Over-The-Rhine Residency and Design-Build studio
OVER-THE-RHINE DESIGN-BUILD
During the course of one semester, Miami University offers a unique residency program located in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood
of Cincinnati, Ohio. Students from various majors live and work in the neighborhood alongside professors, leaders, and community members to gain real experience in their perspective fields
while performing community service. To enhance their first
hand experiences through academic means students take a full course load in addition to their focus (American Cities Since the 1940’s, Service learning, Writing/Designing for Social Change, and Journaling).
In the case of the Design-Build program six students (five Architecture and one Interior Design) worked on creating a white- box space with professor John Blake (Registered Architect) on one of Over-the-Rhine Community Housing’s mixed use properties. Students communicated first hand with clients, professional masons, structural and mechanical engineers in order to complete schematic designs, construction documents, as well as implementing the renovation and repairs first hand.
Project constraints included historic district guidelines, zoning code, building code, and budget.
14OO republic Street storefront structural repair and renovation to a mixed use building in one of the United States' largest and most intact urban historic district.
FIRST FLOOR RENOVATION
The process of creating a white box space for 1400 Republic began with clearing out the space that had been used as storage. Items found were sorted, recycles, thrown away or organized and placed in a new archive space . Clearing the space allowed us to get a closer look into the building's current conditions. After, vision studies were made to help the client imagine what could possibly take place in the space. From the building survey and the vision studies we were able to create construction documents for the renovation.
Click the link to visit my OTR Design-Build website for my weekly blog of the 1400 Republic project and the OTR residency program experience.
Project Members: Ansia Begbudi, Christopher Boui, Login Goins, Emma Margerum-Leys and Alexa Sooyoung Yoon​ Supervised by Registered Architect John Blake
BASEMENT REPAIRS
The main focus of the project was to stabilize the building in order to prepare the space for a future tenant. In this case, the basement became the heart of this project because of the structural issues found. In the process or repairing the space we were able to document and assess the damage to the present structural system, prepare construction documents, propose a new structural system to support the first floor, and begin the process to repair the space ourselves.
