Makenna Dawson Portfolio
Fall 2023
p. 2 Phoenix House Makenna Dawson
Myself and 13 other students in DirtWorks Studio at KU have designed and will build Phoenix house through Tenants to Homeowners--a local non-profit that helps families become homeowners. This project is distinct for 2 reasons: this will be the first house used by Tenants to Homeowners to help transition someone out of homelessness and the structure is almost entirely Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) making this house not only the first of it’s kind, but also extremely durable and storm safe.
Makenna Dawson
Phoenix House p. 4
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At every step of the design process, we had the person who will be living in Phoenix house in mind. The spaces are meant to feel cozy with minimal furnishing, but also have plenty of room for the someone to grow into. Timber is expressed in every room to promote good mental health. And the exterior of the house is unique and welcoming so that the person living here will be embraced by the tight-knit community that values individual expression. In my efforts to get people excited about thier future neighbor, I planned a block party/site clean up. Because of how well it went, I will also be planning a rain garden planting day since the neighborhood has a passion for landscaping.
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Phoenix House
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Pheonix House has been a great oppurtunity to see all the steps that go into getting something built. The studio and I make every decision together to best fit the budget and requests of Tenants to Homeowners and we also have individual roles that allow us to see a piece of the process more in depth. As communications manager, I take the lead on fundraising and our social medias. I was also in charge of the interior details, the exploded axo, and the lighting plan.
p. 8 Makenna Dawson
Kalevala
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Kalevala is a mass timber multistory craft house meant for people to live, create, and display/ sell their creations. The site for this project is near the coast of Helsinki, Finland--a city that has a passion for design and people’s livelihood. The finnish people have a deep connection to saunas. To strip off your clothes for the sauna is to strip off your daily roles and obligations and to just be. My design focuses on the finnish idea of nakedness and how it allows people to connect to themselves, to their roots, and to eachother. By looking at this building as a living body, my design strives to connect to the people that would inhabit it.
“Loyly” is the steam that rises from the rocks in the sauna and is looked at as the human spirit, it’s what we are stripped down to when creating. This idea stemmed from the Finnish epic of creation, the Kalevala.
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Makers Spaces 1 Assembly 2 Wood Shop 3 Metal 4 CNC Router 5 CNC Plasma 6 Robotics 7 Laser Lab 8 3D Print 9 Spray Booth Residential 10 Live Space 11 Studio
Public spaces 12 Garden 13 Retail 14 Lobby 15 Admin 16 Gallery/Event 17 Sauna Service 18 Mech, Electric, Janitor 19 Material Storage 20 General Storage 21 Bike Park 22 Recycle/Garbage
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p. 12 Kalevala Makenna Dawson
Going into this project, I started to look at the different part of buildings as different parts of a body. The spine became a grid of CLT, the bonesstructural fins, the muscles-walls, the organs-programmatic spaces, cells-the organizations and divisions of those spaces.
The main entrance of the building is to the East, facing stretches of parks, another public entrance is to the South, facing the ocean, and the private residential entrance is to the North, facing neighborhoods. You enter into the Lobby/Gallery space (above left) where you can peak into the makers spaces and are drawn into retail. From either side, you can find your way to the 2nd floor where there is a rolling green roof that opens up to the ocean and guides your eye towards the sauna (above right) and cascades up the apartments.
p. 14 Outside Works Makenna Dawson
I’ve always held the arts in high regard. I’ve had a passion for painting, drawing, graphic design, ceramics, photography, etc. and this has greatly influenced the way I look at architecture. Being an art, architecture can touch people on a deep emotional level, it can bring people together, inspire them. Architecture should do all these things while also providing a functional space that benefits the environment it’s in.
p. 16 Outside Works Makenna Dawson
A picture captures a moment in time, it can evoke emotion. I took the picture above at a Cherokee pow-wow: it gives a sense of the event, the strong culture and traditions that lie in that moment, and it connects you to the space with the rolling hills in the background, the pavilion shading the community, and the clearing for the dancers. To express this much in a rendering of an unbuilt building is vital to spark your imagination and to be able to see a space in action. In the renderings to the right, I aspired to evoke the same level of emotion that photography can.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I hope to hear from you soon. (816) 783-3195 Kenna@KU.edu DirtWorksStudioKU Dirt Works Studio