For the past two and a half weeks our studio has been analyzing fruits and vegetables of our discretion in order to understand five aspects; structure, program, circulation, skin, and poche. Thursday night was crunch time for the eight members of Studio V to finalize their analyses for a pin-up review with Professor Huff’s Studio U class on Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, a few miss-haps with the laser cutter and the always prevalent lack of time set a few of us back, but in the end we had a great presentation and review with our fellow CAC.C students and faculty.
On Thursday afternoon, the History/Theory class led by Professor Jim Thomas traveled to Medway Plantation, a short forty minute drive out of Charleston. Being a Chicago native, I had a preconceived vision of what I would see when we arrived at the plantation, a brilliantly white house with a front entry porch lined with looming columns and an extensive front lawn. When we arrived at Medway I kept looking and waiting to see this picture that I had envisioned, but it never materialized. Instead I saw a Dutch style brick home with an earthen clay color stucco finish and turquoise shutters. The surrounding buildings were brick structures painted white with the same turquoise details surrounded by the largest trees I have ever seen. The drive from the main entry gate to the house took at least five or ten minutes and I instantly had a flashback to when I read the book Harriet Tubman during grade school and how she hid in the woods and could hear the noise of the trains in the distance when fleeing from her owner’s plantation. The property was so large and beautiful, I imagined what it would be like as a child growing up in such a place and playing among the trees and fishing along the side of the lake. It was a great trip and I only wish we had more time to explore and discover the secrets of the buildings and property.
It is hard to believe that is has been almost a month in Charleston for all of us, but time is flying by and now we need to pick-up the pace even more so to complete our design build project of a vertical garden. Over the course of the next week the eight students in Studio V will be rapidly developing a design scheme for a vertical garden wall in the form of diagrams, plans, sections, and physical models. On February 4th the class will present their designs and meet with the client Claire Xidis from Elliotborough Community Garden and Jim Martin from the CPC to discuss further progression and the plan of action for the project. For many of us, this is the first time we will be actively communicating and working with a client, a great experience for anyone. It is exciting to know that what we collectively design as a group will become an actual built form and everyone is looking forward to the final product at the end of the semester.