NAVADAPT
The Navadapt Lab is a prototype kitchen for disabled veterans in the Pittsburgh region, conceived and constructed by the Urban Design Build Studio. As a public interest organization, UDBS partnered with developer Action Housing to implement these ideas in the future, with the goal of having a positive impact on an individual and a community.
A central ideology to the kitchen design is the “command center”. This concept follows the 2010 ADA Standards to reduce unnecessary movement for the handicapped user. The result is a countertop and storage space designed for the upper-body while allowing the user to cook a meal from a single location.
After construction, the kitchen prototype was presented at the 2016 REAL Conference in San Francisco. The annual event is centered around reality computing, a concept based on capturing data from the real world and using it for practical applications. To achieve this in the prototype, a group of students known as IDeATe collaborated with the UDBS, an initiative funded by Autodesk. These students helped evaluate our iterations by means of virtual reality and scanning softwares, the collaboration methods on display with the lab. Designed and constructed under a period of three months, the Navadapt Lab continues to be iterated at Project_RE.
UDBS Students: Rachel Sung, Garret Rauck, Candace Ju, Naomie Laguerre, Alexa Roberts, Brian Bollens, Daniel Gomez-Latorre, Sam Day
Professor: John Folan, AIA
