Formwork

Saturday on Livingston

Week Six

This week we are on to sizing and pricing materials, and one more (less formal) studio outreach effort of a cookout at the W.C. Reid Center.

A lucky break: The Dept of Transit has a bus shelter permit application on file with Building Safety and it saved us the estimated five day wait. Phew. So, we wasted no time in starting ground work.

Two kids art projects are in the works – painting Lexan for the wall screen, and making clay floor tiles.

The bubinga + steel benches are almost complete. When those are done, the bench team will disband and join other groups. I think there is a Bellism for this...perhaps "You should never be standing still," or, "You should never have nothing to do?" I can't remember the official wording.

Week Five

The site we were so keen on was threatened because of some apprehensive city officials who believe that corner to be the center of drug activity. Having this confrontation with the city ended up being a good thing. We stopped to recall specific neighborhood folks in favor of the site, and their reasons for it. That made all the difference. The resolution was this: We can still build the shelter at Livingston/Depot. In 6 months, if the shelter is run over with unintended & negative activities, then the city will move it.

Week Four

Nearly halfway through the studio, we are at last in the realm of materials and full scale mock-ups. [Doesn’t anyone have images to insert here?]

Funny bus stop

So far, this is the funniest bus stop I have come across in Asheville. It's on the north side of Haywood Road in West Asheville, not too far after the bridge. In the image at right the sign is circled in red. (Click on an image for the larger view.)

Third Community Meeting

Where's a stadium full of Romans when you need one?

Tonight we held our third meeting with the community, including our transit contact in Asheville, who offered his design affirmations and concerns for the first time. This week's meeting followed a weekend spent combining three project proposals into a single design. In reality television architecture, this design would have survived because it beat out the competition. It would be one of eight designs that, from week to week, modified according to what else was in the running in hopes of brawning over the other proposals.

But at Design Corps, as in other practices and collaborative design-build projects, resolving a design is not a matter of weeding out the inferior. Despite the myth of the starchitect, there is no such thing as a flawless design, if only because the users of space are as diverse as the somewhat 'idiosyncratic' people who dream of its assembly and construction. When designing for a community who must live with the results long after we have all gone back to school, the best design comes together by maintaining ideas that work for that community. And just as every design has its weaknesses, for lack of a better term, every design represents genuine and creative ideas that come from people invested in problem-solving. It is these ideas that, when aligned to the assets and challenges of the community, are maintained and developed into a next step.

This process has happened once already when, working in small groups, we condensed eight idea-rich designs into three. Over the weekend, the entire team gathered and hashed out a single proposal to present to the community. When eight people, especially students, are pitching in to harmonize a single design, there's sure to be debate, hearty discussion, and a little frustration, but our entire team was pleased and encouraged by how well we collaborated over the weekend to produce a design to which the community, as well as city representatives, responded very well tonight. As we head into a week of big decisions--materials and connections, detailing and possibly even site--the team appears comfortable and mutually minded enough to make a strong step into uncertain and inexperienced terrain--constructing our design for real people, in a real community, with real steel, concrete, and probably lexan, and with our real hands and shoulders, and feet (maybe even elbows and wrists). Stay tuned as we hoist the sails.

Bryan Bellisms

'Heroic failure is always better than smug resolution.'

Smug resolution means that you knew what you were going to do, you did it, and you didn't learn anything from doing it. It is much better to just try stuff, because even if you 'fail,' you have learned something.

Community Context

Another post not about the bus shelter

Here are some scenes from the past weeks' activities outside of community meetings, classroom and lab time. These include the Friday drum circle in downtown Asheville, a daytrip to a mountain blue hole, our two-day trip to Kentucky, and an evening spent on the French Broad.