A Busy Week!

This week has been eventful! As Anna discussed, we poured our concrete slab this week. The process was fascinating, and really fun to be part of! Back in the shop, a group of us finished building the formwork for our concrete piers. After we remove the formwork from the slab, we will install this formwork [...]

Last Day Before The Metanoia Block Party

Tomorrow is the Reynolds Avenue Homecoming event for our Intro to Craft class. The groups have been working hard this week to produce cardboard installations, graphics, and signage for this event. My group has been working on an installation that draws from the ropemaking traditions of historic Charleston, and the sensory experience of light, to [...]

Surprise!

The studio got a last-minute surprise this week... due to scheduling issues, the review has been moved to Wednesday! This is a welcome change, as it has allowed us to spend more time on details such as furniture systems, roof material selection, and ground plane decisions. It has been a long week and many hours [...]

Iterations

As we have been working through our small group design phase, the buzzword in the studio has been "iterate". We are all trying to work through this repetitive phase of communicating design ideas, combining perspectives, narrowing down a design goal and narrative, and iterating through variations of these concepts to create the best possible solution [...]

Developing Design Ideas

This week, we have been working on our individual design concepts for the development of Stephen Washington Park. It has been interesting to see all the different directions that the studio is pursuing through this design phase. I am in the group that is diving into designs based on integrated development in the playground. We [...]

Enjoying the Charleston Sun

The studio prioritized time outdoors this weekend... at the worksite! Working Friday afternoon and all day Saturday, our team spent many hours on site this weekend building the Old Towne Creek Donor Wall. On Sunday, some students went back to the site to finish the rafters and purlins while three of us went to the [...]

Shop Days!

We are well into the process of shop construction for the Old Towne Creek Donor Wall! This has been a great experience, learning our way around the shop in the cigar factory and the making and usage of shop drawings. I have enjoyed seeing how things worked and didn't work in the shop drawings that [...]

Researching Charleston

This week is an exciting one for the Community Build Studio! Today we are meeting with the structural engineer to work on the truss system in our design, and iron out some structural details. Some of the students in the class have started on construction documents and a larger scale connection model of the pavilion [...]

A Fast Start To February

In the Community Build studio, the beginning of February has been eventful. We are currently moving towards a February 18th deadline as we work to synthesize our many ideas and narrow down our final group design to be proposed to the city. Most of the studio met yesterday to compare sketches and study models, then [...]

New Snow, New Community, New Food

The last few days have been anything but ordinary. Watching the city of Charleston reopen after the snow is an interesting experience, especially having grown up in the Midwest, where snow is a normal occurrence. Something that I have never seen before though is snow on the beach! I got to experience snow on the [...]