With our first presentation deadline quickly approaching this Friday, the gang spent the weekend working hard and coping with Clemson’s football woes. Returning to studio, each of us presented precedent boards of projects which piqued our personal interest. These precedents highlighted concepts ranging from joinery & materiality to larger questions of site planning. Through discussion of these visions, we were able to create a short list of general site strategies to guide our designs.
Next, we were challenged to spend a few hours in a fast-paced charrette of diagrams for each possible site strategy – utilizing trace paper. Sounds simple enough right? David was kind enough to lend me a roll of his personal trace paper (very cool). I then proceeded to tear off the most jagged shred of trace mid-air that you’ve ever seen (not very cool). Thankfully, my ways have since been changed, and I learned to use a trusty straight edge for good tears. If I only take away one thing from this class, it will be this.
On a more serious note, we each sketched out 4-6 diagrammatic site plans for consideration over the course of the afternoon. We then arrayed them on the floor to sort by grouping proposals with similar layouts, ideas, or goals. This was a great exercise in graphic clarity, since there were far too many designs to fully explain each. After dividing into groups to conquer each of the possible concepts, we hope to have a shortlist of drawn site strategies to mull over tomorrow!