Designing a Lounge or Gallery for a Client’s Unique Aesthetic

Okay, welcome to the final project. I'm excited to share with you. You made it.

You've probably learned a lot at this point, and I hope you've enjoyed all the assignments. Everything we've done has led up to this point. All right, so project introduction.

This is an assignment that will test all of the design skills that you've learned through the previous lessons. You're going to be designing an artist lounge or a gallery space for that dedicated client who you chose and you did research on. You're going to act as the interior designer, and you're going to make all the decisions from what type of furniture, lighting, materials, and you've already started thinking about this because you've done your material board at this point.

You've also done your research, and you should have a pretty good idea of what your client's aesthetic is. I'm going to give you a template. So the requirements, the first requirement is a floor plan.

You're going to use the floor plan that I will share with you in a couple minutes, and that will be used to design the furniture layout for your space. There's a couple things that I would like you to think about. First is thinking about ADA, considering the lesson that we talked about universal design and ADA.

So there's three ADA requirements. The first one is a 60 inch turning radius for a wheelchair. This means there needs to be an area clear that a wheelchair can turn around and exit.

You're going to provide a minimum of three feet for walkways or circulation. If there's an area where furniture is next to each other, you may you have at least one area that is three foot clear for someone to be able to navigate through that space. And I would also like you to keep the entryway clear of any obstructions, and we talked about this when we looked at some of the codes in the last lesson.

You're also going to keep the plan and furniture to scale. I'll discuss this in our next lesson, and I'll share the floor plans with you as well. You're going to create a design that is simple and effective, and it's going to meet the needs of your client.

So the furniture you choose is important, and I will give you some templates, but you're also welcome to find your own furniture. And I would like this floor plan to be in black and white, and the reason why is you will render an elevation. Now we discussed in previous lessons what an interior elevation is, and I showed examples of interior elevations and rendering, so please feel free to go back and look at those lessons.

But you're going to use the elevation in this assignment, which I'll share with you. There's a couple options, and you're going to use this to reveal what you have in that space. Materials, color, furnishings, lighting, any type of finishes that related to your Project 3 material board.

And you're also going to include a scale figure, and we'll use a six foot scale figure for this part of the assignment. Now you'll notice that in Project 3, in your materials board, you had lots of materials that you chose, and you might have even had options. So you're not going to see every single material in the elevation that you chose on your material board.

So it's okay for you to select the aspects of the project, the elements, and the furnishings, and the color that show up in that elevation view, right? If you're looking at the south elevation, you may be looking at specific furniture, specific elements, specific colors, and you're going to use that in that particular rendering. You're also going to include your material board. Now we've already done this project, so essentially what you're doing is, and again I shared with you earlier, that everything you do for this class will lead to this final project.

So the point is for you to be able to have a comprehensive presentation that really shows all the research, the material board, and then the floor plan, and rendering that we are discussing now. So you include the digital material board that you did in Project 3, and I think it's okay for you to remove the title block on Project 3 because this can be its own presentation, and I'll show an example of what that could look like. You may revise your material board to improve your interior design choices.

If between creating the material board and this project, you've come up with additional ideas or another color palette that you think might work better, I'm okay with you making adjustments to that digital material board. All I ask is that whatever you select will be consistent with the elevation that you choose. Now for presentation format, I think a PowerPoint presentation would be great, but you are welcome to use Canva or any other software that that works for you.

You will have a title page, as we've done in the past. You're going to put your client's name, and you're going to put the class name, and then you'll have a simple introduction about your client. And this, I want you to use elements from your second project, from your research.

Again, this project combines everything that we've done. So include images of the client's work, and talk about their significance as a designer. This will be important so we can understand the client and their aesthetic, and how you are incorporating that aesthetic with your own creative strategy.

Now the introduction section should be no longer than five slides, including images and description of your client. After you've introduced your client, you're going to reveal the floor plan on a slide, and then you're going to reveal the rendered elevation following the floor plan. And this should be rendered in color.

Again, the rendered elevation in color, and the floor plan will be in black and white. Following the rendered elevation, you should introduce the material board that you've selected, and have a legend that calls out the specific materials that you're using. And I would like you to come up with a conclusion at the end of your presentation that just has some final thoughts.

Whether you use PowerPoint or Canva, any of those are okay. All I ask is that you upload as a PDF when you're complete. Some considerations.

The final project is an opportunity for you to present what you've learned about this wonderful famous client who you've spent time researching. And it allows you to apply interior design to a lounge or gallery space that you've been assigned that represents who this client is, right? So it's a combination of the client's style and your style. The design decisions you make must be related not only to your client's philosophy, but maybe the significance of their work.

And all assignments in this class have led to this final design test. So use your research. Use the design elements and principles.

Use all the key lessons that we've learned over the course of these last few lessons. And be creative. Have fun, but stay simple.

You are welcome to use PowerPoint, Canva, or any other presentation software, as I've mentioned. And creating a clean presentation with high quality images is important, and you'll see that in the rubric at the end of this assignment. Now, here are some resources.

