Writers Retreat.. Final Spring Project

The last project of the semester was my favorite project. We were asked to take St. Mary's house and imagine that it could transform into a place to house visiting scholars in UNCG's creative writing program. We collaborated as a class and studied the history of the building, the neighborhood, the school and the city, the writing process, historic guidelines and the measurements of the entire building and property. All of this had to be taken into account before trying to come up with even a design concept for this assignment.

The next phase was an initial idea in the form of a Parti. The driving force behind my design ideas was to create a space that met all of the needs of the public space and to try to accommodate different kinds of people and writers. There is a comfortable place for writing and a more traditional desk type of writing situation in each separate "space". The space as a whole is supposed to feel completely open but also can feel like smaller more specific rooms but with the minimum amount of dividing walls. Upon first walking into St. Mary's house I loved the open feeling in front and biggest room but as I went back into the kitchen, bedroom and other rooms, including the hallway, the space started to feel very small and chopped up unnecessarily.

You walk through the front door and you see the entire right wall is shelving and screen sliding doors with storage for the obvious book collection and other inspiration materials (Pictured in the top picture above Ie: section elevation) but also a place for the resident to keep anything they wish to bring with them to make it their "home". The shelves can be left so that the items are part of the design or the screens can hide everything depending on the taste of different individuals. The windows along this wall divide the wall of storage into three equally sized sections. There is a chair to sit and write or read or just relax on this wall. Opposite of the chair is a pair of desks that can be expanded into L-shaped desks for larger groups of students, or left as regular sized desks when they are not in use or needed. Directly behind the desks there is a couch and chairs around the fireplace which is the heart of the home, this area is designed specifically for socializing and relaxation. The arrangement of this social fireplace area sections off the public reading space that sits directly behind in a linear arrangement. There is a very large, oversized L-shaped sofa that can seat people for bigger socail gatehrings or the intended public readings. The one dividing wall is intentionally put behind the public reading nook because it is the most bold part of the whole space and it's the most bold and engaging place to stand when you're commanding attention. (Pictured in the two-point perspective rendering above)

This one dividing wall is a main feature of the house. It is made out of happhazardly put together vertical strips of different thin wood. It can be pulled all the way to each wall, entirely closing off the front (public) and back (private) spaces, or it can be pushed all the way to one side and retracted into the wall completely eliminating dividing walls alltogether allowing it to be one giant space. If the wall is pulled over and a normal sized doorway opening is left to the right side, there is virtually no disruption to the large back window that I added to the space which is another key feature of this design. You could sit in the chair by the front door and see all the way through which is nice because the other windows in the house are quite narrow.

View of the bedroom as if standing by the window.

The back portion of the house is like a loft apartment completely open except the bathroom. The bed has tall shelving in the place of a headboard so that if the retractable wall is all the way open there is still some privacy. There is also a lofted space that runs above the bedroom area along the retracted wall and over a little bit of the kitchen. The placement of the loft was to make the bedroom ceiling lower and more intimate and also to allow someone to hang something to make the bed closed off if they wished. The bathroom walls are made of frosted/painted glass and the kitchen table and chairs are clear plastic. The rest of the house is wood and earth tones. The large back window has giant over-sized seating built in that is essentially the size of three beds. There is also storage under the cushions for convenience. The seating is a good place for reflection, relaxation, reading, writing or hosting over-night guests. The Large window has the same retractable wood wall as the room divider so it can be covered completely if need be.

View of the bathroom wall and built in seating/window, standing in kitchen

 

 

Lofted space above bedroom and part of kitchen/ Bathroom walls as seen in the model