Studio begins with several ‘live-fire’ exercises that requires students to design as they would in the field: quickly, under pressure, and towards a shared objective.
In this case, students had to design a stabilization mechanism for a downhill ‘village’ that could withstand the ‘avalanche’ I was going to unleash on their project. They were given 20 minutes. Nobody died.
For this project, the Designer proposed the U.S. Border Crisis as a kind of moral crisis afflicting all Americans. The student began with an analysis of the political, social and economic forces that had generated this crisis, and led to the effective militarization of the border between two ostensible allies.
That analysis gave rise to a proposed twin set of towers, that would straddle the border. The program would provide services necessary at both ends of the border.
And its arrangement as two towers, facing each other, would allow visual and audible communication over the top of any proposed border wall.
In so doing, the project would acknowledge the reality of the U.S. border . . . that it’s a community held together by shared culture, shared ideals and family. The ‘border’ that runs through it is a political artifact of prior civilizations, and the proposed border wall is an extension of a political schema that doesn’t reflect reality for many of those living at and around the border.
In this case, the student understood the U.S. Opioid Crisis as a disaster. His research endeavored to understand how people had fallen into addiction in such large numbers, and so quickly.
This research led him to a broader scale social indictment - of a society which enables and protects pharmaceutical companies who manufacture ‘legal’ opioids and incentivizes their use at every level of the medical establishment. The cause of the disaster, in this case, is ‘us.’
This conviction gave rise to the formal strategy of the building. Situated at ground level, the building features a mirrored facade so that passersby can see themselves in the face of the clinic.
The building simultaneously acts as a lit community beacon, designed to be a situated in high crime and/or dilapidated neighborhoods where it can be a safe space for all.