Time to Reflect

Reflecting on this project I have learned a variety of little things

1st, i have learned how to build a porch.  no lie. i might not be able to design one that gets past the bar but i can tell you how to build one. learning from what we have done (some call overkill) i know that i can build a porch that will out last the house. lol. no but seriously, i have learned a deal about construction not only from our own projects but my brief stints with the clemson group and there project.  well maybe more about dirt from them but still constructing an erosion bank. that has to come in handy at some point. i still could learn more about how to erect monolithic concrete blocks.

2ndly, i realize that design is definitely a collaborative effort.  sometimes it works out sometimes it doesnt.  in my product design class one of our projects was to write our design manifesto.  of course i said that i believe design is a collaborative effort that allows you to draw from a variety of people places things.  well i was proven right but what i lacked in that manifesto is the patience that comes with collaboration.  i work better in groups but much happier working alone where i know where my responsibilities lay.  i found it extremely difficult working with some egos and people in general but it was a tremendous learning experience for me. i know (well hope) that the work environment is completely different more lax and an open forum of ideas.  i have learned from law class that an open market is the best kind of market and thats why we dont restrict all kinds of speech so there can be an open exchange of ideas. i understand passion but there has to be some room for others to make suggestions.  luckily i wasnt possessed with that design, megalomania, but i do need to speak up more when i know that im right regardless of how many obstacles are in front of me.

3rdly, community service was a big things for us. i'm glad that we were able to help a community. i'm still a little doubtful if they are grateful or not but i do think some of the community is.  I know that Robert aka pumpkin was extremely helpful.  He was a friendly voice that i looked forward to hearing at the site.  many of them had experience with certain aspects of the projects and offered to help.  the community had more questions then answers in the end though.  people always came by to ask us questions about why we did this or why we are doing that.  i dont think the signage block will answer those types of questions because most of them came from a complaining place.  

4thly, stewardship. well do i feel like a steward per se? no. yes i helped a community but being part of a steward means to tend their property as they would in their stead. repeating what i said earlier about under the community section i'm not sure if we are stewards.  We did our project based on what we felt they needed under the pretense of sustainability.  that may not be what they wanted or needed. it reminds me of a quote from Blaine's blog..."creating a balance between what they want and what we give them" i think the latter is what we have done but i sincerely hope they come to want it.

finally, i have learned a variety of things from this studio. i'm still glad that i took it. i was apprehensive after we began our projects if this was a good call. it might not have been but i think when i look back on my time as an architecture student this will be one of the times i was glad that i had pushed myself.  one of my professors once told me that i was not serious about architecture and wasting the time of others, i feel like i have shown that i'm serious about architecture because i have forfeited my spring break, bleed, stressed out three gray hairs, and sacrifice my last semester as a college student to finishing this project.  i have learned that no friendship is a good friendship that cant be tested. i have learned that construction is a slow process. i have learned that designs aren't always as they are on paper in reality. i have learned that in the work world budgets are laws and can't be broken. 

The return of the soap box

first, special thanks to the clemson group for coming out to help out

remember one of my earlier iterations included a plan for a 'soapbox'. Well after much delineation, we have come full circle and it has returned.  pretty much as i had thought of it in the beginning (as shown below in picture) except new location and with new material.

much progress has been done. instead of spending even more of our budget we became a little more efficient with what we had.  we have an abudance of brick so only naturally we find a way to tie that back in with our design.  Seeing how much the trex took up of the material palatte of the site it seemed appropriate to use brick as a stair in order to tie the historic brick wall back in the game.  the brick also blends the rustic metal in with the brick from the shingle wall too.  overall this small detail really ties in the new intervention with the old and provides a space that after all the wood decays or the deck collapses (hope no time soon) the brick steps will remain and serve as an elevated space that has a variety of applications.  

A soap box is a raised platform on which one stands to make an impromptu speech, often about a political subject.  It is also used to express concern or to release frustrations.  The term comes from when speakers would stand on a wooden box meant for holding soap.  I thought reinstitute a common forum to speak your mind in a historic setting was a no brainer.  By using the old brick it also makes the installation permanent instead of temporal like the back half of the porch is intended to be.  This new layer immortalizes the past.

