Today was great because we finally got to the design portion of the program. Today was our full-day design charette for the daycare center. We broke in to small groups and came up with a bunch of interventions for the daycare center. Then we broke for lunch, discussed and criticized our ideas from the morning. After that we designed back into our same groups to come up with more definite and cohesive proposals for the daycare center. There were a lot of awesome proposals today and it was cool to hear everyone’s ideas. It’s neat too to see ideas converging. For example, my group worked on making the classroom spaces more efficient and we came up with the same configuration as another group did too.

We proposed to move a wall and a re-partitions the space with folding doors so that the space would be flexible. They could close the doors to have separated spaces or the doors could be opened to create two different double rooms or a single space in an L-shape of the three classrooms. There are still issues about getting natural light into the middle classroom but I think it’s a good start. Another idea our group came up with that I really like, but I’m not sure it’s feasible–in terms of efficiency or construct-ability–for this project, but it’s fabric air ducts to carry heat from the bakery into the daycare. They could be white or bright yellow or any other color that would also allow them to act as light diffusers within the room as well–two birds with one stone. I wish our groups, as a program, had spent more time trying to solve the heat problem because it’s such a big issue. New furniture is irrelevant if the room is unusable.