DIAMOND | DWELLING | DIMENSION ACCESSIBILITY RESEARCH AND DESIGN

This project coordinates a pursuit on formal language variations, and the concern of creating accessible space within a given form. The effort involved in this process is not limited to technically solving accessibility issues, but also incarnating moments where the spatial arrangement inside the space provides inhabitants a better residential experience. As represented by a series of drawings, diagrams and collage vignettes, the design begins with the adherence to ADA Standards for Accessible Design, and ends up with the production of a certain sort of lifestyle with the caring and inclusiveness for disabled group.

Diamond Shape Study

The ideation of this project evolved from John Hejduk’s Diamond House schemes, a series of drawings and sketches showing floor plans in multi-level houses, with columns being vertical support and all walls in a diagonal relationship with boundaries.

Diamond House B Accessibility Study

As the specific precedent I studied, House B shows great formal qualities of free plan, but as it only focuses on formal language clarity within constrained shapes, it totally neglects consideration for mobility and has many accessibility problems.

Grid Diagram

As the original house is prioritizing variations in the plans, my initial compositional approach is taking the diamond form and expanding it to a broader scale, which becomes a bigger frame to bring elements together into one floor for reconfiguration.

Floor Plan

The strategy of removing the vertical difference resolves issues caused by limited floor scale and bld corners and stairs, and the primary challenge becomes arranging different elements effectively to diagonally fit into diamond floor plan while ensuring accessibility. I parallelly divides the single floor into 4 parts corresponding to the 4 levels in Diamond House, to allocate the programs from most public to most private sequentially.

Annotated Plan

To be more specific about its ADA code compliance, the functionality of space is well-assured by form. the blue dashed boxes are showing all necessary passing space and turning space more than 36’’, the green lines shows maneuvering clearances at doors and alcoves, while the orange dashes are the passage and maneuvering space in kitchen and accessible bathroom, and the red circles show the turning space of wheelchair.

This diagram takes out the circulation in the entire building to visualize main passage clearances going both horizontally and vertically across all the programs of different functions.

All corridors are capable of navigation via wheelchair movements, so the disabled residents have accessible route every part of the house and extra turning space at all the corners.

The lower left parts are the bedroom, closet and bathroom, being enclosed but connected together for private use.

The middle band is the kitchen and dining room, defined by perpendicular floated thick walls with fillet edges.

Different spatial features also ensure accessibility in different ways. Showned in this view is the kitchen and dinning space.

Accessibility also achieved in another direction, where openness of space and multiple corridors ensure better mobility.

The parts marked by curved walls are primary living rooms and studies, framed within discrete partitions of curvature.

At the lower right corner are the entrance, storage and shared bathroom, with glass curtain walls as transparent threshold.

A more experiential medium showing how disabled people and caretakers use and occupy the house is the illustrative vignette. I grasp imaginary moments of interaction between inhabitants, and visualize them in perspective views.

What’s filling the corner is a fireplaces for people to sit together and enjoy warm atmosphere. As one of the small design moments, the thickness and rounded edges of floated wall is just capable of situating a walker.

The living space is surrounded by the curved walls, with the function at the center and clearance round it, while the curvature is making mobility devices to be more easily navigated without necessarily wasting any space.

The kitchen is a combination of linear and U-shape kitchens, having maximum openness and connecting to corridors on both sides. The larger clear floor space and work surfaces allow more activities at the same time.

The dinning room is open to corridors as well, with a lot of left-over space. A wheelchair could go on one side of the table and another device still able to pass behind it.

In the bathroom, auxiliary furnish elements and devices of mobility aids help user adapt to a cleansing space, where the sinks and toilets ensure maneuvering clearances.

Instead of adopting standards in a compact way, the kitchen have actual maneuvering clearance much more than 60’’ to minimize possible circulation issues.

In a word, these vignettes show how challenges on accessibility are tackled differently on the user-end, and illustrate how the life could be like for inhabitants.