The Skrim

My project provides a co-living model of housing for at-risk youth and their mentors, who were previously at-risk youth individuals who grew out of their situation and can now provide assistance to currently at-risk youth individuals. Through my project’s unorthodox organization and the re-organization of housing conventions, the inhabitants can experience private and public life that bleeds together through the looseness of the available interior space within the container of the bed spaces that run along the project’s perimeter. The at-risk youth have an extremely open living and sleeping space that allows for constant interaction amongst individuals to drive the community bonding within the housing project. Each level offers different social services for the at-risk youth, including a therapeutic center where individuals can work through their past traumas, an education center where tutors can help propel the at-risk youth to graduation, and a career center where at-risk youth inhabitants can receive vital job training and career management skills. The program pieces are encapsulated within a scrim that wraps itself around the building and takes cues from the housing project’s interior grid. The scrim offers privacy in necessary areas and filtered light throughout the project by organizing itself around the sleeping spaces’ internal grid. The program pieces on the second and third floor are pushed back to create a soft exterior space between the hard wall and the open-faced scrim that offers a space of relaxation and shade.