HOOP HOUSE
Second Year Studio, Fall 2014 [completed with Sophie Nahrmann, Trent Wimbiscus, Nadia Islam]
A team of four designs a hoop house for a small plot at a community garden in Pittsburgh. This project introduces working with a client, managing a budget, making construction documents, and building at full-scale. Materials: electrical conduit and greenhouse plastic.
Our design meets several performance criteria: to function as a greenhouse by regulating temperature, to resist high winter winds and possibly snow loads through structural integrity, to be easily assembled, disassembled, and stored by clients.
It considers the experience of the user as a main priority, especially through acessibility. The bulk of the structure is contained in the back half of the project, leaving the front able to open up completely, or in three flaps, depending on need. The four main structural “hooks” become multi-functional, supporting both the arc of the hoop house, and plants that require trellising inside.
The hoop house carefully minimizes material costs. Especially in the spirit of a community garden with negligible funds, design choices followed the ideal of minimizing bolt connections and conduit length, leading to experiments in tension structures for primary and secondary support, and the use of cable to reduce conduit costs where possible.
