Time to post a quick update on the projects So far this group, working in the two communities, has managed to: (in no particular order) present schemes for official review twice; clean a site; create an obstacle course; receive glowing praise for two aforementioned schemes; create at least 5 study models; have a budget that so far has fluctuated between $0-$20,000 and back again; learn how to create a customized panel system; meet with 3 engineers; meet with 2 horticulturists; made one trip to urgent care; torn down a structure; crossed through 3 states; visited two other schools; spent innumerable hours arguing; redesigned entirely at least 3 times; and, of course, burned the work of other students.
I'm sure there is much more that I would prefer not to know about.
Please visit each of their blogs for more detailed information about each of the projects and thank you for visiting.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
What is Stewardship?
Stewardship South is dedicated to cultivating a sense of stewardship, particularly in regards to the environment and culture of the American South. The term stewardship has its roots in Medieval England where peasant servants were stewards to their wealthy and/or titled masters. That is to say, the servants were responsible for the care and well-being of others. This power relationship is an unsatisfactory model when ascribed to human beings in a class-based society. However, it is a useful paradigm for design professionals who should consider themselves to be stewards, or care-takers, for the natural and built environment as well as the occupants of their constructed design. The ethical dimension of stewardship extends to communities.
The ability to design and construct built works is a privilege and a trust given to us by the communities that we work within. We bring skills and knowledge to every situation and we have an ethical responsibility to exercise good judgment and care in each of our decisions. Often there is no clear right or wrong answer or even clearly defined problems but in each situation the best response will be one which is well-intentioned and mindful of the impact on the complex issues that comprise each site.
Some of the questions for stewards might be: Whom or what are you serving and caring for? Is it the current or past inhabitants of the community where one is designing and building? Is it the current environmental condition or a future vision? Is it the architectural community and the knowledge held by the discipline? Is it your peer group? It is incumbent upon a good steward to think deeply about these questions and respond, in words and actions, to this challenge with conviction and rigor.
This studio, Stewardship South, should result in built projects that respond graciously and with care to the communities, environments, culture, and discipline within which they are constructed. The projects should demonstrate stewardship through design, craft, completion, and fiscal responsibility.
Each intervention can change the world, even if only for one person…think about it.
The ability to design and construct built works is a privilege and a trust given to us by the communities that we work within. We bring skills and knowledge to every situation and we have an ethical responsibility to exercise good judgment and care in each of our decisions. Often there is no clear right or wrong answer or even clearly defined problems but in each situation the best response will be one which is well-intentioned and mindful of the impact on the complex issues that comprise each site.
Some of the questions for stewards might be: Whom or what are you serving and caring for? Is it the current or past inhabitants of the community where one is designing and building? Is it the current environmental condition or a future vision? Is it the architectural community and the knowledge held by the discipline? Is it your peer group? It is incumbent upon a good steward to think deeply about these questions and respond, in words and actions, to this challenge with conviction and rigor.
This studio, Stewardship South, should result in built projects that respond graciously and with care to the communities, environments, culture, and discipline within which they are constructed. The projects should demonstrate stewardship through design, craft, completion, and fiscal responsibility.
Each intervention can change the world, even if only for one person…think about it.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Introduction
The Stewardship Project
Faculty Member: Jori Erdman, Associate Professor and Director of The Center for Community Growth and Change
Community Partners: City of Clemson, Chip Boyles, Assistant City Administrator
Pendleton Foundation for Black History and Culture
Abstract
The Stewardship Project will engage a mixed undergraduate and graduate Architecture student team in the study of sustainable materials and community engagement through the design and construction of a demonstration pavilion and maintenance to a cultural site, both with integrated educational signage. Sites include Jaycee Park on College Avenue and the Hundreds site in Pendleton, SC. Students will study the meaning of sustainability, both in the physical implementation of a structure and in the long term impact of construction in the social and cultural life of a community. The architecture studio will be used as a laboratory in which students bring resources and ideas for experimentation. By executing real projects the students will also need to work with community members, material suppliers and other related disciplines in order to have a successful experience.
Clemson Site Pendleton Site
Statement of Community Need
The City of Clemson has a developing interest in sustainability but it is not at the level of adopting wholesale change to any building practices or building standards. It is hope that the construction of a demonstration pavilion will educate the community about the potential within sustainable practices to create interesting architectural projects.
The Town of Pendleton, particularly the community around the Hundreds site, does not have the means to maintain and add to the public space that has been created by previous Clemson interventions. The site continues to be a site of significant memories for the community but lacks proper signage to recognize the importance of the place.
Both communities can be better informed about the impact of constructed space and materials through the implementation of an on-site targeted educational program of signage. The design of the signage will necessitate student – community communication and collaboration.
Goals and Objectives
It is the intent of this project that students achieve the following learning outcomes:
s Research skills in the area of building materials
s Critical insight in the application of certain materials in atypical ways
s Sustainable building practices
s Community engagement through design
s Collaborative design practices
s Knowledge of construction and the potential for hands-on design decision making
Implementing design-build projects into the curriculum is part of the larger strategic plan within our department and thus has the support of our chair. The added value of this project will be the research and inquiry component that allows students to actively participate in a study of sustainable and community based practices.
These two projects serve as ideal models for ideas about sustainability. The Clemson project will be more focused on environmental issues and the Pendleton project will be more focused on cultural issues but the two projects will intertwine and inform each other as they progress in parallel throughout the semester.
Methodology and Timeline
This studio course will be a vertical integration of graduate and undergraduate students. The undergraduates will be upper level (graduating fourth year students) and the work builds on previous semesters in which they have developed the skills, attitudes and aptitudes needed to take on this type of investigation. In previous semesters at Clemson these students have been introduced to the basic concepts of materials, community activism and sustainability…both cultural and environmental. They also have highly developed technical skills and the ability to handle increasingly complex projects.
