Rehamping the Barn Final Design Review
The Rehamping the Barn Class is having a open design review on Thursday, May 3rd, from 12-3:30pm in the Faculty Lounge in FPH. All community members are welcome. See the Facebook event here.
From 12-1pm there will be a casual lunch; the students will be there to share their designs and answer questions. From 1-3:30 there will be critiques with the Professor of the course, Caryn Brause, local architects and designers, as well as the Director of Facilities and Grounds, Larry Archey in attendance.
Both the site and the program have been chosen. Mixed Nuts and a flexible dynamic student space will take up the Barn in its new location by the Cole Science Greenhouse. Students in the class are currently working in groups to come up with a series of potential designs of the barn. These designs will serve as an idea bank for the Architect and Design Partners of Berkshire Design, Wright Construction, and Kuhn Riddle who will create the technical design of the Barn.
Feel free to stop by at any point on Thursday, get some lunch, check out what the class has been working on, and ask any questions you might have.
The more input we have in this process the better! If you cannot make the design review, or would like more background on the project and the class, check out rehampingthebarn.wordpress.com.
Curious where the project is?
The Rehamping student group and Rehamping architecture studio course will be presenting tomorrow (Sat 4/28) in the ASH Auditorium from 11:15-12:30 as part of the Inauguration celebrations. Come see the models that have been made!
Check this out! Awesome opportunity for anyone into sustainability, architecture, permaculture….
Here are the posters about the 4 candidates for the new position(s) opening up in the architecture department. Come to all four talks and/or lunches and your contributions can effect the hiring process! also it is just great to see what kind of awesome work folks are doing.
The lunches are Monday the 5th and 12th, Wednesday the 7th and 14th, from 12:30-1:30 in EDH 3. Pizza provided!
The talks/presentations that each candidate will give are at 5:30pm each respective Monday and Wednesday. See the posters for the respective rooms in which those talks will be given.
Barn Project Update!
The Rehamping the Barn class, taught by Professor Caryn Brause, has taken the wheel on the Barn Project. For the past week they have been talking with proposal writers to get more information about what the needs/desires are for space on campus.
To keep up with their class, feel free to follow rehampingthebarn.wordpress.com
Here is the email the class sent out to all the proposal writers to update them on the President’s vision for the barn!
Dear Proposal Writers,
President Lash visited the Rehamping the Barn course today, to discuss his vision for the “Program” of the Barn once it is relocated to the campus.
The President saw a need as articulated in many of the proposals for a space that is “by students, for students and managed by students.” He clarified that Hampshire college will support this structure through maintenance.
He indicated that the Barn should be a space that all students can be proud of and want to show off to the wider world - it must have a creative/sustainable/unique form and program.
He would like the Barn to be an invitation for all current students and student groups to utilize, as well as be flexible as to adapt to the changing needs and desires of future members of the community.
While President Lash indicated that cost should not be the limiting factor on creativity, he also acknowledged that the more we focus our resources, the easier it will be to fund-raise and the sooner we will be able to break ground.
He asked the Rehamping the Barn class to gather more specific information about the “best fits” from the proposals with this Program, to review acceptable sites on campus that would match up with the Program, and to report back to him. To best design this Program we are reaching out to you to ask for your advice and ideas about what a student driven space would look like on Hampshire Campus, and how it might function to fit your groups needs.
We recognize that it is not possible for all of your needs to be met by this one thousand square foot barn, but we hope that the President’s vision can resonate in some way with your group. We hope that you can join us this upcoming week to discuss the ways in which you imagine your group’s engagement with the barn could look like.
We have been working closely with many of you for nearly two months, and we thank your continued commitment to this project. We hope that you will be as honest and self-reflective as possible in considering these programming goals.
The campus will be undergoing many changes in the next few years, President Lash spoke to us in class about the new building that will be built on campus and the ripple effect it will have throughout many spaces on campus. Offices and programs will be shuffled around, spaces will open up, and more opportunities will arise to solve the problems you have articulated in your proposals.
