Family Hubs is a project addressing the Irish housing crisis that has hundreds of young families, including children, living in hotels. The government is providing 20 prefabricated units to create a family hub, where 18 individual units will consist of apartments to accommodate each family and two units of 6m x 8m that should determine the communal space. As the designer for this project, the focus is to develop a communal space that enables people of diverse generations and needs to use it for activities that would ideally carry out of their rooms, such as engage in hobbies, homework and workspace, courses, food preparation demonstration with the intention to food educate; and space where they can interact and enjoy being together. The objective of this project is to develop this multi-functional space that allows them to interact in different activities and still make them feel at home, like in a family environment.

The image above is a 2D of a proposed space planning of the Family Hub`s communal area. The layout achieved is focused on zoning spaces in accordance with each activity without creating enclosed rooms. The good side of having a semi-opened space is that different activities can happen simultaneously and facilitate the monitoring of all areas. From the first stage of design, security was a factor taken as a priority, impacting design decisions such as having semi-open spaces and extra escape routes. Too much noise was one of the concerns when the semi-opened space was proposed, but the use of the right materials and the strategy of the space planning in defining where the activities should happen was the key for a successful design approach.