With final review right around the corner, we are pushing towards completion. This is not without hiccups. If you’ve been keeping up with the blog this far, you can notice we are researching several techniques that revolve around arch structures. Typically, we wouldn’t design arches to build because this causes many issues; but because the arch detail on the Enston Home site is very prominent, we must pay attention to them. This week has been full of researching different techniques to make our lives easier when it comes to constructing the arches… BUT this has come with some turmoil.
Honesty section: We have been mulling around with WAY to many ideas, late in the game. In architecture, we go through a design process that consists of multiple iterations of space, detail, and circulation in order to come to a design that is coherent in the end. We usually give ourselves a few days in order to assemble the final documents and presentations that come with this and refine the details along the way. This week we have been iterating all the way until yesterday (good for design process, bad for us),
Without any direction, we asked our clients to come in for a mid-process review to give us some clarity on our ideas. The worst thing we could have done is push and idea towards final design that they have never seen and then have them not like it. This meeting was extremely beneficial, and we thank them for their extra time. We were able to uncover several aspects of the different design proposals and realize that the idea we all liked; they did not. Now its time to finalize a beautiful structure, FINALLY.
Have we mentioned we also have to present to the BAR?! Yep… The design also has to pass the Board of Architectural Review for the city of Charleston because of the historic significance of the site. This adds an extra layer of design complexity that the CommunityBuild program has not had to work with before. More on this will be explained over the next couple weeks as we approach the board meeting.