FINAL DRAFT PROJECT

MARIA ISABEL RODRIGUEZ 2011-5176

FOOD BANK, SANTO DOMINGO
Good afternoon, my name is Mara Isabel Rodrguez and Im about to present you a
project I did with a partner in the course of design 7. This course empathizes on the
function, structure and regulations of each kind of project, that why the teacher chose a
food bank because of its function and peculiar regulations in different zones.
Starting from the bottom, first we define what a food bank is:
A food bank is a nonprofit foundation that conducts activities to reduce hunger and
poverty. Its principal activity is to donate food to social institutions like canteens and
nursing home.
When we already knew what a food bank is, the mayor question was how does it
really work? The food bank has a process to classify food and manage different types of
storage. This food comes from the volunteers that can be a single person or even companies
like supermarkets. These volunteers can also help by classifying the food. They also receive
courses about nutrition and talks about Dominican Republics poverty and how people are
excluded and left in hunger. In resume, the order of the function is: donors, harvesting,
storage, distribution, and institutions.
The actual food bank headquarter is located on the Duarte avenue. The warehouse
isnt fully equipped and doesnt have a refrigerator or a cold room. It also isnt properly
ventilated or illuminated. Also it is not well designed for the future growth they wish to get.

Due to this, the client advised us to work with modules so, if in the future they need to
expand, it can be more cost-effective for the architect or engineer expanding the warehouse.
He also told us that by 2016 they wanted to move 3 tons of food per year. By knowing this
information, we knew the space the new warehouse required so we started designing.
The proposed site is located in East Santo Domingo near the Quinto Centenario
Horse Racetrack in the Hipdromo. On the fourth block (south to north) east side of the Las
Americas Avenue. It is composed by 3 rectangle-shaped plots of land that measures 42
meters of depth and 50 meters wide.
Firstly, we established our boundaries according to the regulations. Secondly, we
made a sketch of each area location on the plot; we decided that the warehouse should be
facing north, where we found other lots that could be bought by the client if they wish to
expand. After this we located the administration on the remaining space, the south part. The
project is divided on two principal blocks, the administration block and the storage block.
Thirdly, to make the decision of where to put the parking lots and the car entries we
detected two types of people that will be using the food bank, the truck drivers, and the
volunteers. Then we divided the areas according to the routinary walks made on this type of
project. And last but not least important, about the structure, uses of trusses, beams and
columns were chosen. The trusses were chosen because they offer a wide space without an
interrupting element. And the beams and columns were chosen for the administrative block
because of their safety.
In this project my partner and I learned how to design with the functionalism first.
Also we could finally understand that the regulations cannot be seen as limitation,

otherwise we should see it as designing tools. Thanks to that, our project and other one
were chosen by the client to take them as a reference to their food bank.