Ethan Galvan Fall 2020
Shotgun Rehabilitation
Restoration of a West Side Historic Home
Team work with Shengnan Wang & Dillion Graham
The scope of this project focused on analyzing and understanding the significance of the shotgun home typology. Additionally our team was given an individual shotgun home located on the west side of San Antonio that was in sever disrepair to research and provide a potential rehabilitation for.
Shotgun Typology
Axonometric view of shotgun variations. In order left to right: single shotgun, double shotgun, camelback shotgun
The shotgun is versatile housing typology, the key defining feature of the shotgun is in its open floor plan. Each room within a shotgun home directly flows into the next with only partition walls subdividing the overall space into individual rooms.
Floor plans for the three major variations of the shotgun home: Single, Double, Camelback
This floor plan layout has allowed for multiple variations to the original single shotgun design, including the double shotgun; essentially the same floorplan mirrored along a single wall and the camelback shotgun where a second level is added on the back half of the single shotgun
The traditional materials for the shotgun design were simple with the majority of the home made of wood, using wood boards for the siding and wood shingles for the roof. Brick was typically used in order to create a simple pier and beam foundation. Because of the simple construction and layout the shotgun home was extremely effective at using natural ventilation to cool the entire home, meaning most shotgun homes did not require mechanical systems for heating and cooling.
1617 Loma Vista Street Rehabilitation
The shotgun home we focused on rehabilitating is located on San Antonio's west side, an area of town where the shotgun typology holds significant value as many of the original homes in this area were modeled after the shotgun home. These houses were home to many Mexican and Hispanic immigrants who greatly influenced the culture of San Antonio after moving to the city.
The condition of our shotgun home was very poor with much of the exterior siding stripped away reveling the structure underneath. Our rehabilitation design focused on preserving the key design components of the house intact mainly: the gable roof, front and back porches, window placement, and an open interior.
North, West, and South Elevations
Photos showing the sever state of the state of the interior
The interior rehabilitation maintained the open feel of the original shotgun home but added the addition of a dedicated dining space, an office space, and closet for a washer and dryer. The addition of these spaces allowed for the home to have a more updated program while retaining its cultural and historical integrity as an original shotgun home.
With this rehabilitation design the desire was to not only preserve a piece of significant cultural and architectural history of San Antonio, but also to serve as a prototype design revealing the protentional for the shotgun home to become a viable and desirable method of addressing San Antonio's need for housing going forward.
