This project was a project based on Historic Restoration of a Train Depot located in Pullman, Washington, which is to be transformed into a residential space for an artist along with his/her spouse, while incorporating an art gallery and art studio for which the artist can work. Along with the designs, I was supposed to stick to the criteria of ADA and universal design as the commercial portions must be ADA accessible and the residence will be for one legally blind occupant, the husband/wife. The project was meant to be a part of an adaptive reuse design with using the historic train depot's original exterior walls with little to no alterations to windows and doors and using some features within the depot for the new design. The train depot design process was a long and extensive project which taught me a lot about commercial and residential design that I had not learned before while applying the concept of historic restoration and adaptive reuse. My initial project was inspired by a nail in the wall of the exterior of the depot, which in end inspired the concept of Organic Vs. Synthetic Design.
The initial tour of the depot was in itself inspiring, however, I felt that every object I looked to for inspiration was either the same as someone else's (taking away from the originality) or not intriguing enough for me to build off of in a non literal way. This is why I decided to go back to the depot on my own on the following day. When visiting on my own, I walked the entire depot with no distractions and found this old rusty nail in the side of the building. The nail began to make me think and wonder about the depot in ways I had not before, focusing on the history and the meaning rather than the design and materiality. This told me that the nail was my inspiration object. Taking multiple photographs of the nail, I ended up choosing the photo above as my inspiration due to the emphasis of the photo on the nail pulling in a viewer. Through building my concept, I ran into a lot of complications with my thought process and not being too literal. With that, I began to think outside of the literal design of the nail and brick and the texture of the materials and into the actual concept of the nail itself as I had in the beginning. Thinking more about what the nail means and why it is there, is how I came up with my design concept. Looking into the history, meaning, wonder, and stories of the nail and who was there, what hung upon it, why it was there, etc was what drove me into the concept of history and wonder but also the idea that it had been there so long that the organic matter around it has literally wrapped itself around the nail, which is the synthetic. This essential brought about my title of the Synthetic vs. Organic Design. This initially led to the design of my parti, textile, and concpept model. (all on previous blog, and above)
In order to preserve the historical aspect of the original train depot, I was to include and remain all exterior walls that were previously there and all windows and doors could only be interchanged as one or the other and not taken away. With this, I kept most windows the same and only changed one to a door and then one double door to a single and a window. Also, for the exterior of the gallery, I changed the doors to double out swinging doors to meet code for commercial egress. Along with my designing of the exterior with walls and door changes, I basically took on the challenge of a landscape architect and designed the exterior foliage of the depot as well. Adding in plants, trees, walkways, and more which follow my concept as well as egress for the commercial and residential design. The Site Plan pictured shows the walkways in which the gallery egress allows emergency access to the parking lots as well as the residential entry pathways. The back of the residential design allows for a private access back yard that even with the path from the gallery interrupting, is blocked with fencing to allow privacy. It was a challenge for me to channel a landscape design from my interior safeplace, but it was actually very fun and interesting to add to the exterior with this design and not remain only designing the interior. My overall exterior design followed codes and inspiration with its overall organization, using the synthetic vs organic in the grass vs brick and concrete swirling pathways.
Overall, my favorite part of designing the train depot was working on the Art Gallery and the Stir Competition. It was a nice adjustment to venture into commercial design versus the residential design that we have been working on for so long now in the Interior Design courses. using codes and ADA in ways which I have not had to before was a challenge in the beginning, but essentially I figured it out (seen in the photo below). When designing the gallery, it was fun to bring in my concept in mostly the ceiling to allow large concept inspiration but without overpowering the artist's artwork throughout the gallery itself. I was able to bring in organic shape and the piecing of the straight and harsh synthetic into the ceiling with the dropped features and clouds throughout. On top of the design aspects themselves, I am also very proud of the perspectives that I drew for these designs. With the artist that I ended up choosing for inspiration, the art is very vibrant colored and smaller in scale, this is why I chose grey walls to avoid taking from the light absorption that the paintings will need to stand out but also why I lowered the ceilings significantly to not overwhelm the unused wall space in the interior all together. The artist's art is inspired by himself and his own history, I thought this was relevant to my concept initially resulting in the name of the gallery as "His Story Art Gallery" referencing the art as a way to tell his own story but also the history of the nail and depot in all. Overall, my gallery design is my favorite part of the entire Train Depot design as it pulls in the history, emphasis, contrast, and organic vs synthetic inspiration while sticking to the historic restoration guidelines given.
In contrast to my favorite part of the design, the Codes and Egress and the Demolition plan were my least favorite due to how challenging it was overall. I am not saying that I did not like learning it in the end, because in the end it was very significant and influential to my design and also to further designs, it was just a challenging process as I have not done either type of plan before. Learning how to make a codes and egress plan was a lot more work than I intended, requiring hours of research and thinking of how to plan a space accordingly but also remembering those guidelines while planning the space. The overall learning process I feel was a very important aspect to this design project and it will help me in further designs throughout my education as well as my career. Though the process was a challenge, I feel that I adequately met the criteria and learned a lot in the process. It was interesting to think of the design as more than aesthetic and unintentional (in reason to walls etc) and to be able to look as where to tear down and apply new walls with consideration to the entire building, water walls, etc. In order to accommodate sustainability, with this demolition plan, I kept water walls and reused them throughout the design and multiple other walls as well. I also used space efficiently in terms of egress and circulation. I feel that learning codes and demolition and the more on the complicated and intricate design parts instead of on the aesthetic and artistic side of the design process is essential to learning the trade of interior design and this project allowed me to do so.
Presentations were an essential part to the project in the end as it was our way of telling the entire story. I am pretty confident in my graphic design abilities, however, in this project I seemed to run into a wall and I was stuck for awhile on how to compositionally layout the project for showing to professionals, etc. With time, I figured it out through exploration and was very proud of the graphic elements and presentation that I came up with, however, the challenge was a new thing to me. I usually do not come up with a block for graphically representing my work, as I did with this project, I had to overcome it and learn new ways of dealing with the problem which taught me a lot about patience and simplifying. I say simplifying because I realized that I hit the block because I had too much going on in my head for ideas with integrating my concept in the graphic orientation of my final boards. With sitting down and working it out in thumbnails, I was able to come up with a graphically pleasing concept to my boards without overwhelming the project or distracting from the depot design itself. In the end, I felt very proud and confident in my boards when going into presenting because I was able to overcome this obstacle, but also to practice and rehearse my presentation in order to adequately sell my design to the viewers. Receiving reviews from the professionals is one of my favorite parts as it gives me things to grow from, learn from, and work on for next time but also reassures my designs and again helps to solidify that I am proud of what I have been working on for several months.
In the end, the Train Depot Historic Restoration and Adaptive Reuse project was very beneficial to learning new design techniques and growing as an interior designer overall. I feel that I learned a lot about myself, concept, and codes from this project which I can take with me in the future for other designs. This project was fun yet exhausting at the same time, but I wouldn't change anything about that as it was a great learning experience. In end, I feel that I was able to clearly represent my inspiration throughout my project and reflect on the codes and universal design requirements with the final project completed.
