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.