The Urban Grow Center was the third installment of the Fall `17 semester. Going from the scale of a plant, to that of a greenhouse, to a building, the project was also the first full-scale building we had to design. The project itself had a site in Homestead, within bus range from CMU's campus.

The Grow Center serves as a community resource to spread and encourage urban farming to make up for Homestead's food desert. It houses fabrication facilities for raised planter beds and other community needs, various growing conditions like exterior raised planter beds, in-ground beds, a greenhouse, a green wall, and a rooftop garden. Growth and sustainability are linked, and as such the building is outfitted with a solar roof and a geothermal system.

This was a fun project in terms of deliverables. There was the standard renders, sections, elevations, site plan and the like, which was a great way to show my development from a first-year student to a second-year student, but we had oppurtunities to add in wildcards to our presentation. I made an animation showing the circulation options through the space, but also a VR experience that used the VR headset I got through the Medieval Fantasy Competition, which arrived the morning of reviews. I was also really happy with the model I made, which was painted, had removable sections to better enter the stair core and greenhouse, as well as working garage doors in the woodshop.