Welcome to another update from the Dining House Team! In the week leading up to the Halloween Reviews, we met with Emily McGlohn, who, along with Rusty Smith, will be acting as our client. We reviewed everything we had been working on up to that point, looking through layouts, program analysis, and project aspirations. We really focused on the 3rd-year students’ living experience since they will be using this new space for cooking, eating, and socializing. The meeting shined a new light on the major challenges our project is addressing and gave insight into how this new space could work to improve the lives of the program’s wonderful students.

The morning of the Halloween Reviews, the Dining House team gathered in a hurry at the Greensboro studio, grabbing drawings and costumes. The team rushed to Newbern to show off our goofy costumes and participate in the day’s presentations and reviews. Dressed in poofy rat costumes and chef hats, we introduced ourselves as the Dining House team and presented our current findings and schemes for the project. Reviewers encouraged the team to keep exploring building placements on the site and look more closely at the interiors of the new space.  

After the review, the team reflected on the work done up to that point and met with Billie Tsien and Mary Margaret Jones to discuss the two leading building orientations: North/South or East/West. The consultants helped the team to understand the major goal for the project in becoming a major piece of infrastructure for the campus and a cultural piece of 3rd-year students’ lives. Ultimately, the team decided it was worth pursuing a North-South oriented scheme. This position creates an edge that organizes parking and creates a strongly defined 3rd-year zone for the Pods. With these new directions, the team will continue to develop schemes for the Dining House.

“Our project is about living.” – Martha Stewart