Not too much has been going on since our last post.
To recap, the studio is broken up into 3 teams for the site location/structure. Team one (T1) and team two (T2) are working on a single structure with T1 being in the center and T2 being adjacent to garden bed locations. Team Three is working on multiple structures within the site. Now that the weekend has past, we officially have 4 more days to work on our concept to present to the Parks Conservancy, Green Heart, who is the non-profit sponsoring this project, and the City of Charleston.
Just to give a little back story of how these organizations came into the mix… Green Heart, a non-profit whose mission statement is to “build garden-based experiential learning projects and school garden programs to educate students connect people and cultivate community through growing, eating, and celebrating food,” and Meeting Street Academy (MSA) have a partnership. MSA have garden beds across Morrison Drive where Grow Foods used to be. However, because Grow Foods has moved out of the location, MSA and Green Heart have to find another place for their garden beds. It was proposed that they use Singleton Park as their new home but because this is new territory for them, Green Heart had to reach out to City of Charleston to receive this approval. Unfortunately, because Green Heart had never really dealt with the City they were left waiting. So enters the Parks Conservancy. Since the Parks Conservancy has a relationship with the City they were able to help Green Heart be heard sooner. Then Clemson comes into the mix to help build a structure that can not only benefit the school, but the community. Clemson will be also partnering with Clemson’s University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) located in Greenville, SC with help on the structure having composite materials.