Well here we are.... finally done with our project for the semester. I half expected for it to never actually end, but I guess all things must end eventually. Anyway, I think it has been a pretty good semester, with a pretty good project, and that we all did a pretty nice job of making it all come together. We had a lot of disagreements and hard times collaboratively, but over all, it never got as bad as I thought it might get. We learned some stuff the hard way, but I guess that is the best way to learn. Here is the stuff I got out of the semester:

1. It is really hard to work collaboratively... but if you can get over petty stuff that comes up it is a rewarding experience. We worked through problems on site, made a lot of quick design and construction decisions on our own, and ultimately came up with a really nice product. And I think that made the semester a good one for all of us ultimately.

2. Stewardship means a lot of things, and it is a lot easier said than done to actually design and build something... especially if it is supposed to be sustainable. Although a lot of our design ended up being really wasteful, I think that ultimately that taught us all a lot about how easy it is to be really wasteful... and how quickly something can get out of hand. Hopefully this fact will really impact our future designs and thus be sustainable in its lesson it has taught us. It is difficult to make something that is innovative OR something that is sustainable.... but to do both at the same time is even more challenging. I am not sure that we really accomplished that this semester, but I do know that I, personally, learned a lot just by experiencing the project in its entirety. 

3. Community service is a really rewarding thing.... but sometimes you really think that the community does not care one way or the other. There were many times that we never heard or saw anything out of the community, but then every once in a while we would have people come by and show interest and support in what we were doing.. and that made it all worthwhile. I think that the people of the neighborhood are actually happy with the porch... and hopefully will be with the sign too.... and will use it often. We got to meet some characters and some really interesting people, and that was nice. It would have been nicer to have a little more time to get to know the people and get a little more of their input on the site and what we made... but there was simply not enough time. Hopefully we can get them started on their new site tomorrow with our community get-together. 

I feel like I contributed pretty equally to the project: I was able to work with the others to design the sign and how we actually cut it out using the CNC, I worked with the team getting donations, buying supplies and running errands, building the porch, re-building elements of the porch that we messed up the first time, driving poles for pin foundations into the ground, going to Charlotte to get donated Trex decking, working on the landscape by shoveling dirt, gravel, and placing bricks, cutting grass, taking off the formwork of the signage block (what a job!!!), and, of course, destruction of the mini-block. There have been fights all semester about people not "pulling their weight", but we did it... it looks great.... and I think I did my part. 

Here's to another... and my last... studio at Clemson.

framing and gardening

The past several weeks have seen massive leaps in progress. We have moved into framing up the deck... we have the entire front portion framed up and are now working all day Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and the weekends to frame up the rear portion. Although we have lost some time due to rain (unfortunately the Spring Jubilee saw rain all day on Saturday, so we were unable to raise awareness in the community that way), and due to framing mistakes that we have to take time to undo, we have really been coming along well. SAB,  Swade, and James have really been putting in a lot of labor on the garden while the other guys (as well as James) and I have been working on the deck- I have never seen so much digging and shoveling done by a group. Anyway, thanks to some help from the Eleazar's tiller, plants are planted and are being watered daily. We should be ready to start laying decking in the coming week or so, and as I type I am milling the foam for the signage block. We have several more nights of cutting and all of the formwork should be ready. 

Yay for progress!

how do you haul 12,000lbs of lumber 150 miles???

Well, we have been busy.... and the latest issue has been obtaining materials for our ventures. We have managed to pull some donations, and yesterday Sara Ashley and I went around to every Home Depot in a 50-mile radius to turn on the charm for some more funds. There were a few that we feel confident that will hook us up with some more donations, but we are starting to feel the crunch of the budget. The signage block is well on its way to being built: we have just about everything worked out, and Robbie has started making the files for the formwork. We should be ready to mill this sucker out soon: but we still need to purchase $1,200 worth of foam to do it. That is the least of our problems though: due to the dedication of SA, we have gotten 75 boards donated to us and another 75 boards discounted (the total comes to about $1,200)... only problem is that we have to rent two U-Hauls to drive it from Charlotte to here. And that will be about $300 extra dollars.... so get ready Ester..... we have some purchases to make. We are excited though, and are putting together a set of requests for the city and Grant to hopefully up our budget ever so slightly. 

The signage block has really been a task, but I think we finally have it all nailed down. We are poised and ready for CEMEX to call with their leftovers... then it will be time for action.  The porch.... well, we'll get there.... and we are slated to start building seriously next week. 

time for some construction!

