Learning About Dirt

Above is a thumbnail if the collage I made this week. It contains three categories of elements found on the site, all dealing with texture. On the left one will find the natural textures, on the right – the man-made textures and the images in the middle are a combination of the two. I wil post the site analysis part after I edit it some more.

Northern View of the park.

Northwestern view of the park and the pavilion.

Northeastern view of the pavilion area.

The following are the Plan, Sections and Diagrams I was able to complete in time for the review. Unfortunately I did not complete and perspectives on time for the review but am working on completeing them at this point..hopefully they will be posted soon.

The concept for the plan was based on patterns and activity, especially movement. I pulled the design and geometry from a concept model I made earlier in the project: concept-model-copy-for-blog.jpg

The concept model reminded me of two different actions, first the idea of a zipper combining two sides together as well as plate tectonics pulling something that was once solid, apart. The beige area is to be hardscape (sorry, Elizabeth) and the green areas are raised mounds that rise approximately 4′ into the air. As there is such a lack of topographical change in New Orleans, I thought the features would be regarded as something new as well as something that attracted people to the park. They are meant to serve multiple purposes…those near the pavilion are for spill-over from the pavilion and have picnic tables upon them. The area to the Northwest is meant as a play area featuring both a swing-set and a playground. The mounds in the middle on the left are for the park visitor to determine the purpose of. They are left as more ambiguous usage, most likely for those who do not want to be a part of the activities that occur in the park. The mound at the southwest corner is for watching the activities on the multiple sport-court area as well as more passive activities such as reading and conversation. The sport area contains a few different courts placed on top of one another. They include a basketball court, a kick/soft/baseball “field”, a volleyball court and a tennis court. In addition to the activities, I suggested that Live Oaks be planted along the streets on both side of the park creating an allee. The other side of the canal features an allee that survived Katrina and although the two neighborhoods are somewhat similar in a socio-economic manner, the side with the allee looks far more re-established than the side we worked on. It has a “homier” feel to it and even though there are approximately the same amount of people living there as on the other side, it looks as if more people actually do live there. The oaks would, hopefully, tie the community together and create a phenomena (like how I worked that one in there?) that the entire neighborhood and it’s coming generations could watch grow and flourish.

Sections of the Gentilly Park Proposal.

Diagrams of the Gentilly Park Proposal.

If you click onto the thumbnail above, you can get a better idea of the tree planting proposal I made for the neighborhood. The other two diagrams highlight the circulation as well as the high/low activity areas.

Not quite as obnoxious as the last post…..

The motif is for anyone should they decide to go back to undergrad one day and investigate patterns…..if it gets annoying or you are too sober for this, just click on the “View all Images” to see them as a slideshow.

My apologies for the ridiculous title, I actually loathe the band Chicago…250624 is a decent song though, why didn’t they rock out like that more often?

We visited the site on Monday the 25th of Feb. If you told me I would be out and about in a t shirt wishing I had shorts on a year ago from the date I would have asked where are you sending me on vacation? The site was an entirely different experience in 77 degree weather. Complete night and day in comparison with our first visit which was a bit more like what I am used to in the late winter.

From staring at the park for the past few weeks on a piece of paper, I had lost a feel for the actual size of the site. After a while the site seemed rather small to me. I kept trying to envision a football field as the measurements are somewhat in line with a football field but after staring at it for a while, it kept shrinking in my mind. This is why the second site visit was so integral to continuing with the design. It brought the scale back home to me.

We were to lay out a primary structure from our design on the site to get an idea of the size and the space ti would take up. I confirmed many things by being on site with my proposal in hand. First, the pavilion I built was pretty f’n big. A little too big for my own tastes. It’s size would create a division between the east and west that would disrupt the neighborhoods character in my opinion. Secondly, the area that I had set aside for skating was plenty large, even though on paper I thought it would just barely be sufficient. Will have to change things around somewhat to accommodate what I envisioned.

Moving ahead, I am going to explore the idea of combining courts, placing them on top of one another and making it more of a free for all with less order in hopes of losing the rigidity I was proposing. I have also been looking a lot at Burle Marx’s work, especially the Copacabana Beach pathway (shout out to Mary and Andrea and the research they are doing for their Brazil trip…they gave me the hot tip on Burle Marx) http://www.richgros.com/Travel/SouthAmerica/Rio/DSCN5894.jpg seen here. The patterns he uses are in a word, unreal. I have always been a fan of his work but it is becoming more and more cemented as I journey further into the world of LA.

I have also been looking into kinetics upon the suggestion of Andrea (double shout-outs to her) as it was something she had been exploring and thought it may help me while I have been floundering through the past week at somewhat of a standstill (standoff, even?) with my design. It is a bit of a heavy subject but has been interesting to consider. The idea of studying movement is fascinating. I wish I had more research on how these parks were used and could document everyone to go there and how they enter the site, what they do once there and how they circulate in general around a park with no formal walkways aside from it’s sidewalks which have, themselves, seen better days.

I also looked into Menger’s Sponge via a suggestion from Brad (Yes, shout outs to Brad too). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menger_sponge Mengers Sponges seem somewhat easy to wrap your head around until you begin to get into the theory behind them. Thats where I bow out as this is some pretty in depth stuff. The kind of stuff MIT students discuss after too many bong hits. Essentially, it is a square that you divide into 9 pieces on every side. This creates 54 blocks that are each divided into 9 and so forth and so on. It can go on infinitely and creates a pattern specific to each block that is reproduced several times. It consider it similar to the idea of a Russian wooden doll that holds another doll a bit smaller within the body and goes until you have a tiny little doll that inevitably turns into something the cat chases around the house or a toddler swallows. After Frank’s class, I thought you might all enjoy this example as opposed to the typical one… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:JapaneseNestingDolls.jpg

Finally, I was really intrigued by one of Joan’s installation pieces from this afternoon in 308. It was the transparencies that showed where her coins had landed and was hanging in the middle of the room. The way the sheets fit together and the patterns they made had me transfixed for a while. The way the ovals all overlapped really struck me. The idea of patterns that overlapped one another and how they effect one another finally made sense to me on a visual level. I plan on investigating more of this phenomena this weekend. This photo is huge so just click it to get a better image.

I know, I disappeared for a bit there but now am back. Last Friday we had our mid review and I was left doubting my proposal some. All I could think of the entire weekend after was the look on Peggy and Lake’s face when I wrapped up my initial presentation. It was a look of confusion. A look that stuck in my mind even a week later. I had felt good going into it and even felt as if I had an answer to every question that Lake had for every other presentation leading up to mine. When it was my turn I was, for a change, excited about going up there to present. I presented a rather disconnected monologue…the last time I had risen from my bed was 7am Thursday which tends to play a role in these situations. When i get up there I primarily forget everything I am going to say and then regurgitate what I do remember in a disjointed fashion.

Anyhow, they did not seem to be very impressed. Even Mandy who seemed to have nothing but good things to say about everyone’s project was reaching to say something nice when it was time for reactions. The general gist of things aside from…”not your best work” was I needed more activity within my activity space, do not be so rigid in regards to where everything was placed. Try to layer the courts. Things are too ordered where they lie. The path (which I really did not consider too much, just kinda threw them down to figure them out later) was too rigid for their tastes. They asked why it was so programmed and did not like the fact that it was. Kevin suggested that I take a closer look at the demographics of the neighborhood and see what that would tell me. Brad suggested that I create strategies that would filter out into the neighborhood.

So, after some time of wanting to simply take an eraser and start things fresh again, I decided that I could indeed salvage a lot of my ideas but they will need some serious changes to happen to them.