STUDIO AGENDA

motives | program | acknowledgements

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Why

This university project is a fictional study of an actual design opportunity, selected for the richness of context it has provided for project-based learning. This study has not been commissioned by anyone, nor was it undertaken with any particular vested interest in mind, nor is it at all constrained by realities of politics and finance. We do this as if design is not just about solving known problems, but also about discovering them; and as if all brainstorming fails when it becomes reasonable.

Where

Holland, Michigan has many reasons for an interest in all things Dutch, including architecture. Holland also happens to be one of the most liveable places in Michigan, and indeed in the US, according to some reports.. It also happens to have a project in play that has the moderate scale, low technical complexity, and high social visibility best suited for educational projects. This is the city's Civic Center, a community, recreation, and fairs facility whose redesign is a key to the city's proposed western gateway redevelopment. Although this project has already been years in the planning, stakeholders from the City of Holland and its leading design consultants all have expressed receptivity to a studio exploring its possibilities. For among other considerations, its site adjoins the very popular farmers' market.

What

As described in the studio announcement, the goal is to ask how Dutch design might play in North America. For on aspects of urbanism, green building, material lifecycle planning, and the programming of semipublic spaces, the Netherlands might be twenty years ahead. Our main studio project has been to develop a proposal for the Holland Civic Center, in relation to surrounding areas of the downtown fringe. The studio identified the adjoining blocks southward to Washington School as suitable for alternative multifamily housing, which is always an important component both to liveable cities and Dutch design. The studio began with case studies in Dutch design, mainly in the urbanism of walk-up housing. We then turned to abstract typological studies, mainly to sense the alternatives of townhouse, courtyard, detached, and irregular aggregate forms here. (With apologies to its congregation, we suspended disbelief that the church on the site could move from what to architects' eyes is temporary structure.) Housing remained an option for project development in the studio, although only one person took this. For the others, the civic center became the focus, although seldom without concern for the neighboring blocks, including the farmers' market, and for what programmatic innovations might benefit the western gateway. Our brief for the civic center itself was somewhat simplifed from the existing proposal, and perhaps 2/3 as large overall, so that indvidual proposals might then add something new. From a core of two main multipurpose halls, one basketball-ready and one not, projects introduced such elements as community gardens, winter facilities for the farmers' market, neighborhood support such as daycare, and various downtown amenties, such as in one case a bicyclists' hub. Each participant has been expected to take a position on the role of architecture.

Who

This is the work of graduate students in architecture at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, at the University of Michigan. The studio (and this website) has been organized by Malcolm McCullough, the professor, who has taught architecture and urban design at Michigan, Carnegie Mellon, and Harvard. Background information has been furnished by the City of Holland. Receptivity to our inquiries has been shown by just about everyone we encountered. But again, this was our idea and not theirs, and our projects do not imply any endorsement or actual plan.

How

Project-based education has become much more prominent in universities, and architecture is the field that has been at it longest. Our process involves very time-intensive creative work, with mainly solo projects done in parallel with some team projects. This approach teaches our students how to get up in front of people with a proposal that takes many big-picture patterns into account. Most other fields teach how to hide behind the hardest possible numbers, no matter what measurements have been omitted to allow such certainty.

When

Work shown here was developed over about 12 weeks of the fall semester 2010. The group's working visit (following an earlier first look) to Holland was in early November 2010.