Overview:

This semester I have been working at Liollio Architecture with my mentor Andy Clark, AIA LEED AP. During my time at the firm I have worked on a number of different projects over the past few weeks. A few of the tasks that I have worked on include: communicating with engineers to ensure proper placement of Stryker booms in the plans of two different EP Labs at MUSC, sink placement and door schedule in a National Park Service Administration Building in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and making evacuation plans to be posted in the rooms of Dunston Elementary School in North Charleston. This week I have been primarily focused on a project in Charlotte, NC where we are designing a Nature Museum on Little Sugar Creek just outside of downtown Charlotte. I have been helping with the project since we were in SD’s but we have just finished with the design development phase of the project and are getting ready to move into CD’s. My task this week was to make the cut files and build the topography and physical building model for our October 1st meeting with the clients.

Project of the Week:

Project – Discovery Place Nature

Location – Charlotte, NC

Design Team – Liollio: Jennifer Charzewski, Elissa Bostain, Allie Beck; Hood Design Studio: Walter Hood, Paul Peters; Coyle & Caron: Sally Coyle

Project Description: Demolition of existing nature museum to make way for a new museum with more square footage to accommodate higher volume of visitors, updated exhibits and living quarters for animals, improved connection to Freedom Park.

Weekly Tasks:

Tuesday 3/26 – I made cut files for the topography of our Discovery Place Nature Museum as well as the building itself.

Total hours worked: 8

Thursday 3/28 – I built the physical model for our October 1st meeting.

Total hours worked: 8

Prompt 1:

How do you build a practice that engages community?

During Spring semester I was in the Community Build studio where we designed and built a community garden pavilion on the Charleston peninsula in a community that needed and wanted better opportunity for engagement with their neighbors while also taking part in a hobby of their own interest. This understanding of what community members want to be apart of helped myself and the rest of my classmates understand the importance in good community engagement. A question that I ask myself on projects is how do I, a foreign person to this community, assist the community itself in strengthening and rekindling the fabric that it was built on?

I think that the first step is understanding that I am intended to be an extension of this community and assist them in the creation of a vision rather than myself pushing my own vision. Some of the methods that Liollio uses when they engage community based design is they bring themselves to the table where a seat might not have previously been taken by architects and designers. We engage the community at events and gatherings whether we are needed or not, it is the fact that we are here to support that community in whatever way we are able. I think that it is important to indulge my practice into the community where community members might not know that there can be assistance extended to them in order to create that vision that they may have.

 

AXP Hours to Date: 

Practice Management: 0

Project Management: 0

Programming & Analysis: 0

Project Planning and Design: 23

Project Development & Documentation: 56

Construction & Evaluation: 0