My BA3 project has been socially driven, creating a women’s refuge. I used trauma-informed design to ensure the architectural space nurtures and enhances a safe environment for healing. Continually reflecting on how each design aspect will affect these vulnerable women grew my interest in understanding different social minorities' needs and how they are considered within the built environment.
In developing my scheme further, I considered the life cycle of the build in terms of materiality, construction, site, and energy. To create a circular economy, I reused local and recyclable materials to form standardised modular components that can be dismantled and reused in a different project/context. Addressing this early in the design process and looking at the waste circuits of the textile waste industry, I came across cardboard tubes from the centre of fabric rolls, which I scaled up for construction and formed a modular cardboard tube wall structure.
I want to explore how reusing waste materials or components from unused buildings, designing in a circular economy, and disassembly, to retain construction and material embodied energy, can fit within an architectural practice design process.
