Urban Farm Craft Rooms
This is a 2nd Year group assignment for a live project. The plan is for an urban farm in Middlesbrough which will be built in area that is earmarked for regeneration. The activities at the farm will be aimed at visitors with learning difficulties, dementia, autism and physical disabilities, with the aim of promoting inclusion in communities, helping all members of society to feel empowered and able of making a useful contribution to the world around them. This will be done largely by using crafts to teach useful skills, in addition to the care of some livestock, including chickens and bees, and a kitchen/cafe and shop with the majority of produce baked and created on-site. As a group, we named ourselves 'PIECE' - Promoting Inclusion and Empowerment in a Community Environment. Our logo takes inspiration from a honeycomb, and shows the pieces joining together to form a strong bond. We planned to use the honeycomb theme throughout our design.
We were given an initial floor plan for the project and our brief was to design the craft rooms, kitchen and cafe and shop areas of the farm. We were able to make changes to the plan if we felt that the space could be used in a more useful way. Initially we created moodboards to show the client our ideas for the aesthetic we had in mind. We also changed the layout of the design slightly, and created CAD drawings to demonstrate our proposals.
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Moodboards
Describe your image
Describe your image
When planning a design for this project, it was important to consider the needs of the people who would be using the facilities. Bright colours, highly patterned designs, loud noises and cramped spaces can feel very overwhelming to people with learning difficulties, so we chose muted colours, acoustic floorings and plentiful space to move around.
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Unfortunately, at this point in the project the Covid 19 pandemic began, and it became too difficult to work as a group. We therefore split the aspects of the brief into individual designs, with each of us taking a separate area to design, based on our initial proposals.
My area to design was the craft rooms.
Digital Images
Plentiful accessible storage is vital in a craft rooms to accommodate the many different types of equipment needed. This image shows one of the craft rooms which has the room dividers in use crating 2 smaller rooms. The cupboard has sliding chalkboard doors which maximises space and has a reusable surface for writing instructions to groups. A paper storage unit is useful for organisation. As sink unit is provided for activities which require water and for cleaning purposes, and provides further storage cupboards. Wall units and hanging storage pots are also included in my design.