The time has finally arrived: the time for us to get our hands dirty and really start making things happen! Several of us are going out to the site today to mark out where the concrete slab and rebar will be placed and then start digging the trench. Sara-Ashley and I are hoping to get a head start on this possibly long and difficult task (only because the ground around here is really hard and difficult to hand-dig, not because we are afraid of the "intense labor"). I think we are getting our ducks in a row though, because we pretty much have our schedule (several of the group met yesterday to write out one page per week for what we will be doing in each of the following six weeks). Most of us are staying for spring break to work intensely, solely on the project at hand. We should be ready to start milling out the formwork to construct the new mini-block by next week. 

Sara and I went around distributing letters that Robbie had written the other day and managed to get $200 in donations from Home Depot; we hope we will have similar success when we approach the managers in Anderson on Monday. We went ahead and got Ester's card and started purchasing shovels and concrete-working tools as well so that we should be ready to start working the concrete as soon as cemex comes with their donation of cement. 

Sara A. and I have been working with Joe to obtain needed text and photographs for the signage block, and have also been doing materials studies in conjunction with the boys (R and D) on how to embed this material. We believe that since we are working with concrete, it allows us a unique opportunity to embed this information into the form, thus not only saving us hundreds of dollars, but also working in the same language of the students before us who embedded text. We think that it would be aesthetically pleasing and would make a lot of sense. However, a couple of failed attempts at getting this exactly right has met with a lot of friction with some of the others, and it looks like we are going to just cave and let them do it their way.

Well, time for some on-site work!

 

The past week has seen a few misunderstandings resolved, and some quick progress. The porch design has been modified so that we do not encroach upon the ground within the footprint of the old Keese Barn, because nothing we have designed thus far has felt "right". We have thoroughly discussed the signage block and have decided on an orientation and dimensions. We will probably have to pour footings very soon for the blocks, and Robbie and I are working to figure out a formwork with dimensions which will reduce the bowing effect that the last mold had. Our Friday review was helpful and promises to help us with progress..... 

grrrrrr.........

Well it was a week. One more try at coming up with a cohesive design for the porch, and another failed attempt. I must say that I really am getting frustrated with the lack of being able to come up with a design that will work and that everyone agrees on. Time is running out fast and we are all really aware of it, and what is more frustrating is that we really are trying to get something accomplished; somehow things just always fall apart. 

This past week was busy though: we split off into two groups, one of which to work on the new signage mini block and another to design the porch. I was to work on the new mini block, and with the help and ideas from the rest of the group, I think Sara Ashley and I came up with a design that I think we are all excited about. We worked to digitally model the new block and its intricacies and to model it in the 3d printer. We immediately found several problems with the design and went to work fixing the problems. Once we agreed on a rough design, we consulted with Robbie on the best way to create a formwork. Saturday Robbie and I went to buy supplies and dropped about $200 on the materials for our experimental cast and on miscellaneous supplies like buckets and a wheelbarrow. Monday we finally got the formwork finished and got together to cast the form. It was messy, scary, and a lot of fun... and it worked! We now have a mock-up at quarter scale of what the form may look like. We still have a LOT of work to do though, but it sure feels good to have something done that is physical. 

Next step is to figure out how to encase photos and text into resin or some other material and embed it into the concrete. We found out a LOT about what materials to use and not use just casting our first mock-up (like that construction adhesive will eat through foam), and I am sure that we will learn just as much with our experiments to come. 

The porch.... well, I think that we are making to too complex. We really need to scale it back and start looking at it as a much less complex form. Several of us stayed up in studio for hours last night trying to rehash the form and make it work. We also need to remember that we have to save some time and effort to enclose/find some other way to make the memory block safe to occupy. 

We really have our work cut out for us!

P.S. sorry for the late blog!

(Painfully) slow progress.....

We have now gone through another week of design on the Pendleton site, and although we have made some progress, it is not enough to brag about. The group is really starting to feel the strains of trying to design as a group, and there were several days this week where we spent hours doing nothing but catching other group members up on our ideas and doing some intense arguing. 

However, I think that we have now got a much more concrete design down, and since then we have made some serious efforts to show our work. We have been focused on the idea of layering in the site, and have thus far been concentrating on the porch and how it can be the main focus of the site and its landscape; with the help of Robbie's digital skills, we have been designing a porch experience that will transition visitors from the formal porch area through a dynamic, organic porch area which can accommodate bodies in the laying, sitting, and standing positions. The porch layer will occasionally be perforated to reveal the old foundation, the old footprint of the Keese Barn, and where the major structural elements were. These elements will be lit from underneath to make them more powerful at night and to lend some light to the area. We are using regulating lines pulled from the porch area and viewpoints (both to the Clemson site and existing viewpoints to the town square and the Community Center) to inform the rest of the site's design. 

