Proposal 11: MID CITY || CONSTRUCT + GROW [ back to entries ]
The community of Mid City of Baton Rouge has been stricken with poverty, homelessness, blighted housing, limited available goods and services and lack of opportunity for personal growth. Our project addresses these issues by investing in the lives of its residents and providing for their needs in order for the people who make up the community to be directly involved in the growth and prosperity of their own neighborhood. Our aim is to tackle the problems these individuals face every day, such as dilapidated living conditions and proximity to fresh produce, and address them in a way that betters the community for current and future generations.
Increasing home ownership in the community is important to our development because it will bring in more permanent and more community conscious residents which in turn will draw in more businesses and development. Families will bring children that will grow up in one place and develop a connection to the neighborhood. Having classes and programs that address home ownership skills and problems will increase desire for home ownership. Financial classes that work in conjunction with our “rent to own” housing will make it easier for residents to transition and will lead to an increase in density.
Mid City Builds is program that lends tools and teaches housing repair can allow residents to increase the quality of living experienced in their current homes.The workshop would also work in conjunction with the kids playground in teaching them safe and fundamental building practices.
Engaging the children of the community is another important factor to our development. Proposing a program that provides children with a hands on building/growing learning opportunity can start to involve them in the skills development program that our project is trying to bring to Mid City. Allowing them to creatively explore building practices and understand construction in cooperation with a course on gardening will encourage the desire to learn and increase community involvement of the children involved in the program.
The design of our building derived from addressing the two polar facades on the north and the south. On the south as the building progresses upwards, each floor takes a step back from the community, allowing this facade to be used as open space and a way of inviting the neighborhood into the building. This broken facade and corresponding open spaces allow the building to address the human scale of the neighborhood. The north facade was stepped up towards North Blvd. in order to address the more urban scale of Mid City. Its large glass facade contrasted by a frame of dense wooden slats and reveal the interior workings of our building to those passing by on North Blvd.
