---

Media Relations

Design studies students present models for 30-home Habitat community

At an early-November breakfast for Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County, attendees heard from speakers including the nonprofit's executive director, Kerry Thomson; Habitat homeowner Rob Brock; volunteer Ann St. John; and future Habitat homeowner Kristin Bogue, a single mom of three.

One of the most poignant moments at the event, held Nov. 6 at the Bloomington Convention Center, came after the breakfast, when Bogue's young daughter looked at one of the model homes on display in the lobby and said "That's the house I've always wanted to live in."

The model she was looking at was created by a group of undergraduate students from the design studies group in Indiana University's Apparel Merchandising and Interior Design program.

AMID Assistant Professor Kennon Smith and Visiting Lecturer Michael Loalbo are team-teaching "Interior Design III --The Dwelling," also known as "Junior Design Studio," a class in which seven groups of three or four students designed seven different styles of homes for a new, 30-home Habitat community.

Habitat hopes to break ground on the project in the spring of 2009. The new community will be located off Leonard Springs Road in Cedar Chase.

Design studies junior Carolyn Smith said getting to work on the project was more meaningful than the usual assignment. "Just to be working on a space that you know is a possibility that could happen is inspiring," she said. "We tried to simulate real homes as well as we could. We put in a great deal of research about materials and try to stay within a reasonable budget."

The student-created models and accompanying design boards helped convey to potential donors the diversity of styles available for the homes at the breakfast.

"The main goal of the breakfast was to be able to communicate a tangible vision of the neighborhood to those people that would be integral in making donations to Habitat," said Kennon Smith, adding that she hopes phase two of the project will allow students to work with Habitat and its clients on design and color choices that will give each home its own character.

"I really liked going to the breakfast," said design studies junior Karisa Voreis. "Hearing (future Habitat homeowner) Kristin Bogue speak about her life, her past and her dream for having her own home was amazing."

The community is a new project for Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County, which in the past has built one home at a time. Locating enough single infill lots in existing neighborhoods has become too challenging and is sometimes too expensive, said Kennon Smith, leading the organization to search for alternate locations.

Kennon Smith said each group of students was assigned a specific style -- including Country, Asian, Industrial and Craftsman -- that they then studied their studio class. Though the students worked with models that were the same size and have the same floor plan, they were able to change the outward appearance of the homes with different styles of roofs, porches, shutters, columns and colors, among other details, she said. The actual community will likely contain varying floor plans and different sizes of homes.

"This project pushed the students to take a fairly traditional house body and explore how small details could really make an impact," she said. "They did a really good job of giving each home unique style."

Design studies junior Christine Lozano said the class took a guided tour of an actual Habitat site in Bloomington. "The tour helped us to visualize and incorporate what we were learning about," she said. "I'm happy the department is going to continue with this project. I'm sure it will even inspire students to volunteer for Habitat."

The students also worked on the project in Lecturer Barb Young's Computer Aided Drafting class, in which they were assigned to new groups to create presentations representing what the neighborhood might look like.

Using the computer program 3D Studio Max not only helped the students to create boards, but gave them a new, marketable skill set.

Kennon Smith said she hoped the project was a useful experience for Habitat in terms of the products that were provided. "And as a faculty member, I was very pleased with the experience it ended up being for the students. It's a service-learning opportunity for them, but also the opportunity to see a fund-raising event and to see the kinds of impacts that their work can have."

The impact on the students is already evident. "This wasn't only for a grade," said Lozano. "It was beyond that."

About Habitat for Humanity

Habitat for Humanity affiliates build houses in partnership with people in need, then sell the houses to the homeowner partners, who contribute 250 hours of "sweat equity" to building their home and any others that are under construction. Homeowners are selected by affiliates based on their need for housing, ability to repay a no-profit mortgage and willingness to partner with Habitat. Mortgage payments contribute to a Fund for Humanity, which in turn provides the money to build more houses. Because of Habitat's no-profit loans and because the houses are principally built with volunteer labor, mortgage payments are affordable for low-income partners.

For more information about Habitat for Humanity of Monroe County, see http://www.monroecountyhabitat.org/.

For more information about IU's Department of Apparel Merchandising and Interior Design, see http://design.iub.edu/.

---

---