OUR IDEA 1 & 2

After the tutorial week, we had decided to choose another solution to solve our problem, canteen too small, and we are looking for another place which is suitable for students who want eat in canteen.

Actually, NAFA is not like other polys or universities have a large space in Singapore,  and NAFA is located at downtown, so it is impossible that expanding another area or establishing another building beside nafa. the only way we can do is to explore the space we have.



Idea 1

Inspired from the interview, we decided to remove the fountain in the centre of the canteen, it really take a lot of space, and to be honest, there is no use...and the maintenance fee is also a large amount of money.(pic below is that i use the photoshop to remove the fountain )

so you can see, it is obvious that there is quite a large space for students eating.

(draft plan about our idea 1)

 the grass area is good for students having lunch and relaxing, but it still costs a lot of maintenance fee, so we decided to make the grass area lesser,

Advantages:

    - enlarge the space of canteen

    - reduce the maintenance cost of grass and fountain

    - reduce the manpower expense

Disadvantages:

    - less landscape(green area)

    - makes students boring,(another new problem need to solve.......)

Idea 2

idea 2 is about add 1 more storey, what we have now is the level 1, so there is 2 ways to add a storey, one way is add on the top, which is level 2, the other is add one below, which is the basement, and the basement now is carpark,

You can see that carpark is really big and there seems no so much car in the carpark, so i think it's okay for us to use some space to solve the problem canteen too small instead of waste it...the third pic of carpark u can see that there is a curve structure,  this is where the grass located, so the place i stand is below the canteen.

Design Process week 6 A New Direction

Being small doesn't mean a space can not fit all your needs, actually canteen in NAFA is really small, but it can satisfied our students daily wants, main foods, diced fruits, even some snacks. However, the issues still existed, long Q at rush hours, too crowded that make us feel annoyed, etc.

At first, we only think about how to make the rooms looks large, so that we only stuck at focus on the furniture, the folding table or chair. When we done the interview, what Mrs Zhao said inspired us, why we cannot enlarge the space, like the fountain garden, if we remove it, our canteen may looks like a small Kopitiam, and it can contains much more people than before. In the meanwhile, we also need to change the tables and chairs in the canteen.

And the passage below is what I search about how to enlarge your limited space

Stick to Small Punches of Color
I spoke to Sabine Schoenberg, a home improvement expert and host of Homes & Estates—Today & Tomorrow, on how to use color schemes to make a small room look bigger. Schoenberg suggests sticking with soft colors or neutral color palettes when decorating. your apartment. “Lots of people choose to have a coffee table in the center of the living room with a vase of fresh flowers as the focal point,” Schoenberg says. “This is going to draw the eye to that vase of flowers. If you put that punch of color on a shelf at the far end of the wall, the eye will be extend farther.” Similarly, avoid brightly colored window treatments in a bedroom that will serve to stop the eye. Choose instead a bright headboard against the far wall of the room for a punch of color. Textures can also add interesting dimension to softer or neutral color home pieces.

Find Furniture that Fits Your Space
Sally Morse, a design expert for Hunter Douglas, stresses creating balance in a small space. “Replace large and overstuffed furniture that overwhelms, with trim, tailored pieces more in scale with the space,” she suggests. When furnishing a small apartment weighty pieces of furniture should be placed on opposite sides of each other to maintain balance. While smaller items like armchairs or end tables can be placed in corners to open up the room. Another of Morse’s small space solutions is multi-tasking furniture pieces like the ottoman below that also serves as storage for throw pillows and blankets.

Stay Organized
The smaller your space is, the more necessary it is to keep organized. “You want to get as much as you can out of cabinets or storage spaces that you already have,” says Schoenberg. Pullout storage drawers under the bed can keep shoes or winter sweaters neatly out of sight in a small apartment. Pull-out drawers and drawer organizers installed in the kitchen keep dishes and utensils uncluttered. “If you just put pots and pans in a cabinet, there are going to be some you never see or can never reach. The pullout drawers help you access everything you need without digging around.” These small space solutions are often cheap and easy enough to do on your own.

Utilize Natural Light
To give a small space big style—and brightness to boot—be mindful of window treatments and lighting. “Even if the home feels cave-like with less windows and light than desired, capitalize on what you currently have,” Morse says. Mirrors can easily enhance the light in a room when placed across from windows, or a piece of wall art you enjoy. Choose window shades that soften harsh sunlight while still letting in some. Schoenberg also prefers spending a little extra on better quality lighting. “Better quality lighting opens up a space much more, especially with some of the new LED lights out, there is a feeling of extension."

With a “less is more” attitude and some organization, you can enlarge your small space on a budget. And save up money for that dream home. Because, well, I still want that oversized bathtub. 

Here are some reference that may help us to redesign the space......

Firstly, it's important to change the room inside, to make the room use maximum, not only the placement of the furniture but also the structure, like add one more storey.

Secondly, the design of the furniture must reasonable, cannot take too much space, .

Also the details, like the tone of the room, sometimes different tone makes people's feeling different 

Design Process week 5 REPORT

This week, we supposed to do the report for our theme: canteen too small, And the canteen we are going to focus on the NAFA canteen(which i mentioned about at last time)...NAFA canteen is one of a typical small canteen around us, so I think it is easier for us to do some research about it.

For making the report multiple source , our group decided to do a interview about workers in NAFA canteen, we asked them some questions about their daily work time, advantages and disadvantages, improvements and so on

Actually, i have to said that it really surprised me a little bit because some answers is unexpectedly. For example, She told me that she have been here for about 7 years, i can not image that how can i work in such a small place for quite a long time...for me, if i worked in a small place(same as NAFA canteen), i would stay there at most 2 years...and she told me that preparing the food is easy for them because small canteen do not need too much food,. But what annoyed them is that sometimes the food is not enough(especially in rainy day, no one wants eat outside, only 2 choice---canteen or toastbox..), sometimes there are a lots of leftover food. Hard to estimate how much the food would be served everyday...

