Month: February 2011

Basketmaking has been part of the Charleston community for over 300 years. The tradition was brought to the harbor from West Africa and has been passed on from generation to generation. Historically, they were made by slaves to collect vegetables and other crops from plantations. After the decline of the plantation system, black families continued [...]

 So as we try to push and finish our conceptual design development, I have finally gotten my feet wet with the woodshop aspect of our design build studio. And in doing so, it has really made me excited about getting to the building part of this studio. I found it actually really fun working down [...]

It became clear in our last meeting with Claire and Jim that there are a few locations that are in need of the most attention and would benefit the site immensely.  As we move forward with the project, addressing the specific conditions of these various locations will be essential to our success.  A few of [...]

Hello again!!  The challenges of a design build studio consistently reveal themselves every week!  I feel constantly that I am trying to catch up with this design process and trying to make the leaps between assignments from week to week while the edge of the cliff feels like its crumbling from under my tippy toes.  [...]

The students have just begun the first week of designing in teams.  And, I know, this can be a very challenging task. When I was a student in the Yale Building Project, building team unity is one of the toughest assignments of all.  I always laugh at an article that was in the New Haven [...]

Congrats to Jessica Robbins and Jason Drews! The individual charettes have come to a close, and after much deliberation, two were selected.  In the limited amount of time given to come up with a design proposal (one week), all the projects were successful and thourough. Now that we've designated the winners, our next step is [...]

The next step in this semester long project is to take what we have learned from studying and analyzing our fruits and vegetables and use those concepts in designing vertical gardening elements for Elliotborough Community Garden.  With the pepper that I studied I focused on the structure and void space.  I was assigned the existing [...]

We have now all started on our first attempts at designing vertical gardens for Elliotborough. The key is to try to relate this design to the things we have learned from our fruit and vegetable study models. I have learned to create a kind of generative from. I am also trying to study the connections [...]