I wanted to let you know that the nascent Emerging Professionals in Architecture Group here in the Valley is holding a wonderful forum for students, interns and design professionals about the costs and benefits of seeking an architecture license. We’ve assembled a great panel and are doing our best to stir up attention,… and even a wee bit of controversy.
Barn Siting Update
Meeting Notes 4/10
Today we came up with a slogan to put on our posters for the Designer Meet and Greet! Here it is: Interested in design? Come eat cookies and talk with Rehamping about what you need on campus. No experience necessary!
We also talked about what our focus will be for next year. Rehamping is looking to create more opportunities for designers, community organizers, and creative people on campus based on what their needs are. Our upcoming meet and greet (we hope) will inform us of those needs. We also want to make information about campus happenings accessible and widespread.
Rehamping Meeting Notes 4/3
Wednesday, April 3rd, we decided to host a designers meet and great! These are the notes from that meeting.
-Focus of meet and greet is to ask community of designers what they need/want at and from Hampshire
-will be in EDH 3 as it is a pilot event and the first in a series of many more
-time and date - April 18 Thursday from 7-8
-design your own business cards to hand out to others
Need to:
figure out budget (where will food from, how much, supplies?). finalize poster. go to COCA for supplies.
Ideas for what rehamping can host in the Future:
-host design film series to get the inspiration flowing
-software tradeoff night
-personal project discussions
-discussing academic plans-what to do, how, where, etc.
-five college meet and great
Meeting Update
We made some progress today!
Rehamping will be partnering with COCD & the Creativity Center on organizing meetings around and executing Idea Platforms. These are small $500, 2 Day projects to change physical spaces on campus.
Rehamping is considering changing its branding. We’re going to have a meeting about this next week- so come on by!
We realized today that we haven’t done a whole lot of designing physical spaces over the last few years, but have done a lot of work communicating complicated information to a whole lot of people, gotten a whole lot of feedback, and synthesized that feedback so it makes sense to decision-makers & designers.
We want to open up what we do to let graphic designers, community organizers, designers, architects, anybody, know that that is really what goes on in our meetings in EDH, and want to encourage people to join.
(Also a bunch of us are on the brink of Div III, field study, and study abroad- so join up & keep us floating on!)
We’re also hoping to have a meet & greet for designers etc. with snacks soon, so keep posted on that too.
Reminder: Win iPad minis & more! Complete the Academic Satisfaction Survey
Don’t forget to fill out the Academic Satisfaction Survey! We need your feedback to help make the academic experience at Hampshire the best it can be for ALL students. Participants will be entered into a raffle for various prizes including ipad mini’s, gift cards for concert tickets, and much more.
https://hampshire.us2.qualtrics.com/WRQualtricsSurveyEngine/?Q_DL=0q5wAJgzFiG57cp_9EIyEe0iz5MMF7v_MLRP_bJic07nLiBCGJF3&_=1
Sustainability + Situationists = Dérive Redux
Sustainability + Situationists = Dérive Redux
In a revised format, we are gathering a cross-school team to study sustainability through an unexpected procedure: a dérive. We are seeking faculty, staff and students who are interested in spending a couple of hours together to explore the notion of urban radicality in connection to the question of the sustainable.
A dérive is an unstructured journey through an urban setting, in which the incidental encounter, the unexpected vision, or the physical contours of the city street subconsciously direct us onward with the ultimate goal of experiencing an entirely new encounter. These unplanned experiences may involve the material details of the street, the detritus of the parking lot, an unusual object in a shop window, smoke from a sewer, or the simple shape of a walkway and the surroundingarchitecture. Situationist theorist Guy Debord defines the dérive as “a mode of experimental behavior linked to the conditions of urban society….” Despite the theoretical emphasis of this radical method, the concept of the dérive has had a great influence on those who study the city—from the urban planner to the historian, from to the architect to the critic, from the sociologist to the geographer.
Yet, when we think about urban sustainability in terms of political, economic or social policy-making, it seems as if the need to purposely strategize and scientifically analyze creates a tendency to plot and plod that disavows the ephemeral and the contingent. Our project is surely an experimental one: we want to use the creative maneuver of the dérive to highlight places, things, and conditions that call for sustainable practices or attention. Yet, at the same time, we want to use this artistic intervention to question who and what gets sustained—and why.
What gets saved, revived, reused? What gets discarded, consumed, left to decay? What is abandonded? What leaves traces? What gets cultivated? What gets, or should be, retrofit? What disappears?Who disappears?
Schedule:
Friday March 8th 10-12 a.m: Gathering to discuss examples of readings that address the process of the incidental and the dérive as well as sustainable aesthetics.
March 8-April 15th: Participants wander on their own, in a place of their choosing: urban, rural, inside or outside. Take photographs, record sounds, write down impressions and/or draw a map that show how your encounter with people, places, and things inspire thinking about the past, present, and future—about sustainability, extinction, memory and heritage
April 15th-30th :We will compile our discoveries into a digital exhibition to share with the Hampshire community, and invite comments from across the campus…
Please send us an email expressing your interest and we will send the readings along with details regarding the grant funding and possibilities for course or CEL-1 credit.
