Week 7 – Site Programming

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After a very deserved break, the students and mentors were ready to work hard and push forward with the project! The focus of last meeting was to come up with general concepts of how the space was to utilized. Now, the focus was to divide the project into 3 smaller groups corresponding to each building element in the Damen Silos site. To understand the size of the site, mentors prepared an activity that gave a sense of scale. Familiar elements like a store front or a football field were scaled to an aerial map of the site and students had the opportunity to see how these elements could fit into the site area. Students were surprised to see just how much land was available for use and how tall the grain silos are! The building and site breakout are as follows:

·       Building #1 (Silo structures with tall, thin structure attached) – Restaurant and vertical/urban farming

·       Building #2 (Wide building made up of many silo structures) – Art Gallery and School, possible sports complex

·       Building #3 & Site Development (Open canopy structure and design of the open space on the site) – Community Area for Farmer’s Markets, Craft Shows, Picnics, or Concerts. This group will also work on turning the rest of the site into usable space for other activities (pathways, grassy areas, courts for sports, patio, etc.)

Moving forward, groups will be made corresponding to each individual building element. Each team will be responsible for the coordination of the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction aspects of their piece of the project. This enables each team to go through and learn all the different aspects that go into the design of a building project. It is going to be a very busy schedule as the project develops but students and mentors are ready to work hard and push forward!