Talia Lusignan - FÖRNYELSE KAFÉ & HOSTEL

Exterior Rendered Money Shot

Building Section

Renders

Exterior Facade - Featuring Custom Mural and Brise Soliel

Exterior Facade

Exterior Facade - Night

Interior Commercial - Seating

Interior Commercial - Barista Counter

Interior Commercial - Custom Wall Feature and Food Pickup Counter

Activated Roof Deck

Interior Atrium Views

Interior Residential - Main Entry Hallway

Interior Residential - Community Space

Interior Residential - Game Room

Rendered Video Walkthrough - Commercial Space

Project Summary

For our term project for the Fall 2023 semester, we were tasked with a group studio project involving individual and group research stages, collaboration, and individual design. This project was integrated into all three of our required interior design courses, with each course focusing on different aspects of the design process. Our prompt was to design a neighborhood in the Vastra Hamnen district of Malmo, Sweden. Malmo is a location with high levels of immigration due to its relatively open-door policy, and home to many asylum seekers from impoverished or war-torn countries. We each chose a prominent culture/country from a provided list of the most prevalent ones that immigrate to Malmo, Sweden. We had to assess our overall community’s needs, as well as look at other neighborhoods in Malmo to design an accurate European neighborhood. We created a list of commercial spaces which would be necessary for our neighborhood and then divided them between the 13 members of our group. The intention was to design a community space that integrated and seamlessly converged all 13 of our chosen cultures.

Each person was required to design a commercial space of 3,200 sq ft aimed a converging all cultures and welcoming all people, and a residential space of 6,400 sq ft integrating the traditions of our chosen culture in their building. We focused on sustainability and integrating sustainable practices whenever possible into our designs. We were required to collaborate to design our overall site and include topography, trees, parks, communal areas, water features (a key aspect of the city of Malmo’s character), recycling centers, and more. Through solar and sun path studies, pattern and textile design and deconstruction, exploratory foam core models, parti models, research on our plot of land and its views and climate, precedent studies, learning about ADA and proper building code as well as dimensioning floor plans, and more we were able to create a fairly accurate and very diverse neighborhood both architecturally and culturally. We named our neighborhood “Ro Haven”, which means peace and tranquility in Scandinavian cultures. We had to design the entire space, inside and out, as well as create furniture plans, choose materials, render our spaces, create a full architectural drawing set, and design our posters.

My Design

Within our chosen cultures, we each had to choose a demographic to represent in our residential space. I chose unaccompanied minors as this was a very prevalent group of people emigrating from Afghanistan to Malmo, Sweden. This led to my decision to make my residential space a hostel, geared towards teenagers 12-17. For the individual aspect of the project, my chosen culture was Afghanistan, and my commercial space was a Café.

I created a space which I branded the “Förnelyse Café & Hostel” which means renewal in Swedish. My concept was to create a renewal space that is healing and promoted connectedness in its design, in our contemporary style neighborhood. My concept relied on natural elements to nurture the occupants of the building and provide a “safe haven” of sorts for all. It focused on integrating people with their environment as much as possible, and celebrating the natural elements of Malmo, Sweden. A key feature of my concept was my atrium, which promoted connectedness and community while bringing light and warmth to the space. I created custom light features, a mural, a Brise Soleil (breathable “skin”) for the facade of my building, an atrium which went through the entire building as a “core” of sorts for an indoor-outdoor feel, an activated roof deck, utilized movable Nanawalls, and more to push my concept further. We were required to create a physical laser cut site model as well as an individual model at a 1/8th inch scale. For my model I also laser cut the custom facade I created out of paper to really depict light play in real life. My design had a rhombus motif throughout as this was a prevalent feature in my textile design, which was created from the deconstruction and reconstruction of patterns from Afghanistan and Sweden. My parti model represented an exploratory study of light and shadow as well as movement and became the precedent for my custom light feature.