The Site

For my space, I wanted to get people who are living in close proximity more connected. As someone who lives in student accommodation, I have found that its sometimes difficult to connect with people living in your building as everyone’s always busy doing their own thing. I wanted to change this. There is a patch of grass just outside my flat which I thought would be the perfect site to bring people together.

Initial Idea

I wanted to create a way of bringing all of the flats together, and I thought an interactive notice board would’ve been a good idea. I was going to have small buildings, representing each flat round the board. If someone was having a flat party or wanted people over they could go down and entre their flat in the board and the building which represented their flat would light up, but I wasn’t sure how many people would use this or how effective it would be.

Developing the Idea

I believed the interactive board would have a positive response but wasn’t sure how effective it would have been at connecting people, so I started thinking about my experiences and the times in my life where I’ve felt most connected to strangers. I thought back to my Duke of Edinburgh experience where I was with a variety of people with all different likes and interests that I didn’t previously know and we all sat together at night round a fire and had great conversations and laughs. Campfires have a way of bringing people together so I wanted to incorporate this into my design so created a fire pit, but still keep the interactive board.

 

Developing the Elements of my Design

Initially I was just going to have the interactive board as a notice board where different flats could leave messages for each other but then I had the idea that it could also be used for films and music. I also thought the addition of a camera would be interesting as there could be different fires round all the student accommodations and you could FaceTime the other buildings.

 

I wanted to create a firepit which people could sit in and talk. The firepit would be dug into the ground so that it would be protected by the wind, there would also be a ledge round the outside of the circle to allow for people to sit around. I also think there should be a roof on it to prevent the pit filling up with water. I developed the roof so it was at an angle to allow for water to run off and the triangles had gaps between them to allow for ventilation.

 

Final Model

This is my final model, as you can see the fire pit takes up most of the area. I wanted to make it quite large to ensure a large number of people could gather round it. The screen is also quite large so that everyone can see it. I think this would be a really good way of bringing people together and would work well to eliminate loneliness and connect people.