Harmony House
In my Residential II class we have entered into a
competition through the Bienenstock Furniture and Interior Design Competition.
The Bernice Bienenstock Furniture Library is committed to helping students
bring their best designs to all projects. That is what this project is about.
In this competition we are required to come up with a design for the Harmony
House Foundation. The Harmony House is an unconventional youth shelter, located
in Seattle, Washington. The facility provides housing, along with a healing and
rehabilitating environment for youth aged 10 to 17. The goal of the foundation
is to provide a facility that is secure, stable and designed to inspire and
change lives. The term unconventional refers to the fact that the foundation
desires the completed design to resemble a home-like quality that than an
institutional facility. The design should reflect the mission of the
foundations to inspire, uplift and bring about positive change. Consistent with
this mission is a commitment to sustainability and environmental responsibility.
Here in this project is where the challenge lies.
The first floor of the Harmony House is a sandwich and soup
lunch shop that features organic and locally harvested items operated by a
creative and motivated team who train and mentor those housed at the facility.
Harmony House offices will also occupy space on the first floor with mentoring
spaces. A huge part of designing any interior space is figuring out the space
planning in an effective and functional way. The building is a three-floor
masonry storefront in an historic neighborhood in Seattle. When figuring out
the layout of the first floor you cannot alter the building’s façade, which
means the window or door sizes. Stairwell and elevator locations cannot be
changed as well. When planning I had to also take in account that the building
is located on the northeast corner of a relatively busy intersection of the
neighborhood, which during the day has quite a bit of pedestrian traffic as
well. That is why that I thought it was extremely crucial to have the sandwich
sitting on that corner, as well as, have access to all of the windows. It is
important to have it set up that way so that customers are drawn into the
sandwich shop. Another important element in planning the layout is that is only
one set of bathrooms on the first floor. It was important to make sure that
customers in the restaurant could access the bathrooms as well as the people
using the mentoring rooms and offices. I thought that it was very important to
make sure both areas were separate, that way the offices and mentoring rooms
could be away from the noise. It would not be functional to have sandwich shop
customers roaming around in the corridors of the offices. Functionality is what
is key in designing my floor plan.
The second floor is an important part of the Harmony House.
It is actually the area with residences rooms that are being taken care of by
the foundation. There at least six rooms, two lounge areas, computer area, and
a counselor’s station. The main focus again is being able to have clear and
easy access to the restrooms. With there being gathering areas on the second
floor, I thought it was important to put the bathrooms in the middle once
again. I made sure that all of the rooms had a view of the street so that they
can take advantage of natural light. The restrooms and social gathering areas
were on the back side of the building because they did not need to have access
to windows. All of the gathering areas are in one area so that they can easily
access any of them at any time. It will also allow the kids that are staying to
have social interactions because everyone would be in one similar area. I
thought it was important to keep things fairly simple and easily accessible.
One of the main factors in our design was to make everything homey and
comfortable; simplicity is a way to make people comfortable in their living
environments.
