Habitat For Humanity: Union Town House Design

   
     Interior designers are concerned with social issues in our living environments along with the environment themselves. Helping to build and then design a Habitat home was a way to begin to express our concerns as student designers and do something about them.
    After helping to build a Habitat home this fall, we were asked in groups to design a home for Habitat to use in the future.  Designing and meeting with Habitat representatives was very exciting as groups of students developed sustainable and functional houses under 1200 square feet.  The home had to be fully wheel chair accessible, have a great room with living/kitchen/dining together, 3 bedrooms, and a garage.  Other considerations Habitat asked us to incorporate into our designs where sustainable building practices, like 24" on center stud construction and sustainable material choices in our finishes.
     This process helped us to learn how to work in groups as designers and split up our work, and how to come together an collaborate on a design.  Input from contractors was invaluable in this experience in learning how these home we designed would be constructed.  Specific things my team thought about was the volume of the space and using it to create transitions from space to space by making ceiling changes. We also planned for the home to take full advantage of the south sunlight exposure by putting our main living spaces in that side with many large windows. We places the garage of the home on the side of the home facing the highway to Pullman to act as a sound buffer for the home.
      Our design was also constrained by a budget and the materials selection and placement of the home on the lot all were specified to meet this budget.  Meeting a budget for the first time was a challenge.  It educated the group on how expensive materials really are along with the cost of the building construction it's self.  Over all this was a very rewarding experience and presenting it to Habitat at the end went very well.  The representatives who came love the finished work and were very engaged with our models of the homes and our display for them.  My team and I came away form this with great enthusiasm for what we do as designers.