BRIGHTFIELDS
The first master's design studio was based in the Dayton neighborhood in Newark. We were put into teams by Justine Shapiro Kline, our studio professor and assigned topics based on our preliminary research interests at the beginning of class. This is the first time I would know the meaning of team effort. Apart from the group work, there was important base work to be done for the class, for which students volunteered happily.
We began by modelling our site on GIS(Geographic Information System) and Rhino, two software's that I was unfamiliar with but eventually got a hang of. The semester was structured in a way that we get plenty time for research in the beginning, create a narrative for our future goal, work at a larger scale to understand the context of the site, which would transition into familiarizing ourselves with the site, discussing various stakeholders and precedents; the knowledge of which would help us design and work towards our stated goal.
Our group - The Data and Energy Group, as the name suggests were looking at internet data, electricity, gas and solar energy. For a Mumbaikar, data collection(and by data I mean resources for study material) means going to the BMC(Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) office 5 times and failing to find any data, tracing maps from google earth or web search materials to find any relevant article. However the process here was easier because of well archived data and source availability. We were able to find statistics, interactive maps and create a map of present conditions of Newark.
The Seth Boyden Houses - our site in Dayton, is an abandoned housing complex currently used by squatters and homeless people. One of the initial collective observations during the site visit was to propose a rehabilitation or retrofit project for the abandoned housing complex. However a different approach to design thinking was enforced. This new creative thinking would focus on designs generated by different topics distributed to groups viz. Agriculture, Water, Data & Energy, Mobility and Natural Resources. Our design focused on programs for different kinds of stakeholders. There would be four programs that would enable people to embark on energy careers regardless of class, education and economic status, etc. The Brightfield included a School, Training Center, Housing and Manufacturing + R&D.
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