From the Table to Life

From the Table to Life

By: Van Dwinnells

When we design we are given many programmatic conditions that we must adhere to, design for and around, and we do so in a creative way.  One of the joys of our architecture schooling is that we are often time not even burdened with the realistic ramifications of our projects pre and post occupancy; thing such as budgets and real life evaluations of efficiency and overall use rarely if ever creep into our curriculum.  In urban design we begin to think of how social spaces are formed throughout a community, but it impossible to ever fully know what will and won't work in a given situation.  We do precedent studies of similar places, contextual situations, and cultures, but this is no guarantee our designs will be utilized and incorporated into the community's urban fabric.  The fact that we make such grand proposals reinforces this reality and perpetuates a specific need; one, that in order to produce a design that can be built, we must harness not disregard the political and economic processes.  In order to gain such approval, functions and fundraisers should be organized in the attempt to amass funds and rally community support.  Paying close attention to the people, their needs and desires, and subsequently responding to them in a timely and conscious manner will undoubtedly allow our plans to gain traction.  It seems as if there is gap from our design process from the finalization of a design project to its implementation.  We as architects have a great understanding of the needs of the community and those of the investors.  With that knowledge we should also be considering a way to market our designs.  Who better to provide a platform to springboard a project and get it off the ground?  We should focus on creating awareness and the need for our projects.  To me it would seem only appropriate to also have a class within our program, most likely incorporated as an elective for our graduate program.  A class that would enable us to focus and further develop how we could take our projects and professionally present them to a community so as to one day move it from the drawing boards to a real project.