With the end of the year rapidly approaching, the C.H.O.I.C.E. House: Emergency Shelter team has been gearing up for Pig Roast. The focus of the past two weeks has been on detailing the units along with testing different color combinations for the exterior cladding.

And That’s Design, Baby

The ultimate question we have faced when designing the details is, what do we want these units to look like? Even the smallest details will have an impact on the overall look and feel of the units. Luckily, we had three visitors who helped us work through this big question. First up was a visit from Pete Landon and Cameron Acheson of Landon Bone Baker Architects. They helped us understand the traditional way windows are trimmed, which we used as a jumping-off point for our current window detail.

Then, this past week we were visited by Rural Studio’s structural engineer extraordinaire, Joe Farruggia. We walked him through our raised slab and slab-on-grade foundation details to double check that our design would perform correctly. Thankfully, he gave both a thumbs-up!

Since then, we’ve been working on perfecting the details of the front corners, which are major points of contact in the project. At these two corners, windows are wrapping the edge, headers are connecting to the wall, and the roof is extending past the enclosure and over the porch. Each of these connections is so important and will have a large impact on the aesthetic of the units, so we want to make sure it’s right.

Color Me Sheltered

One of the fun tasks we’ve been exploring is the color of our units! After an intense color study where we took every available metal color into consideration, we decided we liked a neutral palette the best.

We like the contrast of the light metal box underneath a darker roof, with a window and door trim color that’s somewhere in between. We think neutral colors will serve as a nice backdrop to the activities, landscape, and furniture that will be in and around the units.

That’s all for now! When we make our next blog post, we’ll be college graduates… how weird!