PROJECT LINK

JULY 28 - AUGUST 01

ATTACK ON THE COMMON

DESIGNING NEW HYBRIDS FOR BOSTON COMMON

 
For hundreds of years architects have had the challenge of designing places that combine opportunities of uniqueness through the combinatory operation of placing two diaposing program elemnts together to create an idea of architectural hybridity. Today, the hybrid is an idea that has infused itself into every design dicipline from cars, to homes, to medicine and all the way to plants and animals. By defintion, a hybrid is anything derived from heterogeneous sources, or composed of elements of different or incongruous kinds. A collison of opposing forces, difference and subtle variation. The goal of this assignment is to address the hybrid situation of two disparate ideas of program and the means through which the situation of the hybrid can be designed. Similar to the idea of the Dutch windmill, the house as hybrid becomes a meeting ground of daily activites that generate both economy and amusement along with the creation of spaces for dwelling. The operator of the windmill not only harvested energy to do a task with the assisstance of the windmill but also had a place for handling his daily needs for living. This project asks you to reevaluate our lives and begin to think of contemporary windmills, or new opportunities for hybrid programs and their architectural design. Our contemporary setting is challenging ourselves to rethink the ways in which we live to lessen the severity of our footprint on the world or to expose contemporary issues that could resolve themselves through the reevaluation of how we live. This project will in essence do the same by setting up a new battle on a site that has hosted and prepared itself for many battles through out history. Students will be asked to work to together to develop a larger strategy at an urban scale where their projects will work to reunify Boston Common and expose these new ideas of hybridity to the general public. Through the act of understanding the larger ideas of context, students will then pursue their own design for a hybrid plus, or the act of designing a an architectural solution for the combination of two disparate things, united in the public arena of the common.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE COMMON

The Common's purpose has changed over the years. Originally it was owned by William Blaxton until it was bought from him by the city. During the 1630s, it was used as a cow pasture by many families living in Boston. However, this only lasted for a few years, as affluent families bought additional cows which led to overgrazing. The Common was used as a camp by the British before the Revolutionary War, from which they left for the Battle of Lexington and Concord. It was used for public hangings up until 1817, most of which were from a large oak which was replaced with gallows in 1769. Mary Dyer was hanged there in 1660. On May 19, 1713, two hundred citizens rioted on the Common in reaction to a food shortage in the city. They later attacked the ships and warehouses of wealthy merchant Andrew Belcher, who was exporting grain to the Caribbean for higher profits. The lieutenant governor was shot during the riot. A hundred people gathered on the Common in early 1965 to protest the Vietnam War. A second protest happened on October 15, 1969, this time with 100,000 people protesting.[6]

Today the Common serves as a public park for all to use for formal or informal gatherings. Events such as concerts, protests, softball games, and ice skating (on Frog Pond) often take place in the park. Famous individuals such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Pope John Paul II have made speeches there. Judy Garland gave her largest concert ever (100,000+) on the Common, on August 31, 1967. It was declared a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1987.

ASSIGNMENT

Each student will be asked to select a specific program and research it’s implications and spatial requirements. Each student will present their program research to their respective studios through a diagramatical analysis of use, history and precedent understanding of all the factors that make up their programatic selection. Next, each student’s instructors will select a secondary programatic PLUS to begin to help establish a hybrid condition, that programatically challenges the researched notions of each student’s selected choice. The goal of the final project is to figure out new ways to innovate the idea of a hybrid situation, meaning the combination of two things that might appear uncomfortable in their relationship together or known also as uncommon and unprecedented when placed together as one thing. By addressing the overlap and juxtaposition of two disparate themes and ideas, the student’s will be challenged with how they come together and how that effects an architectural concept. Next, each student will have to analyze the site and develop a strategy to place their object into the context. This part of the assignment will be a group activity where all the students will work together to find a place for each project. From there, the students will develop their ideas through drawing and model making, in the end creating a final presentation that represents their ideas. This project will illustrate to the students how a concept, or simple idea, can become an architectural experience. It is important to keep in mind that each student will have to respond to the following questions. What will it be? Where will it be? How will it work? How do you make a hybrid form of architecture? Will it associate itself with the others or exist independently on its own? How will it be made? How will you represent it? How do you handle the daily transformations? This will be the final project for the four weeks and the main project that we present in our final reviews and gallery opening.


PROGRAM

*The program is to be determined by each individual student. Some examples for what this program could be are such things as a sneaker boutique, a greenhouse or hydroponics facility, a storefront, an internet cafe, a bus pickup area and ticket counter, an entertainment facility, a wind farm, even an art gallery, or a manga print shop. Each student is expected to research their program proposal and find a design alternative that hybridizes both the idea of their orginally selected program in combination with the addtional program.

PROGRAM PLUS

EXTRA PROGRAM**

**The program PLUS will be determined by each stusent’s studio instructors