Jumping back in

After taking three weeks away from this project over the winter holidays, it’s time to jump back in– this time into the design side.

It has been a bit of a struggle to switch my thinking from research to design. During the last term, research was almost this “safe zone” where I simply explored various relevant– and sometimes tangential– topics to my thesis; aside from a bit of analysis that comes easily for me, there was no real expectation for what I was supposed to do with all of this information. I was just building background for an argument that had not yet begun.

Now in studio, the argument is beginning. As I take my first look at design, better prepared for this project any studio before, I suddenly feel as if I am out of my depth– that I don’t know enough yet, that I haven’t done enough research, that I need to go back to school and get another five degrees in various fields to even begin to think about putting something on paper.

Part of this is just early studio nerves. But part of it, I think, is due to the integrated approach to design that I am determined to take. The heart of my project lies at the crossing of different fields: architecture, landscape architecture, ecology, educational theory, and so on. I am not an expert in each of these fields, nor can one person reasonably hope to be. If I had the resources (and if this were a real-life project), I would not be designing alone– I would work in collaboration with others who do have such expertise. My job as the architect, which I think my degree has prepared me well for, is to design the building. My other academic pursuits– my minor in landscape architecture, study in ecology, work with the Ecological Design Center– have prepared me for what might be an even more important task for such a project: to look for opportunities for fields to collaborate, and to recognize the possibilities that can happen when they do.

So, some stage-setting activities:

Six Portland blocks (200′ x 200′) overlaid on my site

Ohmigosh it’s huge!