DeBuild Materials

http://d-build.org/wordpress/

The COE has a project aimed at de-constructing, rather than demolishing vacant houses; could it be possible to work with them to source local/recycled materials?

the room within a room

I was thinking about the warehouse on Amsterdam NOORD that Yun Pei and I saw this summer - whereby there were individually designed studios within the big warehouse - that each held distinct design vocabularies. Rather than having the room within the room upstairs match and blend in - why not design it such that it is entirely different from the outer shell. See attached fotos of Amsterdam NOORD; Art City.

More images for our "finishing the cube" and "smashing the cube" discussion

Janine Antoni's Gnaw

Seating/Table Research from Marion

hp01 tafel

see:

http://hivemodern.com/pages/products.php?view=sub_product&sid=3503&cid=399

Basement Excursion discovery

Check out what lies beneath 601!

A sauna?

photos from the last few days

Business Plan Competition- Due Jan 22

DISCLAIMER: The Business Competition and Text are real, although the images on the flyer may be superimposed.
We can apply for the 5k "Business Idea" competition.

Take a look at this, it is due January 22, 2010.

All the info, application, etc., can be found: HERE

a wall with a window in a garden

Garden Soxx

GARDEN SOXX

Per Suggestion of Terry Ettinger, Instructional Support Specialist and Greenhouse Manager at ESF, see Garden Sox as a raised bed option:

http://www.filtrexx.com/agricultural_systems.htm

****Click on URBAN GARDENING-PRESENATION, and click through the images for a quick overview of the possibilities of garden soxx.

Fred Sandback

Andrew and Hilary,
Check out Fred Sandback at Zwirner and Wirth Gallery and Dia Beacon - creates planes in space with string.
Inspiration for your installation of tape and string for tomorrow.

Shared Missions Statements

1. Jewelry Box - openings, compartments, receptacle of precious memories, from rough trinkets to polished gems.

2. Finishing the cube

3. Cutting the key - relationships. users become owners (can be metaphorical or literal)

4. Emphasizing the sculptural integrity of the building

5. Cheap, low-skill, awe-inspiring in material and fabrication but not necessarily design

6. Re-incarnation - thinking about the buildings future building upon the past-life of the building.

things in near westside 2

world from Wayne

Monday Class Remember to meet at 601 Tully tomorrow

And be prepared to share a tangible with class and continue to work in designated groups on site.
See you all then.

Please Dont Move the Sticks and Strings

Hello All.

After the ramp + lot meeting, Lindsey and I decided that we needed to map out the imagined lines and spaces of what the lot could be in its physical, future space. So today, armed with some string, a hammer, and some found sticks, we did. Some images follow, and hopefully it will still all be up tomorrow for us to all see.

There are several things that we learned while on the lot for just a few hours today:

1.) The lot is, after all, not that big. Also, there is alot of concrete in and just below the dirt.
2.) There are actually a whole bunch of big grape vines all throughout the property line of the lot/601 tully, and 601 tully and the next door neighbor... wrapped all through the chain link fence. We don't know if they are edible, but Lindsey is on the case. If they are, this could be very interesting. Group Grape? We used the trimmed grape vines as our "sticks."
3.) There is a very very noisy dog one house down that barked the entire few hours we were out there. This, in my opinion, is reason enough to put up a wall.
4.) According to Jessica, a kid who lives around the corner (and who's father owns the loud dog) people cut through the lot all the time. Something else to think about, especially as far as reclaiming the lot for what we want (and not just a short cut), and controlling the space. another reason for a wall?
5.) Light. According to Raul, another neighbor we met, brightness in the neighborhood is important. He complemented our efforts to bring brightness into the lives of kids in the West Side. This comes in many forms, but also simple forms like street lights (which there aren't many-- if any), to ward of darker activities with which this site, street, and neighborhood are fraught. A victim of violent crime himself, Raul's words and story only added to the gravity and importance of bringing light, in all forms, to this project.

