Welcome back to the Dining House team blog! The team has spent these last few weeks wrapping up presentations and preparing drawings for Rural Studio’s annual Soup Roast. As we carry forward a North/South building orientation, we dove deeper into integrating the form with the site. The team worked through passive system ideas, mainly exploring dogtrot schemes and roof sections with clerestories for breeze and soft lighting. Lastly, we left time to get a few extra Loblolly timber logs milled and stored.
The week before Thanksgiving, the team had a workshop with architects Amanda Loper and David Baker. The charettes provided an understanding of certain pragmatic site-specific design choices, such as accommodating current parking layouts and cleaning up existing exterior spaces on the Morrisette Campus. Much thanks to Amanda and David, who helped the team tighten up the building footprint. The goal is not only to make the building more efficient for passive heating and cooling but also to make it user-friendly, with an efficient space for 16 students to use during the school seasons.
Fully rested and ready to finish up the semester, the team returned from Thanksgiving break with a week to prepare drawings and presentations for Soup Roast reviews. We shifted our focus to creating drawings representing a smaller pragmatic footprint and we shared design solutions using reused materials. Illustrations showed how new exterior space around the building could be used. Much of the preparation also included revising presentation points and creating a model with a detailed landscape.
As the last group of the Soup Roast presentation lineup, our team presented our ultimate conclusions and ideas from the last four months. Feedback from the review encouraged the current placement and orientation of the building, allowing more feedback on the building scale. A major point was brought to light in the reviews: the importance of providing a comfortable indoor space for 3rd-Years to recline and be together during off hours.
With winter break in full swing, the team is excited to end the 2024 season on a high note. We are optimistic about our plans for the next semester: diving deeper into details, schedule, material mockups, models, and so much more! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!