A HOME IS NOT A HOUSE
This project, in my third semester of Architecture BSc in QUB was based in Venice, having travelled there to visit the Biennale we were also issued a former gasometer site on the north coast of the island. We were tasked with designing a housing project for a ‘new or emerging community’.
The first stage of this project was to identify a community. For that I chose to design for the Dutch community centred food waste initiative Buurtbuik. The organisation collects food that would otherwise be thrown away from cafés, resteraunts etc in a locality and invites volunteers to cook a meal for the community once a week. Having volunteered with the initiative in their Utrecht Oost location I saw the work they were doing firsthand and I felt it could be a really exciting basis for food centred spaces in this proposal. You can look at the full booklet we compiled on our study of the organisation here.
The architectural proposal here developed from iterations of kitchen spaces. How do we incorporate kitchens in a communal but productive way. In my final proposal the building contained 54 units ranging from one to three beds providing living space with communal kitchens to around 110 inhabitants. To manage the demand kitchens were provided in a stepped terrace with one kitchen on each floor of each single linear block. The building in total formed three linear blocks with three kitchen terraces centred on a piazza and a small harbour, the stepped form of the kitchen opening the building to the harbour providing a small sheltered area for food to be brought in and to site markets and other community events. Growing spaces were provided on the roofs of the linear blocks. A form of suspended street was formed between the dwellings and kitchen blocks with space for residents to sit, interact, grow etc.
