"money shot"
Project Description
the redesign, renovation and revival of the Highland Cotton Mill—now Cisco Mill—in High Point, NC. The design requirements for the existing 300,000 square feet included that it be a mixed-use facility—retail/showroom, restaurants, office space, and residential—and “gentle modern” in style.
challenge: to divide and organize the given space and provide a schematic floor plan for the mixed-use facility--retail, restaurant, office, and residential sections of the facility, and provide a detail design for each space. I was tasked with the restaurant and retail space design.
Note: Project Images
AutoCAD was the chosen media for the project. Rendered floor plans, sections, and perspectives—all taken from our 3D model—communicate the vision wonderfully.
These images are a portion of the total and final project. Two of the images—the “Site Plan” and “Money Shot”—were included to offer a better understanding of the complete project, and were designed by the group. The remaining 13 images are floor plans, sections and perspectives of the restaurant and salon, my contributions to the group project.
A “grand gesture” was required for the space, and our vision was that continuous and intersecting overhead planes would “connect” the different parts of the facility—parking-to-retail, retail-to-office, office-to-residential, residential-to-parking, and so on. The planes, at different lengths and widths, resembled a wonderfully modern art piece. The same philosophy was used to divide the building into its different spaces—the larger retail and office spaces, and the more intimate residential spaces. Upon completion of the floor plan, we had a Mondrian-like composition. The concept—“Chevaucher”, meaning to overlap.
site plan
Main goals:
- the different sections worked well together and individually
- to ensure the feeling of privacy within the residential section, while designing easy accesses to the offices and retail spaces. The “connection” of the buildings and spaces with overhead planes provides interesting way-finding throughout the Village
- sidewalk accesses for the “locals” in the adjacent residential area
- consider the demographic in the Village retail spaces and aesthetic with the notion that “Rodeo Drive will not work in Harlem”. On the flip side, some of the facility would be used as showroom space during furniture market, so adding upscale restaurants, meeting spaces, and rental spaces for overnight stay to satisfy market-goers
- the inclusion of old and new materials with a gentle modern approach to allow flexibility in the design details of each space
- natural lighting and the direction of the sun at given times of day to determine window locations, skylights, open markets, and patios.
- sustainability--preserve the brick shell, original wood flooring, and weathered corrugated aluminum taken from random exterior buildings to use as accents on the interior
- utilize the flat roofs to incorporate solar energy panels and green roofs
-parking decks proposed on the existing paved areas across the street to preserve the green areas that surround the Village
Design Influences
Historical research was performed to prepare a good “foundation” that would facilitate great design. Site surveys, old and recent, were gathered to determine where the utilities and easements are/were located and whether propane tanks still exist. The surveys aided in answering the questions “What was there? What is there now? What needs to be excavated? What can we reuse?” Topographical maps were researched to obtain information on the “lay of the land”. Area maps were retrieved for information on adjacent properties—a large residential area, park, railroad tracks, stream, a forest, and natural wetlands. City history was gathered from periodicals and libraries to obtain information on the rise and fall of the Mill and the area, which led to the area’s current depressed state. Prototypical research on similar renovation projects around the globe was performed to get ideas of how other designers have approached such a large project. A title search was performed to obtain information on all the owners of the property to get insight on how the building has been used over the years. Fortunately, after the Mill closed, the only other use for the building is its current one—Mill Village. Cisco Brothers of California are the current owners. Owner research and interviews were performed to determine background, business philosophies, and visions of the space.
As explained earlier, a “gentle modern” design was required for the Village. Our design stayed ‘true’ to the tenets of modern architecture, maintaining simple geometry, a strong horizontal line, bands of windows, “pure” materials, and lots of natural light. Although no one specific architect was an influence to our design, our design appears to have been unconsciously influenced by Ando and Le Corbusier. The original column grid of the structure, which we were urged to keep and thought would eventually present a problem in our design and aesthetics, proved to be a wonderful asset to our final design, adding a touch of vertical dimension to our strongly horizontal design.
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