2012 national competition project #218 | cafeteria redesign

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Welcome to the 2012 DiscoverDesign National High School Architecture Competition!
These are the instructions for entering a design project in the competition.

Design Challenge Background
Cafeterias are often dark and crowded. They are uncomfortable and unhealthy.

Design Challenge Brief
The challenge is to redesign your high school cafeteria and re-think how your school’s cafeteria should, or could, function asas a healthy eating space. What does a cafeteria look like that is designed around a person’s needs?

You may redesign the interior of the existing cafeteria space, expand on the existing space, or design a completely new addition on to your school building. Your design should contain all the spaces and functions required for a typical school cafeteria – a variety of seating options for students (inside and out!), as well as a food storage, space for the kitchen, outdoor eating spaces, serving areas, and places to pay for the meal. You should also consider sustainability issues and the environmental impact of your design.

Our goal here in this project to is create a more efficent and comfortable cafeteria space for the students at Delta High School. In order to do so we must have certain necessities.

Necessary Cafeteria Functions:
- Variety of seating options for students: Students will need areas where they can easily talk to each other. In addition there should be more than one arrangement for the seating arrangements, to make sure the students can afford to experience more than one seating option.
- Kitchen Food Prep and storage area: A school cafeteria’s main purpose is to serve the students and faculty food in the most efficient way possible. This means that space for food preparation and food storage are necessary.
- Serving Area: In order for the students and faculty to receive their meals an area in which to serve them is also necessary. Without an area to serve the costumers there would be no food being distributed, thus diminishing the basic purpose of a school cafeteria.
- Clean Up Areas: When serving children and adults, accidents are bound to happen. To help accommodate these accidents and clean up area would be necessary. In addition a cleanup area would be necessary for servers to make sure their hands and other serving utensils are sanitized.
- Sustainable: When building such a large room with so many different materials and such to create it you want to make sure that those materials are cost efficient while no harmful to the environment. An overuse of non-sustainable materials can lead to many problems in the future.
- Room Capacity accommodates the school size: In any school you want to make sure the cafeteria can sustain and serve as many students and the school might offer. In this particular situation we will need to accommodate 200 students all at once. That is of course if we continue to have two different lunches. Otherwise we would need to be able to hold at least 400 students.
- Student Store: Many students and staff will receive their lunch from the school’s student store operated by the school senators, a cafeteria’s main purpose is to feed students and staff, if there is a part of a building that does that it also needs to be considered as a part of the cafeteria.
- The Microwaves in the E and R Buildings: These microwaves may not be located directly in the cafeteria are a necessary component to the school’s cafeteria because some student may decide to bring their own lunch to school, in order to eat these lunches they may need a microwaves assistance. In order for the Cafeteria to maintain its definition it the microwaves are necessary.

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In the Collect Info step of the design process, you try to gather as much information as possible about your existing school cafeteria, along with the students and staff who will use it.  You can't propose new solutions until you figure out and document what the existing problems are.

Try This

  • Walk around the interior of your school building and take photos or a short video of the existing cafeteria. You can upload those photos or short videos here. Be sure to write a detailed description for every image.

Think About

  • How many students need to be seated in the cafeteria during one period?
  • What types of furniture is used in the existing cafeteria? Does it need to be movable? Why or why not?

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  • Interview students, cooks, and other staff about what they think of the existing cafeteria.  What changes would they make to spaces if they had a choice?
  • Make a list of those features that you really like about how your cafeteria looks and functions.
  • Make separate list of all the ways that your current cafeteria is not so well designed (chairs may be uncomfortable or the light is poor, or there are really great outdoor eating areas).

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  • Take measurements of the overall dimensions of your existing cafeteria.
  • Take interior photos of the hallways and entrances that lead into your existing cafeteria.

Think About

  • What are the different pathways that students use to get into the cafeteria now?
  • What types of food are available in your cafeteria? How are they stored?

 

Try This

  • Visit Flickr or another photo sharing site and search for other types of cafeterias to determine good and bad examples of how cafeterias accommodate user’s needs, especially teens.

