Hexa Homes

WALL DETAIL

Material Palette

Rice-based MDF
(Made from corn rice husks)

CornBoard
(Made from corn stover)

Corn Concrete
(Made from corn stover and fly ash)

HempWool
(Made from hemp fibers)

SITE ANALYSIS

When visiting our site in Chester, I was not expecting the area to be so large, which was hard to tell from the documents that were provided to us before visiting. Two elements that I have kept in mind when designing for this project are the steepness of the hill and the busy road to the north of the site. It is only apparent just how steep the hill is once you are on the site, which I found surprising, and the northern road also had much more traffic than I had expected. Every time a car passed, you could hear it quite loudly in the background. The wetlands are of clear importance on the site, and I challenged myself to stay outside of the setbacks around the area in my design. As you walk along the edge of the wetlands, you can hear (and see) the many insects that live in the area, along with the interesting mix of vegetation. I was most surprised by the vast amount of cattails that were growing around the area, along with berries and reeds. Instead of just building on or around the wetlands, one of my goals for this project is the come up with a design that supplements the current environment.

DESIGN

The design scheme for this proposal of farmworker housing attempts to juxtapose the public and private aspects of community living to create an inclusive and productive living environment for the farmworker, and in some cases, for their family as well. The design takes inspiration from the "Kitchen House" project. Using the hexagonal nature and communal space to create a new scheme. This project is organized on a hexagonal grid with eight buildings, each of which containing four units.. Each of these unit groups also has a semi-communal space meant to be shared by those who live in the building. Closer to the road is the larger community space with even space and a workshop. The workshop will be where the farmworkers work together to create bio-materials to sell during the off-season.

UNIT PLANS

This are detailed versions of the unit plans for this proposal. From left to right we have a 3 bedroom unit, a 2 bedroom unit, and a 1 bedroom unit. The differentiation between this units comes with the height. 3 bedrooms is a full two floors, 2 bedrooms is one and a half floors, and 1 bedroom is one floor. At the bottom left is the large communal space. that is meant to be used as both a bio-material workshop and an event space. To the bottom left is the semi-public space for each building. This space contains a communal kitchen with recreational space and shared laundry.