As you can see from the pictures, we first dug a 8 " trench in the space where the last three steps would go.  We then filled that with gravel and concrete masonry units (cmus).   We then used brick and mortar on the rest to create the brick stairs.  The same technique used in creating the brick wall behind/ underneath the porch is repeated in the front of the porch not only for function but for unity.  The site had a problem with separately layers, we intend to overwhelm the visitor with unity.  I'll add more pics of the finished brick stairs later.

creative inquiry

Emily, SMick, and I at the inquiry...thanks Elliot for the pic

click here to view the creative inquiry board.

if for some reason this link isn't working try this.

Stewardship + Pendleton

Stewardship is defined as...don't you hate when people start off like that.

I perceive our actions on the Keese Barn site in relations to our stewardship creed as alright. Not to sound too nonchalant or anything, but I feel like we have encompassed stewardship in two manners.
First, being on the site and working. Part of being a steward means to manage the property for another. Granted that just being on the site isn't enough but for some of the residents, it means a lot that we are back. A lot of them had given up hope that Clemson would try to come back out there and work back on the site. The few times that people come out to talk to us about the project instead of flirting with our girls (ha) they mention how they are glad that we are out here. That they cannot wait to see what we put up. Often they are looking to help us whenever they can. One time while we were pouring the concrete for the signage foundation, Mr. Bikeman (not his real name) rode by and next thing I know he had a shovel in his hand helping spread the concrete with us. It was a small gesture that meant a lot. Without asking for anything or by anyone, he pitched in. That just showed us that the community does care how the site looks and we should make every possible effort to care just as much, and not just rush to put up something that we know in a few years will look sh*tty.
Secondly, I think we are responding well to the community. As i mentioned before the community really does what something to go up on the site that's not an eyesore. Our designs for the concrete signage block will go a long way in helping the community and everyone understand some of the interventions on the site. I know it took some of us a long time to really understand why this or that was done, thanks to those theses books. Everyone doesn't have the luxury to read them though, so this should help a lot. We had also planned on using the block as an technological medium, but constraints have altered that though. Instead we are going with a reusable and more sustainable option more reasonable. I know some may think that really lacks any design aspect but think of it this way, we are providing another service to the community. Come Halloween, once we finish the lights and the safety measure, the site could be used for a Halloween venue. cool eh?
The infamously tedious porch is a nice way of giving back to the community as well. I noticed that when we are out at the site, sometimes there are a few of the gentlemen from the community there. They usually are just shooting the breeze. But they don't really have a formal space to just hang. They usually gather at the rear of the site along the brick walls. The porch will provide a more formal space for them to gather. Something as simple as a deck porch goes a long way to the community. They don't really ask a lot so this would be a way for Clemson to really give back.
I hope this has given some insight into how I have perceived our role as a steward to the Pendleton community. Hopefully when we are done (can't wait for the day) we will have done a good job in both the eyes of the community and Clemson University.

Light up the Landscape

You have seen what fishing wire can do in concrete from the mock up below. However using that medium would be rather time consuming and much much more time than we have. And trying to keep that vernacular consist with lighting up the landscape is not feasible. So we have been looking into using the glow in the dark (phosphorous) powder to mix with epoxy.  We know it works well with concrete from previous experiments.  How about using it to light up the landscape.  If we use the same powder and apply it to the steel striping, we have light.  More importantly we have light that is self maintaining and sustainable. I think it would light up brilliantly and create a different atmosphere of the site at night. The powder mix would last about 9 hrs after being charged by the sun. To get an idea of how you could use this glow in the dark effect with metal here are some pics of it in actual application. note the second image at how the lighting is used as a safety measure.

      

Spring Break '08

This past week has been busy busy busy. Some of us gave up our most sacred spring break for construction '08. lol. but all in all alot got done...for the Clemson group.
Most of our, well my time, was spent helping the clemson group out. besides our roadtrip to pick up lumber from Charlotte, much hasnt been done. btw driving a 24 ft uhaul is a lot of fun, or maybe it was just janis that made it fun. Yes, we did get the slab poured which is awesome but in schedule land we are nowhere near substantial completion. We are going to have to cancel any possible events at the site for Spring Jubilee because simply we arent ready. Not to take away from what we have done, I just feel like more could have been done this past week like simple things that could have gone a long way i.e. stringing the porch.
CG are amazing though. You guys are putting plans into action. nice. however i feel the same way. alot was done but in the scheme of things there is still so much you guys have to do. but still they are winning the race.
But about PG.....so the "porch" is coming along. there is a design. there are some cds. so all in all the "porch" is near completion in drawings. however there is no actual analog results. the concrete sign block is the most complete. the slab is poured. the slab is brushed. the slab is ready for letters. we have done another mock up of the concrete. this time we used fishing line instead of fiber optics due to feasibility studies. it works fine but its not possible within our schedule. it took a lot of time for our little mock up.

the landscape has been mapped. it has changed. alot of what we talked about is not. its really really basic. almost not worth doing. but if we can make the site nicer, then whats it. i have no idea about the handrails to the memory block. we havent really discussed it or seen it. but somehow somewhere it exists.

