Finally, our project actually gets started.  Keeping in mind with the site analysis we’ve performed, we started throwing out a bunch of ideas at last week’s meeting as to what should eventually occupy our site.  We had a lot of interesting ideas being thrown around:  amusement park, dinosaur farm, scientific research facility, bowling alley, zombie safe house; but part of successfully creating a program means ruling out ideas not because they’re bad (because there really is an annual zombie safe-house competition), but because they might not be the best fit for the site.  Our site isn’t big enough to build a Best Buy or a bowling alley, and a research facility might not be the safest choice to have considering the chemical risks to the dense population.  Keep in mind that what you really want to design might not be ideal for our location.  This is what the choices were narrowed down to:

Industrial – can be bright and creative, like here or here!

School – doesn’t have to be boring, this one is proposed in chicago and this a studio at yale.

Entertainment – this theatre is awesome, or how about this mobile art pavilion?

Community/ Recreation center – this is cool and this one is in chicago too.

Hotel – wouldn’t you rather stay in a hotel like ace hotel or bella sky hotel?

Next to the choices I’ve put links of precedent projects that give a little insight as to what you can do with these very broad topics.  It’s also very easy at this stage in the design process to plan out spaces on a sheet of paper and extrude those up to make a building.  This is where creativity suffers: your building does not have to be a BOX, so much can be done and what you create doesn’t have to look like boring strip-mall architecture, plus I know you guys are smarter than that.

Next meeting:

Goettsch Partners office @ 224 South Michigan Ave, Floor 17

4:30 – 6:30 on 20 December (last meeting before a little winter break)

Do a little critical thinking on the topic of the group you were split into.  It’s good to have an argument for or against why you think we should put a certain building type on the site, what spaces are necessary for that, and maybe what the building might start looking like.  Take a look at some more precedent images as well, kinda like the ones I posted above.  If you come to the next meeting with a printed out picture, name, and short description of a precedent project from your topic (industrial, school, recreation, hotel, or entertainment) that you think is interesting, then you get candy.  We’ll see just how much you people like candy.

Also remember to bring your permission slips next week for the construction site visit we’ll be taking after break!!