"PRODUCTS! PRODUCTS! PRODUCTS! USE MY PRODUCT IN YOUR SCHOOL!"

Prior to San Diego, I thought I had a general idea of what to put into a school. But upon visiting the variety of firms and educational institutions, I realized that the solutions I initially provided may have been inadequate.

Transparencies, Boundaries, Modules, collaboration, curriculum, interdependence, introverted space, extroverted space, Flexibility, Spaces with potential, Spaces that foster personality, Acoustics, Lighting, Height, Exposed Structure. The list just goes on and on.

With this is mind, it can be easy to get overwhelmed and choose default solutions that exist to solve most of the problems. In my trip to Sacramento to attend the Coalition for Adequate Student Housing [C.A.S.H.]. (Just to provide some background info on why I atttended this event, I entered a partnership project from Spring Quarter second year into a competition and was awarded second place. As a reward, I was invited to the convention to see who and what is involved in developing “adequate” student housing.)

The event featured a fancy luncheon for over 1000 people, and then attendance at the learning convention. I was able to sit at the table with the State Architect, Chester Widom, and eat lunch across from him. [apparently CASH also stands for “Chicken Always Served Here]

After the luncheon the design award winning students were awarded their scholarships and then escorted to the convention where we were gladly introduced to networking individuals from different companies. Companies that specialize in every single element that would be included in a school from school security, toilets, solar panels, flooring, furniture all the way to building systems. Building systems received most of the attention through this “innovative” idea of modular design.

Modular design, you could look at it like portables done right, or portables on sterioids, but they don’t like to hear that.

As I mentioned previously about these “default” solutions (i.e. “the portable”) The companies were mainly there to advertise their own solutions to greater problems with designing schools. As a receptive young mind, I took in as much as I could, talked to as many marketers as I could meet.

I came out of the reception as a some-what brainwashed individual with these simple, pragmatic, affordable, “adequate” solutions deeply imprinted in my mind. This certainly had a strong influence on my own projects design. I attempted to manipulate the strategies I saw to my own advantage. I wanted to design a school that would follow conventional school construction standards. It should be built quick, and easily. And the design should be simple. Sure enough, that’s essentially what I had, I abused the modular system to my advantage to create each programmatic element from a common grid.

What was lost was the sense of “wonder”. A “wow-factor”. As I continue my pursuit to design schools, I look forward to what I’ll be exposed to in Chicago, to hopefully dispel the curse of conventional systems in my mind.