Design II Project 2

Project Two

The Smith House Addition

              For our second project in Design II at Farmingdale State College, we were given the design of the famous Smith House in Connecticut on the Long Island Sound. This house was designed by famous architect Richard Meier. Our task is to come up with a narrative and design and add an addition to the house.

Smith House Below

Narrative:

A young couple with a child on the way purchased the Smith house and is interested in adding an extension to the house. They have requested that the nursery is to be located within close proximity to their new master bedroom. They both like the idea of having nature feel included in the living space, the general feel of the outdoors being in. They have made it clear that the new living area is the most important room and is to be associated with nature coming in. They have also made it clear that they would like a new kitchen to be open and adjacent to the new living area. The husband of the young couple is an musician and has requested an area where he can practice and play music with little disturbance to the rest of the house. These were their primary requests for the new addition to the Smith House.

Ranking:

1) Master Bedroom / Nursery

2) Family Area
3) Kitchen
These are the three most important



Contextual Analysis:

Initial Floor Plans:

Preliminary Ideas:

Preliminary A

Preliminary B

Preliminary C

I Chose to work from Preliminary C because I felt it was the design that would give the most possibilities when editing and designing.

I then reformed it into this, the purple cylinder showing the most important space in the new addition and the red elements showing the load bearing structure above.

After some thought, I removed the beam and girder system and re-organized them as a simple extrusion straight out continuing Richard Meier's system including two load bearing walls within the structure itself. Also leaving the beam and girder system exposed is also the continuation of Meier.
My project being based on nature, many windows and glass doors were added to the balcony side of the house where as the bedroom sides

 Also in continuing with Richard Meier's design process of private areas in the front and public space in the back, I kept the same blank wall in the front with minimal amounts of windows.

Finally there is the entire house with the addition positioned on the site.
'