Last week I cut and co-assembled the site model that I got from the group in digital form, and this week I have been working with a couple of the other group members to assemble the various parts of the existing site as well as our proposed ideas. We have been looking into materials and have been asking around to see if we could find anyone who has been known to give donations/a cut in price for students in the past. So far, we are planning on hitting up Home Depot and the companies that manufacture the recycled plastic lumber for donations and price assistance as soon as everyone agrees on what materials to use. We also want to purchase some LEDs that Dustin found offline to test out, but we need a "studio credit card" or something because no one has the funds to just outright buy the lights. Yesterday, four of the group members and myself attended the clean-up morning at the site with the mayor and the United Way group to clean up the glass, computers, weaves, and perm boxes underneath and around the memory block. We had hoped to be able to take down the "Ron" box beforehand so that the broken pieces of rotting lumber could be picked up by the clean-up crew, but unfortunately this did not occur; however, there are still members of the group that are arguing against taking the block down. I think that most of the group agrees, however, that the block should be de-constructed, and then should be re-constructed as an element that informs visitors of both what the site was, what it is now, and why the students chose the design that they did, while also serving as a night-lit sign to catch the attention of the community. Many of us also believe that a formal historic marker is also very important and something that the community would like in the site. 

In addition to the design arguments in the Pendleton group, the Clemson group came into situations where they needed our help in the past week. Myself and a couple of others donated some of our time to help a few of their group members survey their site and perform several other tasks when many of their group members were nowhere to be found. I really think that this is a good thing, however, because I foresee that working together as a studio rather than solely in the two site groups to get the projects done will be crucial in the final stages to ensure that both sites get finished (hopefully) on time. We have also managed to recruit several of our fourth-year studio friends to come out and help us if we need the extra labor. 

Even though we have made progress, the first real waves of panic are starting to set in as we realize that we really have to get moving if this project is to be realized. With that said, time to get to work!

Progress: Design week 1

We are about to enter into another week of studio, and our two site groups are intensely working on our respective designs. The Keese Barn site group is working very well together, and there have been a lot of really great ideas tossed around; however, we are constantly having to be conscious of the fact that we need to both fix the "fragmentation" of the site's ununified elements and prevent our design from contributing to this flaw. In order to counteract the tendancy to create individual projects, we are making a concerted effort to meet only as a group. This has worked relatively well so far, and I hope that it continues to go well.

We are really concentrating on working with the landscape and the existing structures as a framework rather than tearing down any structures just to rebuild something in its place. Our analysis of the site's needs have led us to create a list of design needs including unifying the site's existing elements, making the barbeque pit and table more useable, finishing the porch, adding seating elements, providing shade to the area, adding signage and pictures, and ensuring the safety of the site's visitors from falling wood, etc. The ideas presented by the former students who constructed the site as it is now were really interesting; however, the community does not understand the ideas and see the current site as merely a "curiosity", according to Joe at the Historic Information Center in Pendleton. I really hope that we will be able to re-habilitate the site into something that the community will be proud of and use, but I know that there is no pleasing the entire community. However, even though I anticipate some controversy, I know that this will be a great experience for all involved.

Field-tripping at the Rural Studio

This Thursday Studio Stewardship headed out for Newburn, Alabama to check out the work of the Rural Studio. Friday we toured the countryside with Dan, a former student and current professor of the Rural Studio, to see some of their most notable works.

I was really excited about the trip because I have always been a fan of the Rural Studio and have admired the projects that I read about in various periodicals. Seeing these works that I have always admired up-close gave me the opportunity to not only admire them more, but also to view them with a critical eye. The projects really are amazing, and knowing that students like myself were able to come together to design and build them is really inspiring. I am also interested in the way that they view the needs of their community. However, actually visiting the studio and interacting with students and workers gave me a less whitewashed view of this aspect of the Rural Studio. Among the projects that we encountered we saw many examples of success, but also several instances of shortcoming.

Although these projects are quite successful from my point of view as an architecture student, there were many times when I thought that some details (and even some large points) were neglected. For example, in the Newbern fire station and town hall is a beautiful building, but the use of a difficult to use space-saving stair and the lack of an elevator makes the top floor where meetings were designed to be held less accessible to older and handicapped members of the community. The stairs are architecturally interesting, but even one of our students tripp

ed while trying to go down them; I can imagine the trouble that someone much older would have with them.

