Porch

We've been developing overall concepts for what the shelter could be to the community the way we’re going about this seems almost like a school formula but it’s not. When we review there isn’t really a formal ‘critique’ everyone presents what they have, usually in groups, then we make a list of ideas and continue to work out the ideas we think are most relevant. So the ideas that no one works on get ‘Darwined’ out. No one person has ownership over an idea so people are constantly moving between ideas and groups to things they may have an idea for or have a desire to work on. This is different from a more traditional studio method which would have had all of design our own idea individually then ‘vote’ on a favorite. The way we’re doing prevents any one person from designing the whole thing, because we are all designing elements and pieces of it that we will try to incorporate together into a shelter later.

We’ve been doing a lot of community meetings with residents trying to get input on our design. As a team we’ve decided on a porch concept to move forward with. The porch is such an important thing, it has been explained to us by the residents as the lifeblood of Hollygrove. I think though that it is an important element to the entire city. It doesn’t matter what day or time you go through a neighborhood there are always people out on their porches and when you walk by they always ask how you’re doing and are always ready to have a conversation with you. By using the porch as a concept the bus shelter will hopefully become a ‘porch’ to the community of Hollygrove. So we’ve been exploring what the elements of a porch are and how they could be integrated into a bus shelter. A porch is used as a gathering place, a point of entry and in some ways a stage as well as a place to observe. These are all elements we want to incorporate. The community has really responded well to this idea because it is a language that they are familiar with and they know, more than anyone, if a porch is successful or not. One of the things that I really wanted to explore was how far porch reaches, what is the gradient of a porch from house to porch to sidewalk to street. Because the effect of a porch reaches all of those at some level.