Student Housing

Spring 2015・Athletic Grounds, UVA

Objective was to design a new student housing complex on Grounds with mixed use spaces.  The main challenge with the site was parking. Although the site was mostly empty on normal days, during sports events it would house thousands of cars. Thus relocating the parking lot would be difficult on many levels. Thus the parking lot is kept as it is and housing is placed on top of a roof canopy. Below is parking and commercial spaces and the residential buildings for both students and faculty are placed above. This also benefits the circulation from the parking lots to people's apartments. The parking and commercial public space is created by a platform raised above the topography, followed by the pedestrian walk. The platform has various access points for both pedestrian and vehicles. The canopy is a dense hybrid residential network which mimics the movement below.

This was a pre-project analysis, where I analyzed different housing complexes for various spatial elements. The two precedents presented very different spatial organizations that impacted the way people interacted within these spaces.