In the shadow of Deadline

So crunch time is upon us. We have much to get done but luckily for us we have spring break. We have decided to forfeit our sacred week for 14 hour work days. reality check.



Construction for the porch is suppose to take up the majority of that time. We have been in a constant war with our professor as to the direction of the porch. We think we have found a balance between the much sought after "amphitheater" and the existing geometry and axes of the site.

now that we are resolved on that, we have began to turn our attention to gathering materials (bucket loads of mullah) and the landscape. We arent landscape architects but our hope is that we show some sort savvy and land some beautification money. SAB our personal horticulturist has provided us with a good start as to what plants might be used. I have done some research into that list and got some more details about planting and maintenance. Lucky for me my roommate is landscape so i plan on picking his brain more on the matter.


currently feeling optimistic that we may just graduate in may, hope this lasts.











below are some personal PRE-conceptual ideas i thought the project could go....

Dancing Nancies....

Its been awhile...sorry. So the pics says it all. right now i feel like we are just dancing around in circles. When we think we are making a step forward we have to take two steps back. and i dont know about you but i don't like dancing in circles its dizzy. i want to dosey doe my way on. We are currently having to go back to the dreaded porch yet again and revise. i understand that that must happen from time to time, but it seems that we have never had a solid foundation to revise. however there have been some baby steps in the right direction, we laid the gravel for the signage. yep so thats about it. i'll add more crazy pics and structure stuff later.

Exquisite Corpse

Looking for a good one liner is hard. So i'm just going to skip that part. So here is the meat of whats good.  We are working well together ;)

We had an exquisite corpse with our professor that was sort of intense. in the sense, wow she really just did an exquisite corpse with us. wow. but it proved to be really helpful. It got us to think differently about how to approach the project and really helped shaped our concept (which is layering btw). from there we had a couple (by that i mean two) days to get a presentation ready for our round robin. Which turned out great. We got some awesome feedback and overall a pretty well received project.  And i quote, "Guys I am actually pleased" or something along those lines.  So overall we are making it happen. I guess that was the cheesy opening line i was going to say earlier should have kept it to myself.

Bonfire!!!

  Well i don't know about everyone but i feel like we finally accomplished something this week. It took about an hour and a half but the Ron box has fallen.  After "elegantly" ushering it into its demise we burned that bad boy.  With some of the left over wood, I made makeshift benches for people to sit on.  Surprising most of them were pretty sturdy.  A few people had thought that we meant to leave these benches for the community, sorry it was just for the fire. haha. But that did inspire some of us to actually consider making the brick patio/ fire pit space more user friendly opposed to an area designated for signage.

It wasn't a huge turnout but those that did show up thank you. The fire was hot and the atmosphere was welcoming.  Some of the community came out and fellowship with us. Repeated Mr. Napoleon (community member down the way) would say that we are doing a good thing.  I think he may have been talking on a microscopic level about the fire, or he was just nostalgic.  Apparently the townspeople used to have these great bonfires but have stopped doing it.  And no one had ever really used the fire pit before so they were excited to see the flames.  They drew out Mr. Ronnie (dj RonDMC) from his house when he saw the flames.  We talked and laughed all night long which made me feel good.  Thats all i needed to re-ignite my personal fire/passion for this project. It was definitely waning.

On that note, here are some SU mockup of how cubes/nodes could play within the landscape and ultimately the porch. feedback is much sought after....

                  

Getting her done

Blane, you are the man.

We are getting her done...the model that is. It took someone saying well i'm going to just do it, b*tch me out later. I tried to take the role and I ended screwing up something up i.e. the egg-crate. LOL but the model looks good, seriously. All the essential parts (site specifics) are in place. All that is left is to make the iterations and seeing how they play in with the existing site. Right now we are mocking up a very simple design for the patio spillage over (pic soon to follow). In the meantime here is a photomontage of how it may look.

