Woven Terrain

WOVEN TERRAIN The concept for the Novato Senior Housing site is a woven terrain. This translates into Weaving of three design parameters – programmatic, landscape and sustainability. Programmatic Weaving provides for a variety of activities to be intertwined with the housing units including sports, tennis, swimming, basketball, and open fields for a variety of community activities. The landscape is comprised of an interwoven fabric of passive and active gardens. Passive gardens provide sustainable revenue generating areas for vineyards and vegetable gardens which produce a revenue generating income for residents. Passive gardens provide areas for the natural California landscape of the site, California wild flowers and butterfly gardens. The housing units are woven within the active and passive gardens to provide the residents and surrounding community with a variety of recreational activities and visual experiences. Site Views A self optimizing script based on site volume and vicinity site views was implemented as a site design strategy to maximize dwelling views throughout the Novato area. The nodes created by the script contain views including mountain, bay and internal site landscapes. Houses were located on these nodes. Sustainability of Housing and Landscape To maintain a comfortable temperature within each dwelling units, natural resources will be used. With the use of clerestories, each unit will maximize natural cross ventilation. South facing windows will maximize winter heat gain and a roof overhang will reduce solar heat gain in the summer. Partially earth bermed units will moderate extreme temperatures and protect the units from prevailing west winds.