The Stewardship Project will take place in the curriculum as a 6 credit studio course. Students will elect my studio as one of 4 optional studios. Graduate students will facilitate the learning and research experience for the undergraduates. At this point there are fourteen students enrolled in the two courses combined.
The primary activities will be designing and building the projects throughout the semester. Funding will also allow us to take a field trip to study one of the most successful design-build initiatives in the country, the Rural Studio in Alabama.
The Demonstration Pavilion in downtown Clemson has a strict timeline and must be completed by April 2008. In January the students will immediately begin design work and construction will quickly follow. Engineering professors have expressed interest in this project as place that they can apply some experimentation that has been going on with recycled materials. We intend to integrate these into the project and use them as part of the educational programming. In addition to working with Engineering, we will be working with the South Carolina chapter of the US Green Building Council and other community partners such as Duke Energy.
For the site in Pendleton, we will be revisiting a site that was worked on 4 years ago by Clemson architecture students. We will be conducting some needed maintenance to the previous interventions as well as constructing a new component. This will require that the students continue the cultural research done years ago and build on the latent community knowledge of events to design and construct the new interventions.
Evaluation plan
The success of the projects in the communities will be difficult to measure in the short-term but we hope to develop measures as part of the educational programming.
Student engagement will be measured by narrative accounts written in a journal throughout the semester. Students will follow guidelines and be evaluated during the course of the semester on their level of engagement and understanding of course content, both technical and cultural.
Faculty Member: Jori Erdman, Associate Professor and Director of The Center for Community Growth and Change
Community Partners: City of Clemson, Chip Boyles, Assistant City Administrator
Pendleton Foundation for Black History and Culture
Abstract
The Stewardship Project will engage a mixed undergraduate and graduate Architecture student team in the study of sustainable materials and community engagement through the design and construction of a demonstration pavilion and maintenance to a cultural site, both with integrated educational signage. Sites include Jaycee Park on College Avenue and the Hundreds site in Pendleton, SC. Students will study the meaning of sustainability, both in the physical implementation of a structure and in the long term impact of construction in the social and cultural life of a community. The architecture studio will be used as a laboratory in which students bring resources and ideas for experimentation. By executing real projects the students will also need to work with community members, material suppliers and other related disciplines in order to have a successful experience.
Clemson Site Pendleton Site
Statement of Community Need
The City of Clemson has a developing interest in sustainability but it is not at the level of adopting wholesale change to any building practices or building standards. It is hope that the construction of a demonstration pavilion will educate the community about the potential within sustainable practices to create interesting architectural projects.
The Town of Pendleton, particularly the community around the Hundreds site, does not have the means to maintain and add to the public space that has been created by previous Clemson interventions. The site continues to be a site of significant memories for the community but lacks proper signage to recognize the importance of the place.
Both communities can be better informed about the impact of constructed space and materials through the implementation of an on-site targeted educational program of signage. The design of the signage will necessitate student – community communication and collaboration.
Goals and Objectives
It is the intent of this project that students achieve the following learning outcomes:
s Research skills in the area of building materials
s Critical insight in the application of certain materials in atypical ways
s Sustainable building practices
s Community engagement through design
s Collaborative design practices
s Knowledge of construction and the potential for hands-on design decision making
Implementing design-build projects into the curriculum is part of the larger strategic plan within our department and thus has the support of our chair. The added value of this project will be the research and inquiry component that allows students to actively participate in a study of sustainable and community based practices.
These two projects serve as ideal models for ideas about sustainability. The Clemson project will be more focused on environmental issues and the Pendleton project will be more focused on cultural issues but the two projects will intertwine and inform each other as they progress in parallel throughout the semester.
Methodology and Timeline
This studio course will be a vertical integration of graduate and undergraduate students. The undergraduates will be upper level (graduating fourth year students) and the work builds on previous semesters in which they have developed the skills, attitudes and aptitudes needed to take on this type of investigation. In previous semesters at Clemson these students have been introduced to the basic concepts of materials, community activism and sustainability…both cultural and environmental. They also have highly developed technical skills and the ability to handle increasingly complex projects.
The Stewardship Project will take place in the curriculum as a 6 credit studio course. Students will elect my studio as one of 4 optional studios. Graduate students will facilitate the learning and research experience for the undergraduates. At this point there are fourteen students enrolled in the two courses combined.
The primary activities will be designing and building the projects throughout the semester. Funding will also allow us to take a field trip to study one of the most successful design-build initiatives in the country, the Rural Studio in Alabama.
The Demonstration Pavilion in downtown Clemson has a strict timeline and must be completed by April 2008. In January the students will immediately begin design work and construction will quickly follow. Engineering professors have expressed interest in this project as place that they can apply some experimentation that has been going on with recycled materials. We intend to integrate these into the project and use them as part of the educational programming. In addition to working with Engineering, we will be working with the South Carolina chapter of the US Green Building Council and other community partners such as Duke Energy.
For the site in Pendleton, we will be revisiting a site that was worked on 4 years ago by Clemson architecture students. We will be conducting some needed maintenance to the previous interventions as well as constructing a new component. This will require that the students continue the cultural research done years ago and build on the latent community knowledge of events to design and construct the new interventions.
Evaluation plan
The success of the projects in the communities will be difficult to measure in the short-term but we hope to develop measures as part of the educational programming.
Student engagement will be measured by narrative accounts written in a journal throughout the semester. Students will follow guidelines and be evaluated during the course of the semester on their level of engagement and understanding of course content, both technical and cultural.
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Clemson Site
Jaycee Park in Clemson
Pendleton site
Keese Barn site in Pendleton