Lots of news! Really, really BIG news!

Two big pieces of news.
We’ll start from the most recent:

1.     Willamette Graystone just donated permeable pavers to our project today!

Willamette Graystone is a local distributer and manufacturer of concrete building materials. Willamette Graystone has donated over 300 sq. ft. of permeable pavers to our project, enough to pave our entire projects exclusively with the donated pavers. The permeable pavers will be an excellent addition to our education components of the project – the less paved areas we can have, the more water will infiltrate into the ground.

2.     Site Mockup

We did a mockup on site this past Sunday! 2x2s, stakes, a couple of hammers, some caution tape, and lots of smiles. I’ve tried to include a couple of similar shots from the site and from the model so you can get an idea for what this project is actually going to look like.

A Very Busy Week

A client meeting and midterm in one week! And we’re still in week three!

Wednesday, we had our second client meeting of the term. It was held in a small building near our site in Springfield. Present at the meeting:

Meghan Murphy – Our contact at the city, from the Environmental Services Department
Amy Chinitz – Our contact with the Springfield Utility Board
Matt Stouder – Springfield Public Works Engineer
Rachel Chilton – Public Information & Education Specialist
Ed Naylor  – Springfield Schools’ Facilities’ Maintenance
Janet Beckman – Brattain House Manager

The meeting could not have gone better. We presented all of the material we have been working this term, which up until now has been coming up with strategies on how to achieve our clients’ goals, namely the education and demonstration of storm water management. Our goal was to get the go ahead from our clients to move the project into the design development stage.

And: we got the go ahead!

Everyone seemed happy, excited, and anxious to see the project move forward.

Today, after only a single day turnaround, we were back at the review boards, this time with several professors and one former graduate student, Howard Davis, Otto Poticha, Erin Moore, and Jonathan Chesley.

The review also went well. Our ideas were sanctioned with most of the critique going towards thoughts and ideas to make the project more integrated and simpler, and still achieve all of the clients’ goals.

The big push forward will now be the sharpening of ideas, the crystallization of designs, the paring of excess. How do we bridge the oft divided extremes, the artistic and the technical, the beauty and the science, into a single, inseparable whole.

Team Storm — designBridge

We are a team of architecture and landscape architecture students at the University of Oregon. This is about our time in designBridge, a student run, student led, design-build program.

This year we’ve teamed up with the nationally renowned Sustainable Cities Initiative to design and build the City of Springfield a storm water management demonstration project to be built between a new elementary school and a community outreach program building called the Brattain House. The design will include a rain garden, a pavilion, and several interactive, educational pieces.

We will be working with the clients to pick a site, develop a program, produce construction drawings for submittal to the city, and ultimately build the project with our own hands.

 

This is our story through the wonderful, and, at times, insane world of design.