Project 01- Katrina Shelters

For the first couple weeks of our class, we spent time researching Hurricane Katrina in preparation for our 9 week project. Our project assignment was to design a shelter for Katrina victims to replace the FEMA trailer and promote recovery. It had to be unique to the area of New Orleans' 9th Ward yet flexible enough to meet the needs of whichever family needed it at the time. To begin thinking creatively, we spent a couple weeks making artistic concept drawings that conveyed our thoughts and ideas on the type of design we wanted and how to incorporate culture. From there, we began to sketch out different ideas to find a design that exceeded all the requirements and met the needs of both the residents and their culture. Once we worked out the basic issues and settled on a design concept, we began basic preliminary floor plans and elevations. My idea was to have the public area (kitchen, dining, and living rooms) separated from the private area (bedrooms and main bath) by a sun deck. The rooms that did not require immobile systems, such as plumbing, could be moved and rearranged by the residents to fit each day's needs. I incorporated solar panels as well as a water collection and filtration system to make the home more self sufficient and sustainable.

​After completing our preliminary plan sketches, we began to make study models to work with our designs and fix kinks in our plans. Once we were done with that, we worked on final sketches and a new study model for presentation day. The new version of my design, which came about after consulting our professor, involved a translucent membrane enclosing the area while brightly colored rooms were able to be moved about the space. In New Orleans, houses are brightly colored and art covers the streets, so it was only fit to incorporate such color into my design. Because of the "glass house" nature of my design, I added color to my elevations to represent what you would see through the membrane. I also used a translucent material to make the outer membrane of my final study model and colored the pieces inside to more accurately represent the visual aspect of my design.