Polina Barskova, Assistant Professor of Russian Literature pbarskova@hampshre.edu
Karen Koehler, Professor of Architectural and Art History kkoehler@hampshire.edu
Notes 10.31 (Happy Halloween!)
Early Learning Center playground project -
Bexx: Folks didn’t respond to the first doodle for a visiting time, so Bexx will be sending out another to try to get a good sized group to go check out the space and chat with staff!
Library project -
Scheduled meeting got hurricaned out, so let’s reschedule for tomorrow, Thursday Nov. 1 @ 2:30pm! We’ll be printing survey questions tonight and hanging them in the library with markers tomorrow to gather input on times the library should be open, spaces that people most like to study, resources, etc. (See previous post for specific questions!)
Barn Project update -
Hester & Julie (members of the barn independent study): Jonathan has guaranteed to raise an approximate amount of funds for the project, and we’ve been meeting with Facilities and Grounds, a practicing architect, and a UMass graduate student to start working on designs that could fit this rough budget. We’ve been discussing solar orientation, building insulation and R value, technical program requirements (heating/cooling/bathrooms), and other fun things! Soon we will be meeting with members of Mixed Nuts to create a list of specific spatial goals for their new home within the barn and working these concerns into our design.
David: Yesterday was the first meeting of the Mixed Nuts Barn Committee! Notes from this include…
- We need lockable space, but we don’t want to close off a large percentage of barn space when Mixed Nuts closes. Maybe lockable cabinets, big display drawers, moveable shelves?
- Mixed Nuts is earning a profit! Some of this money could potentially go towards the barn, maybe specific parts affecting the Mixed Nuts portion of the space (more energy efficient appliances, a loading dock to receive food shipments - maybe the one by Cole, or something else).
- One question that we struggled with was the issue of dry goods storage space, it’s hard to estimate what we need.
- Lots of other notes were jotted down, including the desire for a rockin’ sound system with collaborative/interactive music options (log in and add your own song to the queue), and big chalkboard space for community notes.
- Starting next semester Mixed Nuts is going to hold open forums about our role in the barn, possibly partnering with Rehamping.
Both Mixed Nuts and Rehamping are excited about fundraising - what are nontraditional ways of raising funds? Encourage mini-donations with specific earmarks (like crowdsourcing perks), collaborate with the SEARCH student group? Right now we’re focusing on getting a design and a cost estimate that will enable this fundraising, but thinking ahead…
Awesome Meeting Notes 10/24
Present:
Joseph, David, Ally, Mika, Andrew (Media Services), Jennifer (Library), Jordan, Christian, Hester, Payam, Julie, Bexx, Courtney
!!!
Agenda:
Library
Idea from Joseph about Traveling Swings
Early Learning Center
Library:
Goals from the library - cook up a plan for communicating out to interested students who want to chime in and talk about late night study space in the library. Address questions like - Do study carrels work? Do we have enough space? When do students need to be in the library?
Working towards library being open as a safe space whenever students need it. Jonathan Lash met with Div III students who wanted more late night access to the library.
Deoft Knowledge Center and MIT Media Lab are possible precedents for a library at an institution like Hampshire:
More cool images - http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelsphotos/sets/72157623650731921/with/4493112479/
FROM LAST MEETING:
Spaces from the tour that were of interest (and how do we get students into these spaces to talk about them? Performance installations, haunted library, paper to write on in the elevators?):
Airport Lounge
Mailroom ground floor area
Media basement
Secret Corridor
Kiva
Carrels, Div III bookshelves
CD, Zine, Magazine switch
Ground floor hallway through locked doors
Ways to word questions about library use:
“Wouldn’t it be great if the first floor was open 24 hours?”
Floor preferences, what is it you like on different floors, could it be brought to first floor?
Physical Doodle poll
MOVING FORWARD:
Examining floorplans -
Security is a concern, Campus Police no longer has an office in the building. Currently, anyone in the library at closing time who identifies as a Div III student is allowed to stay without staff supervision. Sometimes folks from off campus spend nights in the library. Accessibility is also an issue. Media students who use the basement are able to get keys to workspace, and have access to the whole building.
There are Div III spaces elsewhere on campus - Arts Barn studios, Lemelson spaces, etc. But maybe students need both types of space, maybe Div II students also need space.
Possible solutions -
- One Card access to the building
- First floor open at night, upper floors could be close, and a staff person could more easily check in with everyone in the space. Problem with this is Div IIIs want access to their carrels, but cubbies or shelfs for their work on the first floor could help with this.
- Ultimate dream is to open first floor to include airport lounge, remove separating wall, create vibrant open space with cafe, “late night social and intellectual hub of the campus”
- John Brunner (Media Basement) suggested door alarm that prevents propping.
