Ah fall! The time for pumpkin spice lattes, busting back out the winter coats, and disappointment as my college football team screws itself once again into making its way into a BCS national championship after an overly aggressive pre-season hype. ALSO, it’s time for ACE to return to full swing…it’s the first time I’ve been a part of the ACE program, so I guess I’ll have to add it on the list of fall-ish “things” to look forward to. I apologize for the blog starting a little behind schedule but from now on it will be the place to recap each meeting and then will provide a preview on what to expect, where to be, and how to get to the next meeting each week.

If you were unable to attend our first meeting of the ACE season on 25 October, held at the Goettsch Partners office, we learned a little about our students and mentors (also that dinosaurs are NOT adjectives), and a little about how our professions of Architect, Construction Management, and Engineering work together. (And lemme clarify something that got a little carried away in the “Who Am I?” game. A “construction worker” and “construction manager” are definitely not the same thing 🙂

Our second meeting was held on 1 November and we visited the site chosen for this year’s project! We all took the evening to romp about the site which looks rather like a swimming pool right now. Our scavenger hunt encouraged us to look at not only the site itself, but the surrounding area. What kinds of buildings are common in the area? What occupies those buildings, are they businesses, apartments, classrooms? What types of people are typical to this part of town? Questions like these enable us to develop a building type and program that fit in with locations context. For example, it’s not really a worthy business investment to put a Mediterranean restaurant in the middle of Chinatown, nor would you put a preschool in an area that is mostly inhabited by elderly people. It’s a good idea to keep these considerations in mind when thinking about what you want to put on this site. Personally, I’m thinking cat museum. (Seriously though, I had a college professor who made us all design cat museums one semester.)

Mmmmm cats, they’ll end up popping up on the blog everyone now and again 🙂 So, keep in mind everything you observed during the scavenger hunt and come to the next meeting with some ideas about what type of building might integrate well with the site and surrounding context.

For those of you who weren’t able to make it out for the scavenger hunt, (or those of you who just want a little recap), our site is located at the northwest corner of Halsted and Van Buren, and Google maps is actually a great way to poke around the area without actually physically going there. Using the street view to explore is a quick and easy way to remind yourself about the area.

Next meeting:
Goettsch Partners office @ 224 South Michigan Ave, Floor 17
4:30 – 6:30
Be there. We’ll spend this coming Tuesday analyzing the site, and doing a little modeling. That’s right, modeling. We’re going to take all the information we’ve collected, and make our SITE look really, really, good. So good, that you’re going to want to take it out to an expensive dinner. See you all on Tuesday!!