Designing for (a) Southwest Interpretive Center(s)

Southwestern Studio

Introduction

We will be moving from place to place during the quarter and will be studying a variety of cultural settings. It therefore makes less sense to focus in studio upon one site, a fixed program and a formal set of architectural drawings. This quarter you will produce a continuing narrative and visual record of your engagement with the project in your 11"x14" bound studio notebooks.

Purposes

The studio is intended as an educational vehicle for explorations of the design implications of your studies of the histories, cultures, politics, ecological systems and place-making processes of the Southwest. As you record your spatial and architectural thinking about (a) possible Interpretive Center(s), you must respond to the following four questions:

1. How do you understand the concept(s) of region in the Southwest and how do you believe that designing should be related to that understanding?
2. How should architecture come to terms with the intersecting cultural histories in the Southwest?
3. What are the current issues and situations to which architecture is most importantly connected? In what ways is it connected?
4. How do you understand the concept of "place"? How should the richest, fullest, most responsible and most equitable place-making occur in the settings of the Southwest?

Project

A Southwest Interpretive Center will have a mix of interior and exterior spaces for contemplation and learning about the various processes that contribute to the character of the region. These spaces may tell stories of the Southwest for a variety of tourists, local residents, children and interested scholars.

The Center will be supported by administrative offices for a Director, Interpreter/Researchers and staff and media persons. They will need office space, records storage, maintenance areas and bathrooms. The public spaces will need workshop support spaces for design, construction and repair of story-telling materials. They will also require bathrooms. The exterior spaces may need workshop and storage areas for landscape maintenance.

If you think it appropriate, the Center can include living and scholarly work accommodation for up to four visiting scholars and their spouses for short periods from two weeks to six months. In this case, some communal gatherings of all scholars, spouses and staff should be possible.

Studio Activities and Communication Requirements

The studio notebook should be available for discussion at all studio class times. Many site visits throughout the quarter will be pertinent to studio questions, as will issues in history, theory and independent studies.

The range of design explorations for the Center will vary but all students must, in their narrative and visual record, communicate thinking about a balance of:

a. A justified approach or philosophy
b. Criteria for location(s)
c. Relationships with characteristics of site(s)
d. Dealing with stakeholders's (sponsors, users,...) needs
e. Spatial organization (interior and exterior)
f. Environmental control (heat/cool, vent, light, sound)
g. Structure, construction and materials (interior and exterior)
h. Details and furniture (interior and exterior)

In the summary to your project we should be able to see in the notebook at least three pages dealing with each aspect above and their interpretation in designing.