| Architecture, Technology and Engagement GRANT PROPOSAL by Brooks Atwood & Clay Odom Architecture, Technology and Engagement: Micro-Urban Interventions that subvert standard models and concepts of Urban and Contemporary Design in relation to non-profit social outreach and the City. A Grant Proposal submitted to The New York State Council on the Arts: Architecture Planning and Design Program PREFACE In the wake of the catastrophic failure of large and small scale support networks after the recent hurricane in New Orleans, and in the light of the unprecedented number of poor, under-educated youth, and under-financed schools, we propose to re-engage the city through smaller, directed, and more relevant, grassroots methods. It is our hope to redefine a strategy for bringing about environmental and civic change through the development of a digitally driven design process focused on all aspects of social space from digital space to digital fabrication and actualization of material components and spatial connections. We have begun a relationship with The Dome Project in New York in order to facilitate the social nature of this work. ‘The DOME, an acronym for Developing Opportunities through Meaningful Education was founded in 1973 to challenge the myriad threats to youngsters who had fallen through the cracks of the traditional school system by creating an alternative school program. Since it’s beginning, The DOME Project has dedicated itself to meeting the complex needs of young people in trouble with the law, their schools, and themselves. For over thirty years, The DOME has built a staff and service network that has successfully helped thousands of young people to succeed and develop the necessary skills to regain a sense of self-worth and prepare for success in their education and beyond. The mission of The DOME Project is to assist young people who are economically, socially, and academically challenged to focus on their education as a means to success. Our overall goal is to provide youngsters with alternatives to the negative pressures they face every day in their communities and to help them develop a healthy, positive sense of themselves as individuals who can thrive in society. In order to meet these goals, The DOME has evolved since 1973 into a multi-faceted youth organization operating… programs that are free and available to at-risk and disadvantaged youths from New York City.’ from www.domeproject.org TOPIC Engaging the structure of non-profit educational and social outreach in addition to the youth constituency and the staff of directors and volunteers that are directly involved with the daily use and up-keep, this proposal is focused on a holistic approach to design that includes design education, design based fund-raising, and new techniques and processes of design. These methods and processes include digital fabrication and construction of spaces as well a digitally mediated spaces such as the internet in a quest to create a sensitive intervention in the city that has the ability to affect change beyond the physical borders of the project because of its direct relevance to its users. More importantly is the added impetus to use these methods to create an architecture that serves as both an interface between the youth and the community and between digital and material space. It is the goal of this project to further define Architecture as an agile process based pursuit that no longer remains isolated and locked, but instead creates potentials and engages a forum for discussions by dissolving and/or highlighting up the boundaries that normally exist between client and designer, community and activism, metropolis and corporations and between the city and the inhabitants. This allows design to engage social change without limiting itself to mere theoretical and academic pursuits. PROJECT FORMAT This project shall also be directed toward the linking
of targeted design-based outreach into under-privileged neighborhoods
that The DOME Project currently provides with the process of design and
the employment of digital tools and formats as educational vehicles. Through
the creation of printed pamphlet style documents, an enhanced web presence,
facilitation of student created art and design objects (from DJ files
to T-Shirts) and standard presentations that introduce architecture and
architects to the youths who participate in The DOME Project’s work.
In the end the physical structure of The DOME Project will also be conceived
and fabricated to help facilitate this outreach by developing and enhancing
the identity and distribution of information from The DOME Project. By
including the youth constituents in the process of design, fund-raising,
and ultimately fabrication and installation, the linking and engaging
of contemporary design practice with issues and voices of contemporary
urban youth culture and vice-versa is proposed as establishing a new methodology
for urban planning….one that engages small scale projects while
including social components that have the capacity for spreading change
far beyond the physical and temporal boundaries of the work. APPROACH The ability to splice into existing systems and change them incrementally from the inside through systematic and strategic methods and techniques is at the basis of this multi-pronged approach to design implementation. Life cycle and process design- how does the new system allow for the creation and deployment of a multi-valent/holistic approach to architectural intervention? This design methodology is developed as an alternative to conventional approaches to architecture and urbanism. This process works from within, subverting and using existing governmental, financial, programmatic and building infrastructures, re-appropriating their latent potentials as catalysts for revolutionary change at multiple operative scales. The approach focuses on agile and intelligent responses to the fluctuating conditions of the site without preconception or prescription through engaging and enfranchising the users and staff of The DOME as well as the financiers, fabricators, and contractors directly involved in the process. At the governmental level, the roles of actor and reactor are reversed, wherein the designer engages government/city through the creation of incentive mechanisms. These incentives allow for emergent conditions of public space and community-based program to be cultivated through private interest, the conventional impetus for commercial development. The emergent conditions are offered back to the community as credits for the potential establishment of a wider presence within the prescribed development envelope. At the level of spatial and material processes that are the underpinnings of design, the use of digital methodologies for simulation of spatial, programmatic, and material requirements and ultimately their use in the direct fabrication of building components and a digital/material armature are the underpinning of the project. The uses of digital tools and techniques are currently revolutionizing architectural practice, and the opportunities for expansion and focused use of these tools within the constraints of budget and scope of the project are keys to connecting each piece and component of the project to the overall goal of advancement of the youth and the community through the interface of architecture, technology and education. The approach is focused on engaging the people and organizations necessary to facilitate the completion of the project: corporations as well as individuals; governments at all levels; artists, contractors, and craftspeople; developers and community activists. We choose to engage the actual student users of The DOME Project as well as the members of the community that have a vested interest in the continued success of the project. Not only are the directed design charettes and educational outreach on design issues conceived as being keys to establishing more thoughtful and active students, but also they serve as a method of enfranchising these groups (both the users and the staff) that are currently disassociated from most discussions on the state of their built world in general but specifically contemporary progressive architecture and design practice and discourse. This is proposed as a potential of creating viable physical and digital connections and ripples outward into the broader community beyond the reach of the non-profit’s current work. In this way a small project is imbued with the capacity to be a direct link to and subversion of standard large scale urban design and urban planning approaches. This proposal stems from the acknowledgement of an interconnected world beyond the mere diagrammatic understanding of connective tissue and flows that pervades current contemporary design practice. This proposal is presented with the acknowledgement of a world in which design is becoming both more important and more commoditized as style without substance. We strive in partnership with The DOME Project and its youth users to enact the incredible potential of design and architectures of both physical digital spaces to create the capacity for change in a larger and deeper sense. In the end if we as designers are able to engage the youth and the staff of The DOME through directed design education and exposure to the processes required to conceptualize and actualize works or Architecture and Art, we fee that this process of enfranchisement will serve to excite them about the importance of spaces they inhabit. This excitement should help to promote a sense of ownership in the overall process of their lives and their community. This allows this small project to take a step forward for the wider city as whole both now and in the future. From the individual outward….this is an endogenic process directed toward large scale change through micro-scale insertions of both design and designers into the community. PARTICIPANTS in the process BUDGET FOR INIITIAL PROJECT EXECUTION $ 8,000 for development, educational outreach, mock-ups, installations and digital film/print documentation. STIPEND REQUEST QUALIFICATIONS |