Downer Dormitory
Fall 2015 / Architectural Design I / Sahar Hosseini
This project dealt with the planning of a freshman dormitory on the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus. Dormitories are can be a crucial key of first-year college students’ success; therefore, the dormitory needed to create an environment for socialization with respect to academic needs and performance. A square module, pushed or pulled into a rectangle in some cases, was deployed across the site and used as the primary organizational strategy.
The design was inspired by nesting dolls; the idea of modules fitting inside one another. This premise was applied to the design of the dorm through the square/rectangular modules: the larger the square, the more public the space, and the smaller the square, the more private. For instance, the second largest square, the outdoor courtyard, is the most public space. However, the smaller squares, such as the suite, and the rooms within the suite, are most private.
The modules were pushed and pulled in some cases to create semi-public and semiprivate spaces. Furthermore, modules that shifted into the courtyard space provides another layer of nesting, that which modules nest within one another, and juxtaposing spaces with different privacy types. The pushing and pulling of the modules also was used as a means of producing movement in an otherwise static façade.
