#urbandesignbuildstudio

When I went home to Milwaukee, I volunteered for Nick Robinson’s community engagement event. As a seminar lecturer at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) and the Principal architect and co-founder of Dream Builders, Nick has been influential within the community. This grand charrette involved architecture students and architecture professors from UWM, Alderman Russell Stamper II, and most importantly residents within the Sherman Park community. Taking place in St. Anne’s on 25th and North Avenue, there was a live band and DJ that created a relaxed vibe as residents spoke about what they needed and desired from their community. Some questions include: “What’s one word that describes your neighborhood and what do you do to have fun?” My experience participating in and observing this community event helped me think about positive ways for building trust among one another while talking about tense topics surrounding housing.

The two current sites for RE_CON 01 and RE_CON 02 are narrower than the previous site at 318 N St Clair, with each lot measuring 24’ 4”. This change in size meant that is was important for us to start by critically refining the plan. The narrower width of the lots is also reflective of the size of most lots around the city, with 25’ being the most common width dimension. The sketch shown here is a quick and initial plan study that focuses on the movement of the sun. The studio has worked extensively through multiple iterations of plan drawings to experiment with core placement, variations on stair, and overall circulation paths.

Here are some of the details of the HOME INCUBATOR that we photographed after the final review.  These images show the tolerances and precision that we had to work with between each detail. 

On May 8th, we had an event at PROJECT RE_ with the Reality Computing student cohort to celebrate the work developed this semester and try out the virtual and augmented reality experiences that they had made.  The work will be utilized during the HOME INCUBATOR deployments and for their own showcase, “Meeting of the Minds,” which is held on campus.  The end products turned out great and the interactivity was remarkable, awesome work!

On the left are a series of digitally rendered branding iterations developed by Sophie Nahrmann (UDBS ‘18) during the 2018 UDBS Summer Internship. The image on the right illustrates paint tests conducted this Spring to test the feasibility of the color schemes on the left. While we were drawn to the vibrancy and contrast created through the painting, we came to the realization that the application of the spray paint was too unpredictable; we were unable to create consistently clean edges or effective feathering of color.  Therefore, we decided to leave the HOME INCUBATOR unpainted and celebrate contrast between the smooth refined maple and the rough texture of the cardboard.

One communal event that the HOME INCUBATOR is designed to host is a movie night. Utilizing the projector that will be stored in the cargo box on RE_TOLD and the front end stand, movies will be projected onto the felt of the VR cube. Movies that are exhibited are aimed to be socially relevant to issues in the City of Pittsburgh. Eventually oral histories that are recorded using RE_TOLD will hopefully be formatted and displayed before movie nights to give contextual relevance of certain issues at hand in local communities.

After our final review Jay and I took extensive photos of the progress we had made this semester.  As you can see there is still work to be done on the trailer module, for instance the letters, but we are excited to finalize the construction of both modules and get the bike out on the road!

During the construction of the Home Incubator, I learned how to use a 1960s metal lathe in the wood shop on campus.  We have utilized the metal lathe to core maple baseball bat blanks that are used to clamp the cardboard laminated chunks together on both the HOME INCUBATOR and RE_TOLD.