The Barn Project has set a precedent for a new way of collaboratively thinking about and working with spaces on campus that is already having an impact on all campus space discussions. If the needs expressed in your proposal do not find their way into the modest space afforded by the barn, that in no way invalidates or diminishes the reality of your needs. The purpose of this re-inquiry to all of you is to ensure that the program of the barn will be the best fit, for the most people, on the sites we are permitted to use.Thus far this process has been an incredibly positive experience in that everyone has been consistently working towards the goal of having the barn create the largest positive impact possible. We hope that regardless of what form the barn takes, we will all continue to validate and support each other.
If and when we have a chance to meet with members of your group in person, we will have a series of questions about material, spatial and siting needs for you to answer. We would love to hear your thoughts on how your group may best be served by either the Barn Project as now articulated by President Lash or by other spaces that may open up on campus.
Thank you all,
The Rehamping the Barn Class
You’re Invited
On Thursday the 16th at 3:30 PM in the Main Lecture Hall, Rehamping will be holding a forum on the Barn Project open to all staff, faculty, and students. The fate of the barn will be decided by the end of February. This forum is an opportunity for the Hampshire community to both learn about the history and process of the Barn Project, as well as provide their input, ask questions, and hear other perspectives. Regardless of your engagement with the project thus far, Rehamping welcomes you! To learn about the barn, read the proposals, and see the work that Rehamping has done so far, visit rehamping.tumblr.com/barn.
Monday Group Presentation
Rehamping members have worked every day in the past week preparing for the Monday Group meeting (deans and head administrators) that President Jonathan Lash invited us to. We’ve prepared a presentation that touches on each proposal and—as requested by the President—answers the questions, “Which proposal(s) affect the most people?” “Which creates something new to campus?” “Who has a stake in each proposal?” and “How re-adaptable would the space be?” Our answers to these questions incorporate not only the opinions of the core eight or so Rehamping members, but also those of the more than 20 others who came to the January workshops during which we not only discussed the future of the barn, but also the effectiveness of current spaces on campus.
The document that summarizes the work of the past month can be downloaded by clicking the image below. This is also the document that was given to the Monday Group in preparation for our presentation.
Who will the decision be made by?
The decision will be made by the President with input by the Monday Group and Rehamping.
Meeting now
We’re about to start today’s meeting! EDH 3. We’ll be doing live minutes on twitter (see left). Give your two cents via rehamping@gmail.com or tweet us! Here’s the agenda:
Agenda, 14 January 2012 Recap of graphics and meeting with JLash Preparing for the Monday Group presentation Creating potential combinations that would strengthen proposals’ potential Important Criteria for the to-be-chosen proposal(s) (according to JLash) The proposal is ‘exciting’ so that alums will want to donate!!!$ Something new/different Can it effect the whole (most of) campus? Breaking down how each combination would play out, what spaces (if any) would be left behind, what they would become… How the physical space of the barn could be broken up (more or less) when the barn would be used by various groups together or separately How the proposals can be ideologically combined- how can we sell these combined proposals to the alums/president/monday group/other donors/rest of campus? Talk through the ones that seem most feasible, did anyone come up with the same/similar combinations? Highlight the combinations we come up with that feel strongest to us- ideologically, practically etc.
11:00 Introductions
11:15 Background of project (if there are newcomers)
11:45 Goals of the Day:
Revamp cover letters from last week
Rework Graphics, create ideas for more if needed
Come up with ideas for initiating conversations between proposal writers
12:15 Ground Rules
12:30 Break into groups, each group come up with a few possible combinations of proposals
Think of these combinations not as something that will be or will not be ‘chosen’ by the monday group/ Jonathan, but rather as potential connections that we can see that we want them to see as well. Hopefully our creativity will spark ideas and illustrate possibilities they would not have come up with otherwise.
1:30 Come back into a full group, present our ideas to each other
2:30 Split up, go out to document spaces so that we have photographs for the monday group. If some people do not want to document, they can stay behind and work on tweaking the
strongest combinations to highlight how holistic our thinking is
4:00 Work on presentation graphics, documents etc. for the Monday group. Leave whenever
you want to!
Notes from the Saturday workshop from which we will design diagrams for Wednesday’s meeting with JLash.
Download all proposals
The Creativity Center proposal was accidentally left out of the grand PDF.
Download it here: Creativity Center PDF
Barn Criteria by Hester
President Lash envisions that the program for the barn will have value
to the community, be feasible and practical, and propose an elegant
and appropriate design.
