The Welcoming Hand

Welcoming Hand is a refugee apartment building designed to make adjusting to the United States easier for refugees. The building contains a variety of needed amenities to make them more accessible, as well as provides rooftop gardens to allow for residents to grow their own individual crops. The design of the building allows for efficient use of the Sun. The finger massing creates more aspect walls as well as three courtyards that are each uniquely programmed. The building is laid out in a skip-stop unit arrangement to allow nearly all units to have through ventilation. Finally, the building is broken up into two main materials, brick and terracotta. The brick elements relate to the surrounding buildings of Niagara Street while the terracotta cladding provides a more modern aesthetic, while at the same time using traditional clay-fired material.

Professor: Brad Wales
Collaborator: Zach Izzo