Crit Response

In response to the crit:

I've never heard the word conflation so much, Koolhaas must have set a precedent.  Nevertheless the term seems to fit for two reasons:

- We're agnostic: our understanding of the site hasn't conveyed a decision.  We mapped history, we've mapped transportation, we've mapped landscaping, we've mapped climate conditions and we've mapped noise, we've mapped maps basically; but non of these diagrams significantly characterized our plot of land as unique.  Part of the remedy is watching the republican nomination race, look at the degree to which strategies are used to convey a dialogue.  We need to be just as ruthless in our decisions about what the site is.  

- We're inflexible: The component remedy is that we need to utilize a wider variety of medium/styles.  Personally I think switching between mediums best flushes out an idea, and that up until now we've been illustrator drones while our conceptual models were an afterthought.  

That's why we come off as confused.

 

The beauty of this process is that we get to build, criticize and rebuild.  Christine's agriculture mapping was brilliant, we should carry her motifs forward and in other forms of analysis.  This should quickly evolve into understanding the process at work fueling our site: are those small community gardens actually useful? Where do the local grocers get their food?  Paul's demographics nail our site to a wall, our logic of choosing a site is rooted on that demographic analysis and that board needs to be made crystal clear.  Paul's history analysis attracted a lot of attention for a reason, but that detail should bee distilled.  Tess did two great things: locate nearby educational facilities and give us a fantastic understanding of how to incorporate sustainable design (not technology).  I think the educational diagram should evolve into a programatic approach: what are courses offered and available locally and how does our program compete?  Kyle made a building height diagram that I think we need to emphasize.  There definitely is a correlation between program and building height, among other things.  The graphic quality of that diagram should be used by everyone going forward, best graphic design  we have.  Lisa I think you got shafted over the landscaping, speak up next time! You showed us where our green areas are, where our built environment is and where our toxic zones are.  We should use this to figure out what we're changing (in terms of existing landscape) in and around the site, and why.  My diagrams brought an experiential quality to the analysis, I think relating the phenomenological experience in and around the site is critical to developing an attitude of our design.  This analysis needs to be expressed in much more clarity.

This critique has given us a great gauge of how well we understand what we're doing, I'm not sure about the rest of you but I have a much more clear view of our intent.