The Perry County Learning Center is an alternative school, and has a really beautiful interior design. However, one of the first things that hit me when we went in was how warm it was on the inside; I wondered if it was due to a great insulating system that the students had worked out. On further inspection around the windows, I found that there were many holes and old rotting moldings which were allowing cold air to enter freely; the warm atmosphere inside was due to heat being constantly pumped in. If more attention had been paid to the detailing around the windows and the exterior walls their heating and air conditioning needs would be much lower.

Even though there were many flaws among the designs, I still enjoyed being in these student-created spaces, and my favorite project that I read about my first year as an architecture student remains my favorite to this day. Lucy House, a home made primarily of recycled carpet squares, was built for a poor black family in Mason's Bend. The students worked with the non-recyclable waste materials of Interface, the world's largest carpet tile manufacturer, to come up with a novel way to integrate these into their design. The result was, in my opinion, a very beautiful building which uses the natural properties of the carpet tiles to insulate the house. Although we were not allowed into the home, we were allowed to circle it and take photos of the exterior. I regret that I was not able to see first-hand the internal qualities of the house, but I was impressed with the exterior. The carpet tiles create a multicolored banding which is complemented by the elegant windows that the students built. On one side of the building is a red tower that takes on a crumpled geometric form and houses the master bedroom. Although we had mixed feelings about the necessity of the form, I feel that it is an interesting feature that probably gives the interior of the bedroom a unique quality. Once again, I regret not being able to experience this space.
The building is not perfect: there are times above the windows where the tiles have settled and made irregular lines and small gaps, but these did not appear to be major flaws and they actually gave the house a character that I really liked. I believe that perfection is not something that one should strive unusually hard to attain in an architecture because the lack of perfection is what gives the piece a human, hand-crafted quality. I really appreciated this project because I think that the students achieved one thing that we ultimately hope to achieve in this studio: a new use for a material which can educate the public on the possibilities of re-using ordinary materials in a new, novel way.

New Beginnings...

The students of Studio Stewardship are about to embark upon a journey which I am very excited about: actually bringing two projects that we have designed to fruition. 

Although I am looking forward to seeing a design that I have had a hand in actually become a physical manifestation beyond a small-scale model, I honestly believe that the most meaningful aspect of both projects will be directly observing their immediate impact upon their surroundings (including landscape, flora, fauna, and people of the respective communities). I feel this way because as a student of architecture, I feel that one missing link in my education thus far has been my being distanced from the actual repercussions that a design I have created would have. It has been easy up until now to  neglect this impact and just assume that a design I created would have an optimal impact on the site and its inhabitants. It is also going to be a crucial part of my education into making things actually work within a site; I have had several projects which I presented theoretical proposals for ideas  like energy harvesting and community involvement but I never got to see if my ideas would really work in the "real world". I think that this studio is going to change that by allowing us to see the fruits (and thorns) created by our labors.

Although I have no idea what these repercussions will be, I am thinking positively and believe that we will have an overall positive impact on each community. However, I anticipate this being a difficult process, where the initial designs and construction processes that we propose will have to be significantly modified to meet unexpected community needs and demands. Therefore, there will probably be times when we may actually cause an obstruction or eyesore in each community and have some negative reactions, but I believe that in the end we will have created architectures that have a positive impact. This will be, after all, a learning experience for not only us but also for each community. I hope that we will have a lot of community involvement (especially for our social gatherings like the proposed barbeque), but I really feel like there will be less than we would like. The Pendleton site has already been tapped for information and suggestions, but I am not sure if that will make conversation with that community easier or more difficult. Although the Clemson site is located in an area inhabited by a mix of children, students, and residents, I imagine that it will still be difficult getting people outside the architecture department excited about participating in what we design: particularly in the beginning. 

This will be a difficult process. I have no doubt about this. We are a studio full of designers that all have strong ideas about the project that we all want incorporated into the final designs. Many of us (particularly the undergraduates) also have very little experience in making full-scale, functioning projects. However, I feel that the most difficult aspect of these two projects will inevitably be actually finishing them in the allotted time. Many of us are graduating in May and I doubt that anyone will be willing to stay very long after graduation to finish either of these structures. The Pendleton site has already experienced this problem, and I feel that it will be our task to not only complete what they started, but also whatever WE start. 

Buona fortuna, studio: this promises to be a wild ride!