A student's point of view about his whole experience for the Pacific Rim Friendship Park project.Construction does not have to be the end of a design process. It can be instead the expansion of the design medium from word, drawing, and model to earth, steel, and cement. We have not moved from “design to build”, or to “build from design.” Rather, we have started on the next phase of the design process. In this phase, we give the land a new voice. It speaks to us in ways that it could not have spoken to us in our pen and paper explorations. Our ideas and plans have been pressed into the land and our experience of that that union of earth and idea then begins to pull, twist, and inspire a new growth of our original plans. Those minute transformations, many of which cannot be felt in graphite or ink, are what help to ground and propel the park we are building. The very language of the term “design build” seems very appropriate for what we have all been experiencing. No precedence is given to either process. Nor is there a division of the two words.
This notion of a relationship, harmonious tension, and interplay between designing and building is something that can be difficult to explore in an academic setting. One of my biggest developments last semester was the idea that when working on a project, drawings inform model making and model making informs the drawing process. Often times, the process can become locked and linear with a restricted unidirectional flow from drawing to model making (the model being a non-responsive reflection of the plan). A week and half ago, we explored the relationship between model and drawing in the more natural, mutual informing way. We drew from our models and modeled from our drawings. The models informed our drawings and our drawings informed our models. Again, this is something I had already explored in school. But what this experience has given me in this past week and a half as we have begun and continue to build, is the realization that in construction, the design, in plan and model form, is not solidified. Rather it is explored and treated as a guide. Much like the non-linear flow between the complimentary processes of model making and drawing; plan, design and construction also inform each other. Construction is not just the product of a past plan. It is a guided exploration of the plan.
In laying out the site last week, there were many times where our plans had to dictate our actions. In our plans, everything was carefully acknowledged but there was an understanding that because of the nature of our project, the plans have a certain flexibility that really helps us to celebrate the true idea of a design build. The plans have told us where to push, pull, cut and project the land and we do so, but in a critical and informed way. Now we can feel the scale of our ideas and the product of their earthen manifestations. We can feel when a ray of benches need to be pushed back, or where a step really needs to fall…
I have worked with wood before, but I have only worked with concrete, rebar, and steel a few times. This is my first true experience with steel and cement. To work with them as something that is organic, something with energy, curves, and a behavior that wants to be expressed is such a gift. The other day Jim was talking about how all too often it is assumed that concrete and steel want to be slab and column. I have noticed that convention can freeze the energy that is present in these mediums and create objects that fail to respond to the land and space. It can freeze the energy present in the designers without them even knowing. Today a skeleton of a wall grew from the ground. There was life in the structure: a guided flexibility. Rebar reached towards the sky bowed to gravity. The nature of the material was exploited in such a way that the curve of the arch was able to take its shape as if it emerged from some organic process. Piece by piece rebar shot up from the ground. There seemed to be a balance between transforming the rebar and listening to it. The location of each piece and its points of connections were carefully and deliberately chosen. Minute bends, many ties, and interlocking pieces coupled with the natural behavior of the steel (the way it bows like a blade of grass), created the skeleton of the concrete curve that will be formed around it. This is structure is a responsive sculpture rather than a prescribed object.
I know that we have all been exploring and discovering the different ways that architecture can come from and respond to the land and community. I just wanted to share some of my thoughts.
-Mike
Michael Meo is taking up a self designed major combination of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning with a focus on social and environmental suistainability and the socialization of public spaces at Hampshire College in Massachusetts.
