Broken Movement

My redesign of the Pufferbelly Depot was a multi-faceted design project that incorporated many steps to get to my finalized design of the residence, studio and gallery. I began by visiting the site to gather information on the space and its history as well as to gather inspiration to begin my entire design process. Once I settled on my inspiration, I then went on to develop my concept, design a textile and a bench, and create a floor plan for an artist of my choice and his visually impaired wife.

The first component of the design process, which was also one of the most fun steps, was going on the site visit to the Depot. I enjoyed this aspect of the design process because I liked being able to actually visualize the space that I was about to embark on redesigning. The goal of this site visit was not only to get a sense of the space and its historical nature, but also to find inspiration for the rest of the project. I took pictures of everything from the light fixtures, to the floor, to the seating and even the exterior sidewalk which is eventually what I ended up choosing as my final inspiration image. I was attracted to this image because I felt that it captured the history of the building and also the purpose of the building. From this image I then moved on to the concept and parti development phase of the design process.



Inspiration image from the sidewalk outside the Pufferbelly Depot



This next stage of the design process, the concept development phase, was the most challenging for me. From my image I knew fairly quickly what I wanted my inspiration words to be; movement, brokenness and intersection. These words were very clearly represented to me in my selected image, but the challenge for me was figuring out a way to visually represent them without being completely literal. I began by only looking at portions of the picture at a time and got ideas that way, but I wanted to come up with a way that I could represent all the parts of my image in my final parti and concept model. After drawing many parti sketches I finally came up with a way to represent everything that I saw in my inspiration image in my final parti and also eventually into my final 3D concept model. I not only wanted to show the inspiration words that I chose, but the color and the shapes in my image were also inspirational to me so I made sure that these were represented as well.

Final digital parti used to create my final textile design

The next step in my design process was to implement the parti that I created into a pattern that would then be created into a textile that I would use in my final design of the Depot. To do this, I recreated my final parti sketches that I had chosen in Photoshop so that I could more easily manipulate them digitally into a repeating pattern. This part of the process was one of the most fun for me because it allowed me the opportunity to really be creative and design something that would actually be a tangible element in my final design of the Depot. I struggled to come up with my final pattern but once I did, I was very happy with the result. Once I came up with my pattern I needed to pick a color scheme for the fabric. I knew I wanted to incorporate the colors from my inspiration image so I settled on a complimentary color scheme of oranges and blues. The final textile that I created is something that I am very proud of not only because it took so long to get to the finalized product, but also because I then had the opportunity to apply something that I had actually created to my final design of the Pufferbelly Depot. 

Final textile design created from my digital parti shown above

Once the concept development was completed, the next step was to design a bench that would be incorporated into the exterior design of the Depot. The bench was to be designed based off of the concept work previously completed. This part of the design process posed to be yet another challenge that I had to overcome because I wanted to create something that wasn’t just an ordinary bench. I started by drawing out many rough sketches that were inspired by my final parti sketch pictured above. At first my sketches were very literal and resembled my parti almost exactly. Although many of these designs looked cool on paper, if they were to actually be built they would not make for very feasible designs for people to sit on comfortably. My next step was to not just look at my parti, but to look more at my actual concept words. When I did this, I came up with a bench design that incorporated aspects of my parti, and also my conceptual words, and was something that would be comfortable for people to sit on. The next step of the bench design was to build a model of the bench I had just designed. This posed yet another challenge for me because I decided to make it out of clay, which proved to be a challenging material to work with. After building the model, it did not turn out as I would have liked, but it did show my concept and if built at human scale, it would have been a comfortable place for people to sit. In my exterior rendering of the Depot the bench is located on the front side of the structure near the entrance to the office.



Perspective Rendering of my final bench design



The final part of the design process was to actually design the Depot. The first step in my design process of the Depot was to determine how I was going to apply my concept words (movement, brokenness, and intersection) to the floor plan. The theme that I came up with was “broken movement.” I applied this theme by creating a floor plan that was very open, but was broken up by the occasional wall, or grouping of furniture to differentiate the separate rooms. I represented intersection by creating all of the more private areas on the edges of the design, and having the most common areas in the central area of the design so that the two intersected in the middle. Once the floor plan was created with universal design and ADA requirements in mind, I had to design the space. One of the challenges of this design was that the spouse of the artist I was designing for was visually impaired so I had to do research on design techniques that are most suitable for someone with this type of disability. At first I thought that this would mean making sacrifices to my design style, but in actuality it made my final design better. It forced me to use more color in my design as well as to incorporate other aspects such as low pile rugs to help differentiate spaces, and to include additional lighting throughout. All of these things are helpful when designing for a visually impaired person, but they also helped to aesthetically improve the space. With this project I also had to consider egress, universal design and other ADA requirements that I haven’t had as much experience with. Overall, this part of the design process was the most fun, but it also challenged me in many new ways and forced me to think outside the box.



Board 1: Rendered Exterior Elevation



Board 2: Concept Development



Board 3: Bench Design



Board 4: Living Room and Studio Rendered Perspectives and Materials



Board 5: Demolition Plan, Textile Application in Gallery and Bathroom Elevation 



Board 6: Rendered Persepctive of Gallery with Materials





Board 7: Annotated Furniture Floor Plan





Board 8: Annotated ADA/UD Egress Plan



Board 9: Rendered Kitchen Perspective with Materials

Board 10: Overall Site Plan and Longitudinal Section

After completing this design project I feel I have grown tremendously as a designer in more ways than one. I not only gained more experience with space planning and furniture placement, but I learned about designing for someone with a disability, egress planning, and other universal design aspects that I will be able to implement in all of my future design endeavors. This project challenged me to design based not on just what I think looks good, but to design with a purpose and to design with a strong concept in mind the entire way through.