Understanding the Why
I wanted to touch a little bit on Giancarlo de Carlo’s writing as well as Alejandro Aravena’s Tedtalk. I think both hinted at some of the same questions we as architects should consider when designing. For whom? and Why? Engaging community is extremely important in the design of a space for many reasons, most obviously because those are the people that will be using the building… Carlo stresses the importance of understanding the why.
This is something I began to understand in my undergraduate
experience. For my senior thesis project, we designed a community center in Villa
Altagracia, Dominican Republic. We partnered with a church in Santo Domingo who
has a satellite location in that village. We were fortunate enough to visit the
site during the schematic phase where we got to fully immerse in the culture
and met with various members of the church and communities. This was the first
time I knew I was not designing for myself but rather for a purpose. We learned
their needs, what was there currently, how the space needed to function, and
even the language of what the building should be.
After graduation, a few of us (including Tre) went back to
the D.R. and we got to help to local workers in the village prepare the site, tie
rebar, pour the foundation, and even started stacking the level one CMU walls…
This experience went beyond just understanding why we were doing this building;
we got to connect with the user and learn about their experience. Something I
had not thought about prior to this project was considering how the local
construction workers would actually build the site and accommodating for that
as well; we had to make various on-site changes to account for the conditions and
available resources for example.
It wasn’t until this project and interacting with the client
in such an in-depth way that we did, that I truly began to understand the why…
We can get lost in the design of a space and lose the importance of the purpose
of the building. I admit that sometimes I am guilty of this.
Here is the link to the youtube video the church (client) sent after they completed the build:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDayRHh4zHA
Super cool Celia! I was really interested with the Ted Talk as well and it made me think about the building past us, which is honestly the more important part.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your experience. That’s so cool you got to do that as part of school. I think we design better (and feel better about our work) when we have met the users of the building. Last year I worked on a developer housing project and felt so detached and unenthused compared to other projects where I have worked with the intended user in the design process.
ReplyDeleteSuch a cool project!
ReplyDeleteYou touched on how this project opened your eyes to the needs of the end user and what sparked the beauty of designing with intent to change someone else's life. I say this because I'm familiar in how you think in terms of design (your desk is very fun to visit during all-nighters) but I see that you apply this - maybe subconsciously because of how impactful this project was to you - notion of why is this important architecture. I appreciate the thoughtfulness of design decisions you make and can only give credit to the experiences that you've have in real world applications that shaped you into this monster.
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