As the first full week of the semester progressed, we continued to prepare for our Friday meeting with Jason Kronsberg, Director of Parks in the City of Charleston. Each team delved further into their research and the corresponding graphic components needed for the presentation. The new students focused specifically on site research to familiarize themselves with the neighborhood, while the returning Community Build students focused more on site strategies and precedent studies.
My focus was park precedent research with Baker. We set out to find comparable parks, which meant they were local, at a similar scale, coinciding program or had an element that we felt important to bring to the discussion with Jason. We were somewhat surprised to find that there were not many case studies that met all these criteria. This only reinforced the fact that this project will be a unique asset to the community. In my opinion, the most interesting precedent found was Skinner Park in Detroit, Michigan. Although not local, this design build project was done by the Detroit Mercy School of Architecture in an underserved community. It is a simple pavilion that has the ability to meet numerous programming needs, as the space is open and flexible. One end of the structure includes a stage, while the other half is open slab, normally set up as a shaded picnic area.
All teams came together on Thursday to compile the research and prepare for our meeting with Jason the next day. We made sure the presentation was cohesive and made notes of what feedback we needed to move onto the next stage of design.
[Skinner Park pavilion; rendering by The Detroit Collaborative Design Center]