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2012 national competition project #197 | cafeteria redesign

By 173754 | L Redesign your school Cafeteria | 2012 National High School Architecture Competition

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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.

What should I upload in this Overview step?

Write a short description of the problems you will be trying to solve in redesigning your school library.

What is the Design Process?

How do you start a project? How do you get from the design problem to the final design? Learn more about the design process here.

The purpose of a cafeteria is for eating and socializing comfortable. If you cafeteria cannot accomplish this there is a problem and therefor needs to be redesigned. Our school's cafeteria has several issues that I hope to address and fix with this redesign.

Issues and how I hope to solve them:
• The lack of seating. At lunch time students sit on the floor because there is no room at the tables.
• Sustainable recourses. To make our school greener.
• Outdoor seating area. Currently in order to go outside you have to walk all the way across the school and you can’t even take a lunch tray outside.
• Outdoor seating and weather. We live in Nebraska and over half the school year it wouldn’t be very nice to sit outside. So I propose a covered eating space.
• Lunch line slowness. Currently it takes 20 minutes to get everyone through the lunch line, we only have a 30 minute lunch!
• An addition must mach the existing building. Our school has been around since 1967 and since then we have had four major remodels. It is very important for us to match the original building.
• Windows! Before 2009 our school had few windows. You could go a whole day and not know it was raining or snowing outside.

Comments

excellent CAD work there stevester

By 170710, Student at 08:58 am, 11 April 2012

Thank You kind Sir.

By 173754, Student at 08:42 am, 11 April 2012

i envy your design skills

By 170710, Student at 08:12 am, 11 April 2012

I see what you meen

By Cloud Varias Kira, Student at 09:33 am, 20 April 2012

Juror Comment -
Nice clear statement of issues and deficiencies. Do make sure to spell check and proofread though.

By Edin_Chi, Architect at 10:00 pm, 03 June 2012

I'll post all my comments on your project here.

WOW!

What range of skills already. I better tell my college students to get thier acts together. Really nice work, complete, thorough, informational and innovative. You will benefit by advancing your ability to study the work in freehand to more detail and ideas before you commit to CAD or Sketch-UP.

Try to remember the most powerful computer is and always will be between your ears. Let the penicl thrash out all the ideas possible, build up that diagramming page, and explore freely, then lock it down with software. You are the artist, not some softwware engineer writing code for you.

Nicely done.

By keane, Architect at 03:59 pm, 04 June 2012

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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?

Try This

  • 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).

Try This

  • 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?

What should I upload in this Collect Info step?

Consider uploading photos, a short video, and a site plan drawing of your existing school library. Help us understand the existing conditions and the location of this room.

How do I collect Information?

How can collecting information help me with the design problem? Learn ways to collect information that will help you with the design process here.

173754's work for the Collect Information step:

Summary
I collected Information about our cafeteria through pictures, measurements, and the existing building plans.
This is the floor plan of our cafeteria that helped me build a model of the cafeteria. It also...
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This is the most recent addition to the cafeteria. This added some more seating but still students...
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This is the current facade of the school that I will try to incorporate into my addition.
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This is a site plan of our school with annotations.
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This is a wide angle shot of the whole cafeteria.
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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?     

Try This

  • 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?

What should I upload in this Brainstorm Ideas step?

Consider uploading hand sketches or a quick study model of all your first ideas. You can scan these drawings or take photos of your model.

How do I brainstorm ideas?

Brainstorming ideas is your first step towards making an informed decision to the design solution. Learn more about that here.

173754's work for the Brainstorm Ideas step:

Summary
These are some of my sketches that I drew to try to communicate my plans.
This is one idea I had to redesign our cafeteria that includes both more and outdoor seating.
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This is another Idea I had that would involve destroying the teachers lounge- that no one uses- to...
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This picture of a deck is what I'm trying to recreate at our school. I would love to have a...
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This indoor pool's glass enclosure is similar to what I would like to include in our cafeteria...
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This glass enclosed deck is exactly what I want to add to our school. It would allow us to be...
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This is a picture of the Endesa headquarters in Madrid, Spain. They used DuPont SentryGlas to...
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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.

Try This

  • 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.

 

Try This

  • 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

 

What should I upload in this Develop Solutions step?

Consider uploading images (JPG, GIF) of your rough digital model. It's ok if your model is still a work in progress. Show an axonometric or perspective view with people, which will help others understand the scale of your library.

How do I develop solutions?

Look at all of the ideas you gathered in the last step. How do those respond to the needs of the space? Learn more about developing solutions here.

173754's work for the Develop Solutions step:

Summary
These are some images during the construction of my redesign model and some solutions to problems that occurred during the construction.
This is an unfinished rendering of my cafeteria redesign. This is a view facing north from what...
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This is the current facade of our school looking from the north before the addition.
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I added this door to reduce traffic congestion getting between the different parts of the building.
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With this new addition being all glass it could get very hot in the summer. So I installed these...
1 comment

Curious about the instructions for this step of this library design problem? >>

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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.

What should I upload in this Final Design step?

Consider uploading final hand or digital renderings, images of your finished physical model, or your finished digital model (as a DWF file).

How do I know I have my final design?

Consider all of the design considerations you made in your last step. Use feedback from students, teachers, and mentors to finalize your design. Learn more about finishing your design here.

173754's work for the Final Design step:

Summary
This is my final design that incorporates most of my ideas into one cohesive whole.
I decided to power the fans in the new addition with solar panels that would be placed on top of...
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This is an image of the cafeteria addition from the north west.
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This is an image of our existing cafeteria. Currently there is not enough seating because students...
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This picture shows how much extra seating this addition would provide compared to the existing...
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This is a proposed seating arrangement located on the north wall so students can look outside...
1 comment