Dru
Dezigns
Apartment Complex
This project is as the name states an apartment complex. The site location is on a canal side in Birmingham, U.K. The client wanted the building to have a store and a bar on the property, so I went ahead and designed a micro brewery with the idea that they could bottle their own ales.
As for the apartment itself the client wanted a good mix of single, two and three bedroom apartments so no less than 2 of each. I also added private green outdoor areas to each of the apartments in form of a rooftop garden.
My site analysis centered around the sun path showing where the sun would hit where and at hat time of day. This game me an idea of where to place the courtyard and also shows how in the winter the sun will be blocked by the neighboring building. I also did a canal map and a wind map just to give some more information on the site. Lastly the noise map shows that the main road would be the biggest source of noise but it is several feet away from our site so it does not effect the site much.
This page shows my design process through some of my earlier sketches before I went into CAD. It also shows the building style I was inspired by for the outer look of the building. In the end i wanted to go with wood cladding for the roof and the walls.
This is the ground floor of the building which contains the courtyard in the middle the shop on the left and the bar/microbrewery on the right. Both staircases act as fire escape stairs along with the fire stairs to the very end of the building. There is also a covered green space to the bottom of the shop as a sort of relaxing spot for the tenants along with the courtyard. The plan on the right is the plan for the below ground floor for the micro brewery.
The Second floor plan is where we start getting into the rooms and roof top gardens. The diagram on the left shows which spaces hold which number of room by the designated color.
The Third floor plan is the same as the second with the diagram showing the number of bedroom through the designated color the above diagram displays public and private spaces on the ground floor.
Section "A-A" shows the cross section of the bar and the micro brewery and the storage for the ales.
Section "B-B" is the cross section that shows the building looking from the front to see the truss setup and room layout.
Section 'C-C' shows the cross section of the building from the side and shows the room layout in more depth, the shop and the covered outdoor green space
This pages shows the sections of the apartment complex.
This page shows the site and site model along with section "D-D" which displays a cross section through the whole site from the side view. It gives a more detailed idea of how the surrounding area looks.
This page isolates a single room in this case the single bedroom to give you a better idea of how the space feels. Also a building construction detail of the walls and what holds the building in place.
This page shows the elevations from all sides of the apartment complex
Lastly this page shows the phases of design I went through for the exterior of the building. I experimented with several different materials before deciding on the wooden cladding.