Chapter 24: Scattered and Framed
Today I drove Ozayr out to Ocean Springs, and then out to Waveland and back along the coast to show him the range of damage and rebuilding that we're dealing with in the region. Afterwards we stopped by the Waffle House in East Biloxi near his hotel and talked through a lot of design issues and made some big and exciting decisions about my thesis for about three hours or so and drank enough sweet tea to float a boat.
Due to some holdups with funding, we decided to push the infrastructure piece into a relationship with the studio and housing aspects of my thesis and let the construction portion happen if it happens, but otherwise over the summer with funding that I've been discussing with some charities in East Biloxi this summer.
Anyhow, I'll give you a quick rundown of some of the other decisions that were made...
After waffling on the practicality of the shipping container here and there in terms of how dominating it should be in the project, we discussed the container's strengths and weaknesses in terms of programmatic availability.
We discussed the development of Studio 4284, an undergraduate offering at the University of Minnesota which is developing the Clean Hub, a design of studio leader and Shelter Architecture principal John Dwyer. It has been one of the precedents for the infrastructure piece of my thesis and I got the opportunity to sit in and critique a preliminary design presentation and discuss my ideas and the ideas of the studio in developing an intermodal, infrastructural solution using a shipping container. Some of their ideas were very interesting and many raw, but with excellent potential.
After reviewing the possibilities for my site selection, and despite having permission to adapt a container on the Hands On site, and the idea of using the St. Louis site is enticing, but the old machine shop at Division and Brown which I actually highlighted quite some time ago was brought up and Ozayr and I actually decided that it would be the ideal site in which to highlight the interaction of the industrial aspects of the local and global economies I am interested in. The site which is zoned B-2 will hopefully allow me the opportunity to explore the mixed-program of my three headed studio project. The studio is starting to explore the zoning in East Biloxi and I'm hoping that they will be able to help me understand some of the issues they're coming up against.
All in all, I couldn't be more thankful for Ozayr coming down for this visit. I am really focused at this point in my Thesis and I am feeling absolutely content and confident about the work I am doing down here and the people I am working with. That about sums it up for this round. Stay Classy.