images from our psycho/spatial exercise:

Lot+Ramp

Hi all,
Lot + Ramp is pleased to announced the meeting in Slocum at 3pm today.
If you are in another group and have an idea about this space, please drop by our meeting.
I would strongly recommend one member from S. facade+Interior to come around 4 or 5 just to get a sense which direction we are heading. Thanks and god speed with your design,


- Ramp

he found four colors as squares
under fluorescence
China Moon Sanibel Gray
Green Lame First Light
she took to trim with a swiss army knife
while he stuccoed the steps green
the door needed to be big
enough for her wheel chair and to move
the furniture in and out
and enough light in so she feels alive
upon entering and when he sits he sees
and writes when he does
when it's winter and its dark
quickly and she likes the way it looks when she comes home
from driveway to door
and baby can see out
the window and knows
which house is his
when she asks where and they know
who lives there
because they found four colors
and took to trim with a knife
stuccoed the steps and look out the window
So that she feels and he can see
and write and baby knows
where he lives

Example of Another Community-based Design-Build project

http://www.parsonsdesignworkshop.org/html/intro.htm

This is a good example of how the community-based programs can make a great space; especially how materials (especially Phoebe's Polycarbonate) can be used / recycled efficiently.

October 7, 2009

Good class today. We broke up the class into small groups/pairs to develop a specific part of the project: interior 2 floors; south wall; north and and east wall; lot; ramp and patio-exterior circulation; and and....
People seemed - in the smaller exercise- to feel the urgency and ownership of the building.

Artists and architects and landscape designers all seemed to feel equal and everyone had a voice - whereas before I wasn' hearing from some people. Anda French came to class to offer some structural expertise and she was able to meet with each group and quickly troubleshoot.

It is a relatively big group to try to act as one - but hopefully by being in smaller groups for awhile we can move forward.

Using the blog now to archive the history of activities.

Eric, Kristen and Hillary and Jamie introduced Anish Kapoor, Doris Salcedo and Carl Andre respectively - in thinking about 601 Tully interior. Hopefully the introduction to these artists will make their way into the design and thinking of the class.

Favorite Solnit Quotes

Storming the Gates of Paradise

Introduction: Prisons and Paradises

"...place is a crossroads, a particular point of intersection of forces coming from many directions and distances."

"The straight line of conventional narrative is too often an elevated freeway permitting no unplanned encounters or necessary detours."

"...experience never gets sorted out, except by the mind that insists it must be, and the most truthful are the passionate impurists."

"But for Thoreau, any subject was a good enough starting point to travel any distance, toward any direction."

"This compartmentalizing of Thoreau is a small portion of a larger portion in American thought, another fence built in the belief that places in the imagination can also be contained."

"We are usually in several places at once, and the ways our conversations and thoughts meander is a guide to the connections between all things or any two things."

"There's a widespread belief among both activists and those who cluck disapprovingly over insufficiently austere activists, that idealists should not enjoy any pleasure deemed to others, that beauty, sensuality, delight all ought to be stalled behind some dam that only the imagined revolution will break. This schism creates, as the alternative to a life of selfless devotion, a life of flight from engagement, which seems to be one way those years at Walden are sometimes portrayed: escape. But change is not always by revolution; the deprived don't generally wish most that the rest of us would join them; and a passion for justice and pleasure in small things are not incompatible. It's possible to do both, to talk about trees and justice (and in our time, justice for trees); that's part of what the short jaunt from jail to hill says."

"Places matter. Their rules, their scale, their design include or exclude civil society, pedestrianism, equality, diversity (economic and otherwise), understanding of where water comes from and garbage goes, consumption or conservation. They map our lives."

"...the mind and the terrain shape each other: every landscape is a landscape of desire to some degree, if not always for its inhabitants."

towards an argument

10/2/09: end of school day traffic (car and pedestrian) passing by / stopped at the corner in front of 601 tully

review photos