locationBelize's eastern shores meets the Western Caribbean Sea. The climate is tropical with prevailing winds from the southeast during the summer months and northeast during the winter months. The property is located on Historic St George's Caye, Belize's first capital from the 1700s. Today there is only one resort, all other building are private homes.
|
architecureThe homes at St George's Caye feature Creole Colonial architecture style.
The piers feature "crawls" enclosed areas that were used for keeping sea turtles for sale when first settled, but are now used for bathing. The pier we design needs to be close to the land, and have ample space to park one 45 ft boat, 2 28 ft boats, and a small 20 ft boat. |
|
The propertyThe property consists of two lots, each about 75 ft wide and the north side 220 ft in length, and the southern boundary almost 300 ft. Currently the property has two structures, a 4 room dorm building and 12 x 12 storage shed. Our first building was placed in this location due to the initial plan which we prepared. However, we have since realized that the buildings need to face into the prevailing winds and the verandah face eastward because the afternoon sun is the hottest.
|
initial planThe first building we put up is the one in the lower left corner. It was closest to another property where we get power from and ran the power line under the ground through our neighbor's yard.
The two lots on the far left where "staff" is written, we do not own, but may have access to later. The sample room designs were not used, as smaller bathrooms were made. The bathrooms are 6x6 but the sink is also inside the bathroom. |
COTTAGEOur first building is 28 ft x 18 ft, making the interior of each room about 13 x 17 ft. In the upper floor the bathrooms are inside this space, in the downstairs the bathrooms are outside the room space, resulting in larger rooms downstairs.
There is a 8 ft verandah made of wood upstairs and the verandha on the ground floor is tiled. In the afternoon the lee side of the house gets very hot which is the reason why we would like to redesign this building and would like to switch the verandah to the windward side. |
VIEW FROM THE LEE WARD SIDE LOOKING EASTWARD
VIEW OF THE WINDWARD SIDE LOOKING WESTWARD
We would like to transform this side into the front with a verandah and steps leading upstairs. But how can we redesign downstairs since the bathrooms are outside the building? DOWNSTAIRS VERANDAH
DOWNSTAIRS ROOM
The single window on the back wall could be converted to a door to open up to the front verandah. UPSTAIRS VERANDAH
The verandah can remain, but we replace this stairs with a simpler design that goes straight up, more like a back steps. UPSTAIRS ROOM
The new buildings with guest rooms need to be large enough for 2 queen beds. The bathrooms could be larger also. |
the needs |
1. Redesign existing building to include verandah on east side and relocate stairs so they are accessible from the east. We would like to add the upstairs part now and at the end of the summer redo the lower floor verandah. The reason is that the water vats are full and we need to move the water in order to move the vats and we don't have any where to store the water to move the vats. Can we do this in steps?
2. Design layout of future structures on property. Other buildings we would like to include are:
|