For my final year project, I will be working on an Architectural/Interior Design based capstone. The title of the project will be: Pandemic House. I chose this name because the main purpose of this project is to change the interior of a house to adapt to the world we live in today, the era of the pandemic. This project will prioritize adaption and explore the relationship between interior spaces and human perception.
This will be both a creative and research based project. I plan to use architectural principles in constructing a house, as well as design its interior layout and amenities. By practicing interior design skills, I will create the interior of the house to address the necessities of daily living during this pandemic. For instance, separate rooms may be needed for those that would need to quarantine, as well as built in hand sanitizers on each wall for each inhabitant. This project will focus on how future houses could provide peace and safety during the stress and anxiety of a pandemic.
Because I am interested in pursuing interior design as a career, I see this pandemic as a design challenge that reimagines the future of housing. This project can either be constructed as a virtual 3D model or as a physical object. I will sketch out my plans for the interior either using traditional methods or software, then write a research based paper to explain my ideas.
The first book I want to use is The Responsive Environment: Design, Aesthetics, and the Human in the 1970s. This can be used to my advantage to help me figure out how exactly to block the coronavirus, which is on the exterior, from entering the interior. The second book I would like to use is Architecture in Dialogue with an Activated Ground: Unreasonable Creatures. What I would like to focus on most in this book is how it addresses the use of space in the house. The article, “Visionary Villa” from Sanctuary: Modern Green Homes is a great example of reconstruction design. A couple chooses to modernize a villa according to today’s standards, which is exactly what I want to do with my project. Another journal article that works well with my intended project is The Inevitable Flatness of Floors Interests Me. It will assist me in understanding floor plans, diagrams and spacing before I actually construct my design. Lastly, the article I need the most in order to understand and bring this project to life is Design Philosophy and Poetic Thinking: Peter Sloterdijk’s Metaphorical Explorations of the Interior. This article explores the relationship between society, human perception and interior spaces.
I want to construct the outside of the house first and then design the interior of it from scratch, which would be the main part of this project. I could also use an existing model and greatly adapt it. Because this is a creative project, I hope to learn from the process, the medium, and more about the software that goes behind developing these blueprints.
The outcome of the work will be a blueprint structure of the house, the model of the house, whether it be online or physical, and the designed and decorated interior. This will be accompanied by a short essay explaining exactly what the project is and how it was constructed. In addition, I expect to share the results of my project through the IDEAS symposium. If it turns out well, I hope to present it to an architect willing to consider my design for their firm.
