construct hope
This project seeks to inspire underprivileged communities to provide for their own cultural infrastructure with recycled materials.
Through an array of architectural studies in recycling, Construct Hope explores the potential for recycle/build projects to act as a means of empowerment.
Throughout the project there has been an underlying question: how can we create a true sense of place with the least financial investment. While reclaimed pallets are themselves free, the cost of transport and assembly makes them less viable. Looking for a way past the financial constraints of material, I looked to the way immaterial elements of light and sound might activate a space. I found that recycled bottles could be used to create windchimes and constructed a number of 1:1 study models of the recycled windchime.
This small study in digital techniques converts human models to scale figures
First, the subject is photographed from multiple angles.
Using contemporary digital methods, scale figutes can be copied from real life.
This small study in digital techniques converts human models to scale figures
I find it helpful to think of architecture as a way of storytelling, not so much as a story in built forms, but a story of people. In this age of rust and detatchment, it is easy for today's North Philadelphia to mistake itself as separate from all the North Philadelphias that came before it. It is my hope that this project may act as a small step in the right direction; a reminder that we are not only the characters of this story but its authors as well. It is our responsibility not only to pay respect to the stories of the past, but also to those we are writing today.
While there is no fix-all solution to the problems facing North Broad, this project represents a small step in the right direction. It is my hope that this will inspire similar efforts within the community.
While there is no fix-all solution to the problems facing North Broad, this project represents a small step in the right direction. It is my hope that this will inspire similar efforts within the community.
Shining a light through the shadow booth onto the side of a building, an otherwise abandoned space is transformed into a temporary theater.
Shining a light through the shadow booth onto the side of a building, an otherwise abandoned space is transformed into a temporary theater.
This project begins with a small picturebook.
It represents my understanding of this place.
My exploration of Broad Street began with many walks up and down a stretch from Cecil B. Moore to Allegheny. The rough post-industrial look of the place (the abandoned buildings, vacant lots, and everywhere, rust) only supported my negative stereotypes built up around the neighborhoods just north of Temple University. Still, there was a sense that there was something more hidden within this place. Through research into the history of Broad Street, we learned that this area had once boasted a thriving industrial economy. The area also was home to vital cultural institutions, such as the Uptown Theater and the Shibe Baseball Park. The more I walked through these neighborhoods, the more it became apparent that some of this cultural vitality had survived despite economic hardships. Chipping away at my stereotypical understandings, I began to discover the hidden people and culture of North Broad Street. Look hard enough and you will find them there: hopeful, pensive and above all, waiting.
Through frequent site wanderings, getting to know North Broad more and more as a living place, I became convinced that any effort in traditional urban renewal would result in gentrification and be of no help to the current inhabitants. Here change must be provided by and for the people it will affect most. Moving forward with this understanding, I decided to flip the system on its head and work to educate and inspire rather than plan and dictate. The result is a series of studies in recycled architecture meant to instigate change within the community.
Bereft of an economic foundation or cultural infrastructure, this section of North Philadelphia currently lacks the tools necessary to rise above its problems. Using recycled shipping pallets as a building material, I have developed my own iterations of recycled projects in the hope that they may inspire similar projects within the local community. If the residents can feel free to alter their environment rather than remain subject to it, then their position might shift from one of victimization to empowerment.
I treated my studies into recyclable design as a process of learning and exploration. Rather than develop a singular architecture, I sought to design creative systems that allow me to explore a multiplicity of ideas. My methods also represent a personal attempt at bridging the gap between manual and digital methods, mixing the intuitive quality of handcraft with the efficiency of digital processes. Through the use of flexible physical modeling, handmade stampings and collage, I sought to engender a number of valid possibilities rather than search for some fix-all solution.
As the project developed, I increased the scale of the recycled structures. Using one of my physical models as an ink stamp, I produced a number of diagrams of a small theater.
This represents the largest iteration of the light theater. A quiet sense of place is built up around light and sound rather than structural forms.
This represents the largest iteration of the light theater. A quiet sense of place is built up around light and sound rather than structural forms.
Having worked for some time with reclaimed pallets, I sought out other recyclables to use as building materials. After some deliberation, I decided to work with glass bottles. The new material immediately provided new design challenges. Where the pallets provided for structural stability, bottles proved fragile. The pallets were also easy to employ in orthographic patterns. Glass bottles on the other hand resist stacking, making structural building troublesome. Using a combination of sketching and collage, I tried to get a handle on this new material. The bottles seemed to suggest a more diffuse spatial quality, so I focused on how to arrange hanging bottles in such a way that they created a sense of space while limiting material use. The results, while visually interesting, required a vast quantity of glass bottles to carry out. Met with material limits, I sought out new ways of placemaking.
As an architect, I take great joy in designing new places and experiences; creating the setting for each of our little stories. Yet I realize that there are some stories that are not mine to tell, and some places not mine to imagine. It is my hope that you will treat this as a prologue of sorts, a beginning of a beginning of a story that is yours to write and always has been.
I next developed a flexible, building-block style model to explore the possibilities within my paintings. Each iteration keeps in mind the scale of the human body, using physical scale figures to get a feel for each configuration.
The chimes are strung with twine and painted with alcohol inks. I chose to work with warm colors as much of Broad Street seems drained of bright colors. Looking to connect my efforts to the rest of Team 13, I lasercut a QR code into the windcatcher, embedding digital technology into a handcrafted medium. In an effort to project what kind of an experience the windchimes would produce, I developed an audio rendering of this effort in placemaking. (Headphones suggested.)