design World go hand in hand - "Whats Hot" in the fashion industry is "What's Hot" here.

Here are some of the most popular color trends for this year 2012:

Orange tones (persimmon, coral, etc.) is THE color right now within the fashion and design industry and is definitely getting all of the hype.

 Here, we see it being used as a soft splash of color

 and here, we see that it is the dominating color.

Black and White is back! Timeless as always.

 love the vintage flooring

 Black and white with a splash of red

  

Purple- such a fun color to decorate a room with and its bigger than ever in 2012.

multiple purple tones

paired with white

Blue and White. We have seen many rooms with blue in them, but what colors have they been paired with most? WHITE.

Gray and Neutrals- my personal favorite - reason being, they never go out of style and you can switch out accent colors cheaply rather than revamping a whole room. 

Did you notice that most colors are paired with white this year?

Furnishing Styles  

Organic, reclaimed, restored, etc, are all apart of the furnishings in 2012. People are wanting to go GREEN . . . and that ain't a bad idea. Crystal and glass are also every where this year.

Reclaimed beams and coffee table

NYC is up on their trends with this restaurant's use of reclaimed wood
See restaurant here.

 Glass dining table

Futuristic? Italian company Santambrogiomilano designs this line of glass furnishings.
See it here.

Accessories

Don't you love accessories? I know I do. There is a wide plethora of accessories out on the market today.

 Mirrors

Recycled glass (many different uses)

Clocks

 Topiaries or greenery

And light fixtures galore!

Welcome to my design blog!