Ask for forgiveness, not permission

I have been involved in three projects involving public and city particpation during my six years in architecture school. One was successfully built, one fell through, and one seems like it will always be at a stand still. 

Most recently, as Will explains in his post*, was the interesting Asheville project we were part of last spring. Although our projects were never designed specifically to be built, they were supposed to be a group of projects, not designed by licensed architects, as a catalyst for the project and community involvement. From our experiences with the city and the task force of local representatives, it seems that project will not go any further in the near future. *Read Will's post, it's magic.

Back in the day during undergraduate times, I was involved in two public projects through our Precast studio, in two different towns in South Dakota. Like Clemson, SDSU also had the PCI precast concrete grant, and used it to design small plazas to be built for four towns across the state. The students did the designing, construction documents, and some of the labor (building form work, laying footings, etc) during their junior year.

The project that fell through took place while my class was involved with the precast studio (ugh).  We did not end up working with public participation for this project, we worked with a task force as part of the city board. The semester went well, and they were excited about the final design. We built formwork, did construction drawings, it was ready to go for the following summer. However, sometime in the spring, our architecture department and professors pulled out of the project. The city changed their minds about everything and tried to change the entire project after all of the documents had been completed, and decided they were not going to pay for any of it. Small town bureaucracy became an issue during this project, not even public opinion.

I was involved in the another project my sophomore year. This project took place in a small town along the Missouri River. The exact site is where the railroad ended for a time in history, a line from Chicago to the west. Directly across the river from the site is where Sacagawea and Chief Sitting Bull are buried, so there is history at this location. I think this project was successfully completed and built, because we only dealt with a small group of the city board members, who were on our side and excited. Only after the project was built did the public speak out. Only a few people spoke up negatively (signs in their restaurant windows, etc), but otherwise it was a huge hit with the town and is used to this day. In this case, the lack of public participation and a small amount of city participation made this project follow through. It's one of those moments where "ask for forgiveness, not permission" toward the public, worked successfully.

The unsuccessfully completed Kansas St Plaza

The successfully completed Wrigley Square Plaza.