Think About

  • Does your new school cafeteria need to look like the same typical cafeteria with long rows of tables?  What other eating spaces around the world are inspiring and interesting?

annabeth's work for the Collect Information step:

Summary
I collected information by making sure to take pictures of the cafeteria and analyze what some of the problems were:
This is an image of part of our Cafeteria Here at Delta, the circles are tables used for students...
This is an image of the main part of our Cafeteria where the lunches are actually served to...
Here is an image showing how crowded our line gets because of how slow the service is due to...
Here is an image of the R building cafeteria where most students eat and receive their lunches. As...
This is a close up image of the long lines at Delta. This image collected has inspired me to create...
This image is of an overview of the school, a birds eye View. In the bottom most right hand corner...
This was an image of the seating provided at Delta High School. As one can see these seating...

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In the Brainstorm Ideas step of the design process, you put some early ideas down on paper that show what you've found in the Collect Info step.  You also might take more photos to show specific new ideas you have. 

The simple diagrams you make here will help you understand how the existing cafeteria location and design compare with your new ideas.

 

Try This

  • Walk around the exterior of your school building and take photos of possible locations for your new cafeteria with outdoor seating.

Think About

  • Will this cafeteria replace your school's existing cafeteria or become an addition to a different part of the building? Will it be built in an empty lot or space?  Will it be underground or built on the roof?  You decide.

Try This

  • Use Google Maps to view and print out an aerial photo of your school. 

Think About

  • Spend some time looking at the aerial photo of your school.  What types of other buildings surround your school?  Homes, businesses, parks, parking lots, or an empty field?  How will these other buildings impact the design of your new library?
  • What types of streets surround your school? Are they busy or quiet?     

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  • On a piece of tracing paper placed over the aerial photo of your school, sketch a diagram showing a large arc around the building to show the path of the sun throughout the day.  This drawing is called a site analysis diagram.  (Remember, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.)
  • Draw other lines on this diagram to indicate the best views around the building.

Think About

  • Based on the site analysis diagram you've sketched, where is the sun located throughout the school day? 
  • How can the indoor and outdoor seating areas of your new cafeteria be positioned to take advantage of the sunlight for good lighting?

annabeth's work for the Brainstorm Ideas step:

The student did not provide any content for this step.

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In the Develop Solutions step, your rough ideas come together with drawings and models that can show others your solutions for a new cafeteria.

Important! Since DiscoverDesign is about investigating the design process, the other people viewing your project - other students around the country, your teacher, and the competition judges - want to see how your ideas have changed over time. This means that while you're working on your digital model, you’ll want to be sure to keep re-saving it with a new file name every few days as you work through the steps.

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  • Draw a sketch or use software such as Google SketchUp, AutoCAD, or Revit to illustrate your ideas.  You can upload photos (JPG files) from your SketchUp model, video fly throughs (FLV files) of your SketchUp model, or drawings (DWF files) from AutoCAD.

 

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  • Make sure your cafeteria includes the following types of spaces and furnishings.
    - indoor seating area (tables, seating)
    - outdoor seating area (tables, seating)
    - food storage (shelves)
    - cook desk (place to check out)
    - small office for kitchen staff
    - bins for recycyling

 

annabeth's work for the Develop Solutions step:

The student did not provide any content for this step.

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The final step of the design process is to create more finished drawings that illustrate your ideas to others. Remember, your explanation text, and the types of drawings, images, and models you share need to tell the whole story of your project to someone who may or may not have ever visited your school.

You might want to share floor plans, elevations, renderings of your digital model, photos of a physical model, or a video animation of your model.

Continue to collect feedback from your peers, teachers and the online community to help you improve on your final design. Be sure to review and add constructive comments on the work of other students who are solving the same design problem. If your ideas change, be sure to explain your thinking and let others know about the new work you have posted to your account.

annabeth's work for the Final Design step:

The student did not provide any content for this step.

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