The patio is raised 3' from the grade. From there it spills over into the interior space, and is spliced by the 'super' ramp. The splice creates a orator space closest to the memory block. From there stairs reach out into the landscape.

This other photomontage tries to express a more sacred interior space defined by a series of extruded cubes known affectionately as nodes (big orange blob-didnt get chance to insert cubes). These nodes are dense in this space and become pixalated as it transverses the landscape. Some of the nodes emit light in fractal patterns to create a 'web' between the nodes (a special night feature). Accessibility occurs along the perimeter of the space. The ramp along the Western side straddles the original foundation of the Keese Barn, and the stairs linking the site to Farmers' Hall create the other boundary. (insert twist) The link between the steel stairs and the concrete stairs becomes severed and reorient. The steel stairs reemerges itself back into the footprint along the Clemson axis. Two of the concrete stairs are removed and the two remaining act as a 'soapbox' for speakers. The position is perfect for the speaker to engage the community (space) and provides ideal backdrop (memory block).

"you have to start somewhere"

I Love It....

Do i have an opinion on anything....yes, but at the end of the day its just that.

Progress, progress, progress. We make one step forward and take two steps back.  I love how we come together for are ever imminent and necessary design meetings just to make decision as a group, and then when there is a little resistance, cave.  When group decisions are made after discussing individual opinions, we should stand by our decision instead of bringing up things we dismissed as a group.  Just repeating ideas that we decided didn't work within our concept makes us look as though there is no cohesion or discussion-basically not a group.  Either we need to listen more carefully to each others opinion before we dismiss it, or maintain our stance.

This past week has been tough.  The group has gone through great bounds to further relations with the Pendleton Community.  The clean-up and the random trips to Pendleton really have helped.  

We designed a egg-crate system for the landscape/patio.  The formwork looked really nice (thanks to our digital guru).  After some discussion about how the decking should go, I laid them out on the egg-crate.  It was laborious but needed to be done.  Granted there were a few options about how these should go.  One option was longitudinal, and the other was multidirectional.

However, I f*ed it up with trying to stain the wood. Bad call, james.  However we are working on a revision that implements the grid but not so harshly. 

Cube and nodes.....

Feb 2nd

So no unique title this week but i do have the answer to life...42 (too bad that doesn't seem to help me any).

Let's see, since the last post we have had a mini-review, another scheduled soon, group design meetings, and surveyed the site.  So we have been pretty busy.  You can check out the girls posts to hear more of what's been going on. My personal quest has lead me to re-evaluate the puzzle porch.

How to make it more function as a porch while maintaining a unity with the entire site. 

So i have been throwing some ideas together of how to make it more than a porch maybe not a puzzle, yet still having this revealing element. so it has become more of a 3 phased porch. phase one is simple; two is revealing (a crank portion that reveals the concrete); three is blending in two direction a) into the memory block (puzzle has turned into a wall puzzle) and b) to a lower deck that bleeds into the interior space and begins the ramp/step/seated space.

Puzzle Porch

So we are gearing up to enter "Phase 2" of the Keese Barn Site, and I couldn't be more excited. The seven (me, sab, swade, janis, nobby, brooding toad, and blane) of us--sorry i had to count---are about to dive in this joker. "Phase 2" starts by building off of Phase 1, duh. lol. No but we have a few things we are really going to focus on first: porch, lighting, seating, community space, and safety. Right now we want to remain as vague as possible for our own sanity.

I really am inspired by the sliding puzzle toy. What if the porch had this mobility sliding in a fashion similiarly to the puzzle to reveal historical tib-bits especially the concrete slab.

There still is a lot of tweaks to be made - hopefully by Friday. Check out the video of this puzzle (of course it would need drastic simplification

so that people could solve it). But this is just my take on the porch BUT it is a team effort.

Come Again....