The criteria listed here, discussed by the architectural faculty, facilities
and grounds, administration and the student group Rehamping, will
guide the process of choosing the proposal(s) for the program of the
barn. Rehamping will facilitate an EPEC course over Janterm which
that process will take place.
Is the need already met on campus?
Are there other spaces that can be used to satisfy this need?
Creativity- the proposal should be vitalizing and exciting.
It could open up spaces on campus by moving poorly spaced/placed
offices or programs into the barn
Value, Feasibility, and Elegance
Value to the Community
Criteria for the Barn Proposal:
Feasibility of need on campus- Do lots of people have this need, and
does it make sense to use the barn to satisfy this need?
Will this program be accessible and inviting/enticing to all types of
people on campus? (interests, ability etc.)
There must be a balance feasibility of project and the overall impact
Feasibility and Practicality
Does the scale of the barn make sense for the program? In other words, is
the barn big enough?
Potential Budget/modesty of alterations. How much does their proposal
require the barn to be changed/altered? Do these alterations make sense
within our budget and the constraints of physical structure?
Environmental concerns- will this proposal have an excessive footprint?
The placing of the barn should be within current circulation, and not
placed in such a way that students must deviate considerably from paths
already used around campus day-to-day.Elegance and Appropriatness of the Design Idea
Ground Rules
• If you wrote a proposal give others a chance to speak about it first
• Own up to biases
• Announce affiliations
• Discretion outside group
• Talk about it!
• Yes and…
• We aren’t arguing
Contact us!
If you have comments you want included in the discussion tweet us or email rehamping@gmail.com
Barn Workshop Agenda
The purpose of this workshop is to create a document for Jonathan Lash that can represent the proposals for the Barn from our perspective. He is new to this community and our understandings of these proposals will help him make his final decision on the program of the barn. As representatives of the Hampshire community it is in our best interests to put each proposal in its best light. In addition to this, we also have extraordinary flexibility in our ability to question, synthesize or merge various proposals in order to strengthen them. We will be thinking about questions such as: How does each group face a spatial need on campus? Is this a pressing need? How much of the community is affected by this need? How does each group propose to solve their problems with the barn? How do they address issues of space and site? How can they work with other groups? On Thursday at 6pm anyone in this group who can attend is welcome to meet with the president to explain our process, answer any of his questions, and ask any of our own. Next week’s workshop will be in response to our meeting with Jonathan Lash. Based on our conversation with him, we may re-synthesize and represent the proposals in preparation for a a meeting with the Monday group on January 30th. A small delegation of folks (around 3) will go to this meeting and represent our process in that space. Materials that would be helpful: Large sheets of white paper to write on
Agenda
11-11:10 Personal introductions, who we are, why we’re here, if we submitted a proposal etc.
11:10-11:30 Bring everyone onto the same page about the process thus far, the president’s vision, show images etc. Discuss the purpose of this workshop and what will happen next. Questions, anyone?
11:30-11:45 Lay ground rules for our conversation, and restate our goals for the day.
If you submitted a proposal, admit it and feel free to further explain if people have questions, but try to remain as neutral as possible.
11:45- 12:45 Read proposals, eat lunch.
12:45-1:30 Split into groups, go out and document the existing spaces (sketches, photos etc) of each proposal that has one, and/or the site they are hoping for. Avoid groups looking at a proposal that you are personally connected with.
Discuss how housing is not feasible, make sure everyone is on board with that. Discuss how the Farm center is a default if we receive no funding…Leslie knows this etc. Talk about how much attention we will pay to them for the rest of the workshop. ie. maybe 50 percent less effort each?
1:30- 2:30 Read through half the proposals, letting those who documented the spaces talk about their findings, go through and answer the HOW DOES questions for each. (about 10 mins each)
2:30-2:40 break
2:40- 3:40 Read through other half of proposals. (about 10 mins each)
3:40-3:45 Break
3:45- 4:15 Talk about how proposals may be merged/combined/synthesized
4:15- 4:45 Discuss how we want to represent this information to Jonathan Lash, delegate who will write up each group’s proposals “cover letter” (some cover letters potentially being for mutliple groups)
4:45-5 wrap up, how did people feel about the day, do they feel satisfied, where does everyone want to go from here?
