Concept to Conception in Public Spaces: Part 1

When searching for a project which strongly incorporates the community and context of a public space, and located in a rural setting (since my comprehensive project is also situated in a rural setting), I came across Rural Studio. In my opinion, Rural Studio is the real deal and the whole package for public community spaces. And it’s even more inspiring because the projects are completed by students. Here’s the story:

Rural Studio is a design-build studio course for Auburn University students completing a thesis project in Architecture, Landscape Architecture or Planning. The projects are located in the countryside of Hale County in Alabama. They work through phases, primarily including direct interaction with the community to discover their needs and wants, formulating design solutions, completing the necessary drawings, finding the essential funding, and not only building the designs, but also the community. Their philosophy revolves around “Small Site, Big Change”, acknowledging that everyone deserves to live in a well-designed place, no matter how rich or poor, or how big or small the community. The studio is succeeding with developing socially conscious and aware designers.

Throughout the years, a primary site for Rural Studio projects is Lions Park. This park is located in Greensboro, Alabama, and provides the largest park space in Hale County. The City of Greensboro, Hale County, the Riding Club, Greensboro Lions Club, Greensboro Garden Club and the Greensboro Baseball Association are the primary managers of the park, and therefore the main clients for the park’s projects. There are nine completed and ongoing projects for Lions Park including baseball fields, concessions, a park hub, playscape, restrooms, skatepark, surfaces, Cub Scout and Boy Scout building, and the parkscape.

The project I will be discussing in further detail is: “Lions Park Parkscape.” 

The goal of the Lion Park Parkscape project is to make the park holistic and connected. It’s program is revolved around recreation and leisure.They began the project with an inventory, analysis and concepts. They present these graphically through diagrams. Each diagram clearly highlights in yellow the design feature that will be implemented in their design. These easily convey the problems and opportunities the site holds. The size of the site is not specified, but by looking at the existing basketball court in the existing plan, one gains a strong sense of the size of the park. The topography is relatively flat, however there are a few existing berms throughout the site.

Here are some of the diagrams:

 

 

Rebecca Horn expresses design in such a vibrant manner: “From the first stroke there is a tacit agreement with the pencil’s line to dissect the paper, to divide it into new forms, with each mark explaining its existence to the next: it rejects, resumes, plays, destroys, empties, leaps, dives down into the depths, spirals up towards the light, catches fire, melts, flies around like ash, clasps hold of the fox star’s tail, burns out in a brilliant red, and descends deep down into the roots of the paper” (Treib, 2008).

This quote fits with the design process these designers follow. Their next step was to play around with some forms for benches and other interactive elements of the park through entertaining sketches. These show their innovative concept ideas, which include your typical design solutions, as well as new, interesting ideas. It is evident that in this stage of their design process anything can be imagined, discovered and/or created. It's time to let the creative juices flow!

These are some of their sketch examples:

After meeting with the community, the design students began creating more finalized design concepts at this stage, which are presented through various computer renderings. They include a focus towards ecology, with ideas of implementing biofiltration with tall grasses, bioswales, and various new plantings of trees. Other focuses include uniformity throughout the park and public amenities that directly correspond to the park users’ needs.

Here they are:

The above image shows how graphics can become a physical unifying element throughout the site.

The above section allows one to see how the drainage works in a simple diagrammatic way. This image can easily persuade the public to plant grasses to succeed with biofiltration.

The above three images represent photomontages of the designers' vision. Two of the images have full-color entourage, while the other has black and white entourage. The full-color entourage seem to be highlighting the actions the users will perform in the site, whereas the black and white entourage seem to emphasize the landscape more. Regardless, they all give a good impression of how the users will interact with the site. They seem to have been created on photoshop, like a digital collage. While they are not photo-realistic, they are engaging and entertaining images, which have created a desired environment.

The process continues with the beginning phases of implementing the project. They do design mock-ups by placing flags in the ground along the proposed trail routes, and balloons where exercise equipment will be built. These images seem to express the concepts in a real-life form. Changes can still be made, but the ideas now have a physical presence within the real site. In my opinion, this is a very important stage of the design process.

Here are the balloons:




The building process begins at this point for the design team, but they balance the act of building the project while also simultaneously hashing out other design details.

Here are the most recent finalized drawings the team members have produced:   

I found these images to be very successful, because they show the same guy running in the same view of the same part of the site, but at different scales. The first image shows how the proposed design fits with the existing context, while the second image shows more of how the design functions, and what view a runner would have.

The project is still in progress, and from following their blog, they are currently battling funds. But they even get creative with their graphics in order to help bring in some moulah. 

Let me show you:

Overall, even though this project is not being designed and built by professionals, these students are tackling real-life community problems, creating innovative solutions, and bringing these ideas to life in a well-received manner. They have displayed their ideas through professional-quality graphics, and provide digital graphics examples from students in other design programs. These represent what I at least need to be capable of creating myself.

To conclude, this project and studio completely inspires me for so many reasons. It’s great to see a university promoting such humanitarian efforts through design, while also providing real life experience for the aspiring place-makers. They truly look into the community’s needs and desires, and put strong efforts into fitting the public space with the context. They are doing these projects because they care about the people living in the community, and they are designing these spaces through an artful, but carefully thought out process for these community members. And it comforts me to discover others who don’t overlook the people in these rural communities. 

Who the Lions Park Parkscape team members are: Jessica Cain, Alex Henderson, Benjamin Johnson, Mary Melissa Yohn

Where the information and images were discovered: 

"Lions Park Parkscape." Rural Studio. Auburn University, n.d. Web. 

        <http://www.ruralstudio.org/projects/lions-park-landscape>. 

"Lions Park." Web log post. Rural Studio. Auburn University, n.d. Web.    

       <http://lionspark.ruralstudioblogs.org/tagged/LP+Parkscape>. 

Treib, Marc. Drawing/Thinking: Confronting an Electronic Age. London: Routledge, 2008. 

        Print.