Today is day one of a week long individual design charrette. On Friday, we presented our fruit/vegetable analyses and got our assignment for this week to take what we learned from our fruit/vegetable analysis and what we now know about the site, pick one of 6 different individual onsite locations and create a design for a vertical garden that reflects what we learned from our fruit or vegetable. By quickly “smashing” together all the things we’ve learned over the past two weeks, we hope to end up with 8 different vertical garden designs that fit the Elliotborough Community Garden site and that mold to the conditions of the site, taking into account all of the analysis work we’ve done as a group on the site (sunlight exposure, traffic, etc.) as well as keeping in mind what it is exactly that a vegetable needs to grow. (These being a specific amount of sunlight, water, proper soil depth and space, protection from temperature extremes and of course, love.)
So with love, we were all furiously working to put together a study model this weekend that would help us to design a vertical garden that had aesthetic and functional value. The laser cutter didn’t stop all afternoon and we were sticking things together any way we could figure out how.
After we guest critiqued Studio U’s presentation of their arboretum project on the campus of MUSC, we had individual desk crits for our vertical gardens. There are a lot of great ideas and concepts that look promising as both a functional garden and an architecturally interesting wall. So in the grand tradition of “smashing,” we will be building new models and making new diagrams to progress our work by Wednesday and hopefully end with 8 great walls of gardening by Friday.