How do we get input from students?
- Inspirational images that draw attention to a survey, etc.
- Prompt questions
- Extended opportunities, rather than single event, would be most effective
- Halloween changes the way campus feels and triggers conversation, might be a good time to ask quesitons
- Mini cut-outs of cool things that could be installed, collaborative collage of what students want
- “Where do you study (in the library or elsewhere) and why do you choose that space? What elements create an atmosphere you can work in?”
- It’s hard to design with time, but could carrels be shared? When is there open space and when is it full?
What we need for a proposal that will allow implementing changes is a resounding “yes, we want to use the library at night,” “yes it’s ok to not have access to the third floor,” “yes lockers would be cool,” etc. Or maybe responses will be no.
Classrooms could be an alternative model for creating additional meeting space.
Courtney is Div III without a carrel, goes off campus to find a comfortable place to study. More nooks/cubbies would be awesome.
Conversations with Campus Police have brought up the culture of stealing on campus - carrels are well-respected and rarely stolen from. Could we bring this ethos to the first floor?
Cubbies turn the library from an institutional space into everyone’s space. Off-campus students can also feel at home. Lockers are always available in the RCC, but smaller cubbies could fill a new niche.
NEXT STEPS:
MEET ON MONDAY 10/29 FROM 6:30PM-8:30PM TO PUT STUFF UP IN THE LIBRARY!!!
Joseph’s Idea:
Traveling Rings - set of swings, anyone can learn, people travel to use the set-up, it creates a really cool community, could be a great addition to campus. Example set costed approx. $10,000. Could be a COCD funded project, could possibly be taken on by OPRA.
One concern would be liability.
Come talk to COCD for help writing a proposal! Rehamping could help with siting/outreach, possibly find things to include that would be more accessible to different abilities/body types.
Early Learning Center Project:
Fill out the Doodle for the ELC tour to look at the space and discuss the redesign of the playground! http://doodle.com/hf32bngwyegfpdeq Agenda includes looking over notes/goals from last meeting, seeing the space, asking questions, coming back and starting to brainstorm designs!
This project could take many forms - small project helping to find precedents or ideas, larger project involving design/build, independent study, EPEC class, etc.
Andrew’s RCC idea:
When the space is set up for speakers, etc., the place is horrible looking! Possible project would be to design a tall, colorful backdrop.
Thinking forward, greening of the RCC is coming up, so we won’t be able to use that space during renovation. What will we do?!
THANKS EVERYONE FOR A FABULOUS MEETING!!!
Written notes:
Synthesis of the Barn Brainstorm!
GOALS FOR THE BARN BUILDING:
The President has asked us to design and build a space that is an exciting, flexible by and for student space. The site of this building will be adjacent to the Community Garden and Cole Science, house Mixed Nuts, and be a collaborative, welcoming & supportive space for students to gather.
Boundaries
It is important that Mixed Nuts and the Community Garden have their distinct spaces, and that their programs do not overwhelm the public space designed to be for all students. We hope that these boundaries will be permeable and flexible, but that each part of the program maintains enough space to retain their identities.
Circulation
Circulation between three main spaces is important, and can affect how effective these boundaries are. Does mixed nuts have storage only they have access to? Do we want to allow heavy traffic through only certain parts of the garden, to protect individual plots? where are people coming from on campus?
EDITABILITY
While the word ‘flexible’ was given to us, flexibility can lead to a sense of ‘programless’-ness, where no one is quite sure how to act or be. Editability allows for changes to be made around a focused core, where individuals and communities can affect the space to better fit their own needs, while having some kind of structure in which to do so.
Identity of the Public Student Space
This space needs a separate identity, or specific branding, that keeps it from being overtaken by the other programs in the space.
We want this space to be: Social, collaborative, connective, comfortable, NOT institutional
Naming the Building? The name matters, what people call this space matters.
Let’s call it the Barn, as a working title. We don’t want this space to be JUST ‘mixed nuts’ because then the space seems to ‘belong’ to certain folks and not to others. this space is for everyone.
B.A.R.N. is an acronym. what does your barn acronym stand for?
this space will be ACTIVELY ANTI-OPRESSIVE
Barn Independent Study 10.16
- For friday- each person bring 10 images// site diagrams@ 1/8 scale // etc.
-pin up of each of the previous designs 1/8 scale
check scale of existing map
- finish map
- overlay utility information
- mapping trees, sun dial, lampposts, low wall, cobb oven
email brian- meet at 10:30
email joanna- $$ for course
email karen/special programs- reserve space
email diana- join Barn Committee
courtney
-email beth hooker
- poster
- email signers of comm. garden
Chris-
- overlay utitlity info
karina
- write up notes from saturday
austin
- email brian about if he can meet at 10:30, can we meet then this friday?
julie
- organize meeting to do trees friday morning
Rehamping works towards community-created renovation of the Hampshire College campus.
