Art and Living Revived: Depot Adaptive Reuse

Process Work

Elevations

Demolition Plan and ADA/Egress Plans

Furniture Plan, Site Plan and Section

Commercial Spaces and Material Selections

Residential Great Room and Material Selections

The Depot Project was a great learning experience that involved adaptive reuse and designing for the visually impaired. Our task was to design a residence, studio, and gallery space for a Pacific Northwest Artist. In the scenario, the spouse of the artist has a visual impairment.  I began the project in February and we spent a lot of time working in the concept development stage. From our inspiration and parti's I designed a textile and more. Once I began the actual design of the depot and working with floor plans it was drawing near to the end of the semester. I felt a little rushed and I probably would have made more changes if time had allowed. Overall, I really enjoyed the project and it was very challenging. It pushed me in a new direction because I am already accustomed to meeting ADA standards but I had not worked specifically with visual impairment before. I focused a lot on visual impairment in my kitchen design and I was very pleased with the result. I would like to make changes to my gallery. I love the gradation in the purple walls but I think that the red brick clashes with the purple and could benefit from being a different color. If I painted the brick walls a lighter color it would also brighten the space all together.

The adaptive reuse experience was very fun. It was very important to maintain the structural quality of the building. To add to this, I added additional wood beams and columns to go with the original trusses. One challenge of the existing building was working around existing windows. There were many moments in the early design phases where I wanted to place a wall intersecting with a window and it was sometimes frustrating to work around. Overall, I was happy with the project but there were certain things I would be interested in continuing to work on or change to make them more functional.