Still reeling from our rural studio trip, our heads are spinning with possibilities. We can use this material with pv's...and pisos....and etc. We had Vincent (french guy) come in to talk to us yesterday about all the possible applications with this plastic material and alternative energy. Although he answered some questions he left us with more unanswered. Understandable since this material is still being researched. There are a lot of things we are going to have to find out for ourselves which is very exciting. But apparently we weren't listening to the same guy. We have 2 months to get this done, and where are we going to find the time to get the research in. To fully understand the capabilities of this material we would need to conduct some extensive research/surveying. Even Vincent was worried that we would need more than a semester just to conduct the proper research. People 2 months. We have to have plans before we can even submit for a building permit. Granted we can fudge the materials as we go along (that doesn't have to be concrete for the b.p.) but the materials play a crucial role in the support structure. If we use the plastic material, we have to mindful of its water retention properties and design stronger supports for the canopy. I'm not trying to be negative and cast a bad shadow over us, I just want to stress the point that there is a fine line between what we can experiment with and what we need to get done. I had made a comment that I understand why rural studio doesn't dabble to much with sustainability. It was received with rather puzzled looks, but in actuality i think I'm right. We just have to be really pragmatic about these projects. I think one of the students at rural studio said it best, "As architecture students we are told to have these eccentric designs, the beauty of rural studio is that we are told to still have those designs but to make it come to fruition (okay fruition might have been my word). We quickly learn that balance between what is on paper and what we can build."

Rural Studio Charm

On our awesome trip to Rural Studio we were able to see what students can build and how much fun they have doing it. They do some very amazing work. There was so much to see most of which we didn't. So many projects looked awesome, it was sort of hard to find one that i felt we could benefit or learn from the most.

However, I was really intrigued by the Learning Center. I think most people weren't really taken with it, but I saw more than just a retrofit. Yeah it was in a sh*tty county and looked very boring from the outside, but it was more a diamond in the rough. According to their website, the original request was a space be created and refurbished to accommodate a new alternative school, and possibly function as a teacher resource center. Well rural studio gave them that and more. The new project maximized storage and use.
The original property was...well we really don't know. But from the pics it was not much of anything. I asked a woman that worked there what the building was used for before it burned. She didn't know really. She thought it may have been a business although it looked to have been a residence.

It wasn't the fact that they were able to transform this into a sleek interior, but that they reused and salvaged a lot of the original materials. The whole Pendleton project is about reuse from the shingles to wood. During one of our design charrettes, we had discussed the possibility of using reclaimed materials and mixing them with new ones. Of course, the Hundreds site has a different program (we aren't building a housing structure) but the lessons in mixing material and redefining space could be rather helpful.

The pallet consists of reclaimed wood, brick, and new wood. They pretty much gutted the building creating a rather large open space which can double up as a "classroom" when the walls are separated. There exists compartments within the walls. When closed it resembles a pattern of opaque and translucency, but separated it creates student desks. The removed sections are free-standing desks, and the subtracted area become desk stations too.

This may be the only project that was actually conceived in the spirit of sustainability. I remember asking our tour guide, one crazy mofo, if there has ever been a criteria for sustainability in their designs. He told me something along the lines that functionality trumps sustainability. Hopefully, with having seen what can be done, we will be able to mimic their motivation and end results and expand the range of sustainability with student design/build.

First Time Out

So for those of you who don't know what is going on in Clemson, here is an update. NOTHING! That being said let me tell you what we, Stewardship South, is doing. Right now we are in the process of designing two public service projects-- one right here in Clemson and the other in Pendleton.

Both sites are rather interesting, but Pendleton by far. It an historical site in which we have the opportunity to further the expression of memory. Right now there exists a memory block in the space that use to be the cafe. This site is void of any real connections to the community it serves outside the memory block which is more of an abstract entity. Okay so that last part was a compilation of what everyone around here has been saying. But i do agree. The meaning behind taking an old memory and converting it into a new memory for people is really cool. I just hope we pull it off.

Mr. G informed us today during our ginormous charrette that we will have to deal with mistrust on the communities part. Apparently there is some bad blood between some of the community and Clemson. Go f'in figure, right. Anyways, so I foresee me, being the only black in this studio, being the poster-child for the Pendleton site. I'm cool with that though. Once they see that we are trying to further the experience of the site, they will be behind us. I think really it will come down to how much of an effort our pr and cultural people take to really get the community to know that we mean well and are truly just trying to help. I probably will spend more time there than at Jaycee Park because it's going to be really crowded--and i don't do huge crowds unless i'm invited. There are so many issues behind that statement that we are just going to gloss over that one.

Speaking of the size, that is going to be the most difficult hurdle. J Nasty said it best, "I'm afraid that we are going to have too many chiefs and not enough indians." (well put) Side note i think there may be more of the partying types than anything.

As long as we don't diddle daddle on the design too long we might be able to get something done. But then we would have to deal with materiality, and site layout. That is a handful in itself. Well all we can do is hope the best and party like it's 19-99.