During last few week, after the empathy to the workers, we always think about workers may got lots of things to do, but this time, i noticed that they can go home around 5PM because they do not need to prepare the dinner, and we are not focusing the problem that due to the canteen too small, it's hard to estimate how many people will eat in canteen, and it sometimes is decided by the weather!

AND

i also take some pictures about our canteen's furniture...(to be the honest, some furniture really need redesign! it's waste a lots of space)

the table really takes a lot of space , and the heavy chair! if it change to the foldable furniture,  we might services more students at one time.

Design process week 4 Focus on Furniure

Our group has discussed lots of solutions of canteen too small(u can see it in our mind map) and in spite of add more space in NAFA, we'd like to change the furniture in the canteen, which means use the space maximum.

This is our mind map, and at last we need to design something that can present it easily, so we choose  the furniture...

tables and chairs in nada canteen

outside long bench, which also is a part of canteen

To be the honest, tables and chairs in NAFA canteen is really a "big size" it's hard to move and it take too much room inside,  so i assume that it would be one of the reason that the workers here hard to prepare the food in the morning. And it might also cause the canteen too crowded and noisy, this also makes the worker annoyed sometimes.

So in my personal perspective, why not we designed a foldable furniture to save more rooms? the video below is what inspired me (from Youtube)

all the furniture in the video have at least 2 functions,  this is a good point for us to start our project, to design the furniture in the canteen. 

week 3 Design Process EMPATHIZING

Canteen too small



employers worker
If we were one of the employers we will feel happy with the small canteen because it will be easier to clean, easier to manage the canteen and by the end of the day there will less overfood. However, we will be having a hard time to prepare the food early in the morning, because the food we need to prepare are huge amount, since most at the students will be eating at our place.
And because of the small place, it will be really crowded and hard to catch up all the students order, and sometimes the noisy make us feel annoyed
Last but not least, because at the small canteen it will be less employers (workers) which make us need to do a lot of staff. Although we have less leftover food we sometimes also feel bad if we cannot provide the students more choice,etc.

the picture u see is the leftover food, most of this food will be wasted, so if we have a small canteen, we might have lessover food, and waste less.

so i think this is the advantage of the small canteen.

Design Process week 2-1 Canteen in China

Last week we do some research about our theme, Canteen Too Small, and here is our mind map

This is my first mind map and u can see it is really rough, Then the other day our group had a group work, so we discussed it and at last we did a big one......

and i add some pictures and paste something on our mind map, it's nice and clear.

Then after this class I compare the NAFA's canteen and some of the primary or secondary canteens in China, and it looks quite different.

U can see that canteen in china is really big, any of it can service all the students teachers and stuffs and one time and do not need to wait a long time. Actually it's because China has a vast land.

  

This is a video from YOUTUBE that shows the south china university canteen, it's just like a Chinese KOPITIAM...hahah.....

Design Process week 1-1 Beginning

This is the first week I have the class Design Process, I am the leader of the group, and I will put anything related to our "problem"----canteen is too small on this blog...

The passage below is what I just found by google and here is a school got a really "tiny" canteen and it makes some argument.

Let's see!

In a very subtle way, all the "reasons" given by the school, by the PTA, by the Education Ministry officials, by Putraja through Ku Nan, have a common denominator - they are implying that the planners failed to provide a canteen that could accommodate at least half the maximum number of pupils in each of the school's two sessions.

Why only 50 percent? This is because it is a common practice, if the school is operating at maximum capacity, not to flood the canteen with the whole school population at one go so as not to make it impossible for the canteen operators to handle the crowd in the very limited time for recess. Therefore, recess is broken into two sessions. If a school is much under-enrolled, then a single session break is possible.

It has not been stated that SK Seri Pristina is over-enrolled, i.e. having a student population that is more than the capacity it was designed for.  If it is not over-enrolled, then the canteen that came with the rest of the school buildings should be able to accommodate all the children, half of them at a time at least.

So, claims of insufficient space in the canteen mean that the canteen was built too small. This is like giving a slap to the JKR schools division that is responsible for school buildings, It is therefore incumbent on the JKR schools division to clarify:

How many square feet of canteen space did it allocate for each child in SK Seri Pristina?  Is this the norm or otherwise?

What is the area of the space in the canteen usable by children for their meals? What is the area of the teacher's dining room in the canteen?

How is it that sunlight makes the canteen a much hotter place than the washroom/toilet that was converted into a permanent extension of the canteen as stated by PTA member Major Hardeep Singh?

Was the JKR schools division ever informed that it had provided too small a canteen for the number of children it had built the school for? 6) By how many square feet more must the canteen be enlarged in order to accommodate the "overflowing" children? What will the cost of the extension be? 8) How long will it take to complete the extension?

What is the explanation for not building a large enough canteen in the first place - lack of space? Lack of funds? Etc.

Schools of similar design are to be found all over the country. It is therefore very important for the JKR schools division to provide answers to the above questions before the PTA's of some other similar schools make similar decisions as the SK Seri Peristina. They may improve on the performance of this school by putting up beautiful signboards outside the washroom/toilets stating "Kafeteria SK ……" ; and even decorating them with flowers, etc.

AS U CAN SEE, the small canteen sometimes really got a problem, like it said that the canteen that came with the rest of the school buildings should be able to accomeodate all the student, half of them at a time at a least.

BUT, why NAFA's canteen also tiny but no one conplains about it and even sometimes it looks really empty? so in the few days, our groupmates and me will discuss this questions...