Mary Grace Corrao - UACDC Wood City

This studio was about rethinking the common building typologies through the application of mass and engineered timber. The goal of this semester was to come up with a solution to the metal buildings littering our landscape, by injecting architecture back into the typologies in tandem with producing a wood-based taxonomy with the standard economic value used to construct cities. My typology study and building design was the warehouse typology.

This project has now won the 2021 Green GOOD DESIGN Award, the Plan Award 2021, and honorable mention in Fast Company's 2021 Innovation Design Award.

The program is a coffee shop and roastery. With the goal of taking the warehouse typology and injecting architecture into it without changing the nature of the typology, I added frontage to the shed in the form of a porch and pavilion. I then projected a courtyard as the centering piece. I first noticed, when studying the warehouse typology, the lack of interaction between a factory/warehouse to the public. The courtyard also acts as this “third space” that allows for interactions between the office and factory workers with the everyday coffee shop goers. Therefore, reintroducing the warehouse to an urban environment.