As a reminder, the 60-inch turning radius, it represents the area that must be clear. This is not a physical circle that's drawn on the floor. It is an area that is clear with no obstructions, so a wheelchair can turn around and exit the space, okay? The other code that I'll share is what we shared in one of the previous lessons, is the door approach.

Make sure that you have plenty of space where you're approaching the door, and make sure that there is no obstructions, and you can use this diagram and the previous lesson as an opportunity to remind yourself of some of those things that you may want to think about. Okay, the evaluation rubric. You're going to have a floor plan, and I'm looking for efficiency in space planning.

This means that you may not want to fill the space with furniture. You may, and I'll share an example of how to keep things simple, you may only choose one sofa or a couple chairs, or maybe you just want a bench. Remember, this space is designed to be very functional, efficient, and match the needs of the client, right? Would the client want you to add three or four sofas and four chairs, or would they say, no, I want someone to sit in this lounge and appreciate the design that's around them? Keep it simple, keep it clear.

I'll be evaluating your rendered elevation. This is in color, and it should be rendered accurately to the best of your ability. The material board, which you've already completed, and you have an opportunity to revise that.

That's worth 20 points. And then the client introduction, keep it simple yet informative. I'm also looking for creativity and alignment with the client style, and keep in mind, this is worth 40 points out of the 200, so this is a good chunk of the project's deliverables, is creativity, and knowing that you worked with the client itself.

If your client is very contemporary, but yet you decide to go with a traditional design, there may be a misalignment there, so think about that. Your title slide, and I'm looking for innovation, creativity, and I'm also looking to see if you're using the elements and principles, not only with the design decisions, but how you describe what you've done, or the client's work. Craftsmanship and neatness and spelling and grammar are also very important, and you'll notice that this project is worth a total of 200 points.

So again, this is a combination of everything that we've done into one comprehensive project that allows us to see what you can accomplish as an interior designer. Now, let's look at the floor plan. So because I understand that you likely have not taken your AutoCAD, you're drafting in your Revit classes, I have provided a base plan with dimensions to get you started.

Okay, so this is an artist's lounge or gallery. It is obviously empty, so you make the decisions as far as what and how much furniture, what you're going to do with materials, what you end up doing with lighting, and then we have a couple elevations to choose from. So this first option, basically, this is Furniture Plan A. If you choose this option, there's two options.

You will have a window in the space. Now, artists' lounge and galleries can be approached in many different ways. One way is saying it is a physical lounge and we want daylight to come in.

The other strategy is saying, no, it's I want it to be more of a dark gallery that does not have natural light. And if that's the choice, then you can go to option B, which is just a simple space, same dimensions, without any windows. So depending on what your design concept is and what you would like to achieve, I would think about the idea of incorporating option A, which has a couple of windows, or option B, which does not have any windows.

Now, the elevation, as we discussed in the previous lessons, this elevation here is looking at this wall. Okay, so this elevation A is if you were standing right here looking at that wall surface, right, the elevation view. If you have a sofa right in front of the window, you're likely going to see that sofa in the elevation view right in front of the window.

If you have a plant in the corner, you will likely see the plant on the right side. You can see how this all aligns, right. If you've got a bench on this side, you will not see it in this elevation, because the point is for us to look at a single elevation view.

So again, you're looking at this entire wall as a two-dimensional surface, and then you will be coloring and rendering the elevation according to the materials that you chose and the client style and aesthetic incorporating all of the strategies that we've discussed over the course of these lessons. Now, I've also provided a furniture template for you, and you'll notice that the furniture template at the top has a scale. So keep in mind if you choose to use these furniture items that I've provided for you, you want to include the scale.

So right now, this furniture is scaled to this digital scale right here. If I blow up this chair, I'm going to need to blow up the scale as well. So everything needs to stay scaled.

The best way to do it is to, you know, take a screenshot or crop away the information and just use straight from the PowerPoint. So just bear with me. I think this will make sense when you see it in the space.

We have a variety of different chairs to choose from. If you want to know how large they are, just look at the scale, right? So these chairs are roughly two feet in width. And just so you understand, this five foot in length, if we use that compared to the small sofa, we can tell that this sofa is six foot in length.

Now, the size and the shape of what you choose is going to depend on the design style. And am I okay if you want to make some of these chairs a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller? Yes, I'm okay with that as long as it works within the space. So there's a couple sheets here that show the information for the interior elevation, the floor plan.

And in the next video, I will share with you the example that I shared when we first started this course, which I think will be helpful in understanding what the end goal is. And the next lesson recording, we will dive into PowerPoint and start assembling the floor plan and show examples of how that elevation can come together so that all of this makes sense as far as where you're going for your final project. Again, in conclusion, be creative.

Be innovative. And you may say, you know what, I don't want to use this furniture template. And that's okay.

You may decide to go find your own furniture. A simple trick would be typing in something on an image search. You could say sofa cad blocks, right? This is a cad block is a digital file.

And you may find a sofa or a daybed or whatever type of furniture you want. You're just going to have to make sure that you scale it appropriate. If you go and download a piece of furniture, and you know that that furniture is three feet in length, you're going to want to make sure that the digital scale aligns with it.

So things are consistent. I will see you in the next video.