PATHWAYS, EDGES, BOUNDARIES

On October 22, 2008 we dove head first into a new and exciting experience. For the second half of the fall semester, the first years were assigned a project called "Pathways, Edges, Boundaries”. The focus of our project was the enhancement of the Gatewood Studio Arts Center parking lot. Our challenge was to define the pathways, edges, and boundaries between the building and the parking lot. But there was a catch, whatever we built had to be made from concrete!
For the first part of the project, we split into our Northside, Midtown and Southside groups. We then conducted a Behavioral study, Historical and Cultural study, and an Environmental study. I was a part of Northside, which was responsible for the Behavioral Study. As a group we took 24- hour surveillance of the parking lot to find out more about how people behave and interact with the parking lot. We compiled our findings into several different forms for a presentation. Northside produced a PowerPoint, surveys, charts, graphs, and maps depicting the information we researched.

The largest piece of information we observed was a human behavior called “cutting the corner”. We decided that this was important because a large majority of the pedestrians would step up on an island only for a brief moment to cross the corner and then step off while making their way to the building. Because so many people did it, we wanted to find out more about why. As a group, we came to the conclusion that cutting corners was caused by a pedestrian path that was, in fact, a place of worn down leaves and pine straw that was created by frequent traffic. This helped our class come to the conclusion that we wanted to elaborate on the existing pedestrian paths. Also as a class, we decided that we wanted to focus on commonality using circles and squares. Although they are basic shapes, we thought that they would really help convey a message of pathways, edges and boundaries. We also decided that we were going to focus on the islands, which really needed attention in the barren parking lot.
After studying our parking lot, we the split into smaller groups (most of about 15) to begin working on our islands. They became “Desert, Mirage, Oasis, Gateway, and Building Edge”. I was a member of the Oasis group, which was lead by Department Chair Tommy Lambeth.
[photos of our island]

[Notes and Ideas: doodling]

Excited and teeming with ideas, each group began formulating plans for their island. The Oasis group had huge ideas: such as walls, seating, tables, and other large structures. Although our ideas were good, we were quickly brought down by reality. We were working with concrete, which is heavy and not easily mastered in a few short weeks. We had to downsize our plans. After much discussion and trial and error we decided to make a path out of circles and squares with cylindrical posts flanking the path. We made a small model to convey our idea clearly.

Fortunately, the class loved it, and used Oasis’s idea as springboard to their own projects. After a few more revisions to our concept by Tommy and Stoell, we produced a final model and were ready to begin creating molds and casting.
The first few casting experiments didn’t go so well. We had to find a good aggregate and appropriate casting molds. I had an idea to bring in shoeboxes for our rectangles. I was proud to find out that these worked the best for removing concrete from molds versus regular cardboard boxes. Luckily, I had a closet full of shoeboxes! We also used plastic organizing containers for smaller rectangles and smaller squares. For the circles we used some gardening pans and cutouts of carpet rolls. For an aggregate, we decided on Perlite. Perlite is a lightweight concrete aggregate which is mostly used in tiles, is easy to handle and mix, and is cost efficient. The Perlite worked better than our previous choices, wood chips and sawdust. The wood chips were too large of an aggregate and the sawdust was very brittle. After a lot of casting we realized that there would be no time for the cylindrical columns we wanted. So we decided to cut up the carpet rolls they would have been molded from and use them to crate more circles. Our project then evolved to a pathway, which would be outlined by the circles and squares instead of a path made of circles and squares. After countless hours of casting, we finally had enough shapes for our pathway border.

We placed our circles and squares the morning before the critique. I was very pleased with the outcome of the project as a whole. Each group had incorporated the circles and squares design, and our exhibit was great. Overall we faced some difficult questions about our concept, but I think we did a really great job.