Concept and Context:

You have been contracted to prepare design presentation drawings and construction drawings as listed below for a new mixed-use building to house on the first floor – a sculpture gallery where your client will sell their work and an adjoining workshop where your client will hold sculpture classes. Each of these spaces will have equal area on the first floor. The second and third floors are to house an apartment on each floor. One apartment will be for the client, his wife Elizabeth who is a lawyer and requires a home office, and two children, the other apartment will be for the clients mother and father. Mr. Hamilton Sr. uses a wheelchair. Your client wants this building to be modern and “push the design limits” but “fit the site context” with it’s building façades. In addition your client does not want the building façade to be a copy of adjoining buildings. The local municipality has the right for “Architectural Review” and requires that the building be “contextural” in some manner. The goal of this project is to replace an existing building with a new building that is contextual to its surroundings but has its own presence as “a building of today.”