Author(s): Michael Zaretsky & Terry Boling
In recent years, the work of many academic design build programs across the US and Canada has been tethered to community outreach and engagement, a symbiotic relationship that has resulted in a wide spectrum of work- from the highly inventive projects of the Rural Studio, to the more utilitarian design/build studios that service blighted areas in many urban cores. How can community centered design/build initiatives continue to advance multiple research agendas as well as to satisfy community needs? We are interested in exploring the relationship between community design and design/build – looking for opportunities to advance both the process and the product of future design build endeavors.Community design/build projects typically start with the charrette, where experts armed with rolls of sketch paper and markers lead teams of stakeholders through a process of ideation- usually starting with diagrams of relationships and leading to pictorial images of projects that will ultimately be constructed by groups of students. The charrette format relies on conventional architectural notational systems (diagrams, plans, elevations, and technical sections), potentially alienating those without the ability to comprehend discipline-specific abstractions. The process is generally linear, and parallels conventional practice – design it, then build it. Unfortunately, this technique doesn’t capitalize on the distinct benefit of design/build, namely the feedback that results from the unexpected behaviors, resistances, tolerances, material limits, and serendipitous discoveries that can only be understood through enabling a direct interface with the tools, techniques, and materials of construction.Our goal is to facilitate a process for community engagement in design that introduces full-scale material and assembly prototyping as a generative force in community building. We advocate a bottom up process where the project and program is discovered from within rather than imposed from the outside. Instead of slick renderings of a future assembly of materials in space, community members are presented with constructed artifacts to assess that have real weight, depth, color, texture, and light. These artifacts can then be contemplated and tested for fit in situ- moved, altered, and modified through direct interaction with physical components rather than through abstract notations. This slow process allows participants to claim ownership as authors in their own right by connecting process, participation, and memory through their own engagement with iteratively crafted constructions. The work produced is speculative, and operates at the intimate scale of the detail rather than at the scale of the building, suggesting future events and fabrications rather than definitively setting them. This paper makes a case for this alternative approach to community engagement and includes a recent case study project that is the result of a collaboration between our design/build program, a local community development foundation, and the community they serve.
Volume Editors
Sergio Palleroni, Ted Cavanagh & Ursula Hartig
ISBN
978-0-935502-94-7