Haiti_UTK: A Reflection of the Semester

This semester has been one full of growth and learning. This course has stretched us as students and designers and given us a better understanding of the various cultures around us. Working in groups with students from both interior design and architecture has forced us to learn to speak the same language. We have learned to listen to each other and respect each other's design abilities. 

 

Traveling to Haiti added a level of richness to our semester and projects. The ability to survey the site in person and interact with the community gave us a sense of what would be appropriate for the development. It would have been much more difficult to design a successful proposal without having seen the site for ourselves. Also, the ability to work closely with Jean and Joy Thomas was a blessing. They were able to cast a vision for us to follow. Our skype interviews and conversations ensured that we stayed on track with both the overall site development and individual house design. 

 

This studio has been an incredible opportunity that is rare in the educational environment. Not only did we learn about site development and house design, but we will have the chance to see our houses being built over the next several years. Our success as a class would not have been possible with the help of our professors John McRae, Chris King, and David Matthews. They put in countless hours of critique and structural explanations, for which we are very grateful. 

Haiti House Design 06 B - final blog post

The Haiti_utk experience has given us an extremely rare opportunity. Many times in architecture school projects do not live past final reviews. However, the housing project in Fond des Blancs will carry on as Jean Thomas continues to focus on the construction of the local community.

Haiti_utk has left its mark on the community in Haiti. With the E'xode Secondary School under construction and the proposal for the housing project. John McRae and Jean Thomas have worked together to not only to benefit Fond des Blancs, but also to everyone who has contributed to the work being done there.

Providing american amenities in a location such as Fond des Blancs has the difficulty of not implanting foreign ideas, complex design, and Amercian culture into a place that has not even met the basic needs of its people.

Our goal for this semester has been to make a positive impact without leaving the stamp "American knows best".

The truth is that we do know how to design, build, and manage more efficiently and effectively. Our mission is to provide the platform for Haitians to learn the trades and knowledge to elevation not only their quality of living, but also the qualities of construction, education, community, etc...

DESIGN INTENT          

The Haitian House 06 B returns to the basics of Haitian design –ease of construction and economics. 

ECONOMICS     

Approach the Haitian home design from a sound economical point of view

EASE OF CONSTRUCTION | simple design
BASIC MATERIALS | locally available
LABOR | locally available

CULTURE          

Respect Haitian community and individualism

COMMUNITY | public and private areas
MATERIALS | familiar style within local community
LOCAL TRADES | no imports from international suppliers

DESIGN            

Bridge the divide between Haitian needs and American amenities

EASE OF CONSTRUCTION | construction datum design
MATERIALS | roof truss and clearstory design
COMMUNITY | blending and gradient of space design

Haiti Home Design - Round 1

For today's class, each group was given the task of completing a first iteration of two house designs. Our group focused on designing an expatriate family house and a patriate family house. We split into two smaller groups to discuss our focuses and come up with plans, sections, and elevations. 

 

A Patriate Family House

In thinking about the qualities that we wanted to focus on, the distinction between public and private spaces and allowing ventilation throughout the house became priorities. We zoned the house into a private band - the bedrooms and bathrooms, a semi-private band - the living, dining, and kitchen areas, and a public band consisting of the porch. We began a study of how to best provide ventilation through the pitch and form of the roof and the areas that might contain vent block on the house. 

In our critique, our professors gave us further suggestions and ideas on how to best form the roof. We will look into changing our design to a butterfly roof in order to promote both ventilation and rainwater collection. We will also further analyse the connection between the living area and the porch. We want to design our house so that we can take advantage of the climate in Haiti. We will also change the current location of the dining area so that it is incorporated into the rest of the living space. These changes will help reinforce our ideas and distinctions between public and private spaces.

ExPatriate Family House

Our team came up with the initial design for this house as part of the schematics that we took down to Haiti to present to Jean and Joy. We modified it based on the feedback that was given while in Haiti. Ventilation, daylight, and ease of construction were the focus for this design.

Moving forward with this design will require a deeper look into the layout of the core spaces. The parti of the house is working well and just needs a little refinement, but the design needs to reflect it more. This will be accomplished by analyzing the adjacency of spaces, working on organization, and refining the interior layout so that it reflects the concept.  

Diary entry of Fond-des-Blancs

Dear Diary,

Today is February 2, and one of the coldest days I’ve experienced in New York this winter. As you know I am a civil engineer student studying at NYC University, and I plan to travel home to Fond des Blancs for our spring recess. I shall miss the city and its many amenities, but I look forward to the warm weather and the smiles of my family and people. Their strength and prosperity through these hard times after the earthquake have made me more determined to learn all I can in school, so I can return home and create stable homes for my people. Creating a functional community that will stand as the trademark for design is my true goal. So, I boarded the plane for home, I plan to study and sketch all of my experiences for my design. 

Dear Diary,

Today is February 3, and I have finally made it home and embraced all of the cultural transitions. The smell of charcoal burning fills the warm humid air. Seeing farm animals graze the lands is something that I have not missed living in New York.  But I have missed the great conversations of people gathering around the stream to wash their clothes. I do wish that my people had my stable systems of water and electricity, but this has never stopped them from conversing together at night. This is something I need to keep in mind for my community design. As the day sets I sit and watch the sun set behind the mountains, a warm glow fills the sky as the dark sky starts to set in. This is always the highlight of my day at home for time seems to slow down and the beauty of the country begins to show.

Dear Diary,

Today is February 4, and I have begun writing down things for my desired community in Fond des Blancs. I want to create a place that is organized, has amenities, and is catered to the culture of my people. I plan to make the pedestrian circulation priority and moving the car to the exterior. I also want to keep a lot of the natural trees for they create shade, food, and other gathering spaces. Making structural stable homes is very important for my people have feared living in concrete homes since the earthquake. With my education and connections with construction workers in Haiti, I feel I can make a community that everyone will enjoy and most of all feel safe in. 

Site Design

    The class held a inner-studio design competition for the overall site plan for the housing project in Fond des Blancs. Three of the teams had very similar concepts and initial ideas for the site plan. The teams combined to form Team C. We collaborated and combined alike concepts and ideas, and discussed issues of contradiction.

    We found ourselves asking the question: How do we introduce american advantages into a haitian culture? Conceptually, we were striving to improve the quality of Haitian life without creating a gap between the Haitian needs in Fond des Blancs and American design. The most effective way that we determined to accomplish our goal was to design in context -not in concept. We analyzed local resources, construction methods, and the culture in Fond des Blancs. Our analysis lead us to a list of  physical "absolutes", "grey areas", and "off limits" design principals. We focused on responding to preexisting site conditions, the interests of Jean and Joy, and bringing quality to our overall design.

    We faced many obstacles attempting to graph ourselves into the culture in order to understand Haitian design. As a team, we recognized that our design is intended to be an alternative to urban living. While our site is located in rural Haiti, we utilized program gradation across the site and strong community emphasis for locating public, semi-private, and private zones. The public area is located adjacent to the road. Traveling into the site, you experience the transitions through building proximity and open space.

    While traveling in Haiti, we observed many variations of organic growth in Haitian dwellings. We documented the tent cities in Port au Prince and the small family homes in the mountains. Our site plan embodied the organic growth, relationships, and proximities of Haitian buildings. As a team, we felt that the design concept and the realities of Haitian design were composed in a simple and orderly final site plan.