Communal Dining

I FINALLY made it to the halfway mark of architecture school.  Here's the final results of a semester of work on the Harlem River Urban Agrarian Center. (click on the link for all the background information)

Each of us designed a different aspect of the center. My classmate and I collaborated on a community kitchen and dining space.  She designed the kitchen as well as a culinary development center and I designed the orb shaped dining space on the water.  The roof, made of wood, is also shaped like a bowl to collect rainwater.  The space is meant to be used by the community for picnics, dining, parties, and other community activities related to the urban farm in which it is situated.

The facade is inspired by the very first people to inhabit this land - the Native American tribes of the northeast - where they would often build different structures for different seasons.  As seen in the photos above, in the winter they would be completely enclosed with a skin and the summer structures would have the skin either peeled back partially or completely removed.

The window panels of this communal dining space remain sealed shut in the winter, but in the summer they pivot open up to the summer breeze.

And here are some photos of the model:

Click here for more photos.








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