I designed the \\ Visibility // Shelter \\ for a studio project at The Rhode Island School of Design.
The Interior Architecture department at RISD concentrates on adaptive reuse, and the site for the studio was a parking garage in downtown Providence. With the emergence of self-driving cars, there's a believable argument that the vast amount of parking space in Providence will become obsolete. What will all of this space be used for?
The topic of the studio was "habitable environments," and we were asked to pick a user group that would occupy our design. I chose LGBTQ+ homeless youth, as it's a population that needs housing at disproportionately high rates. I explored the concepts of privacy and exposure; the idea being that my user group would require a flexible spacial experience that was both a source of pride and a protective shelter.
Wooden screens were the architectural device through which I investigated these notions. Different patterns of perforations in the material allowed for different degrees of physical flexibility and visual density.