Recap: April: Caffeinated Soap and What We Do

Back on April 7th we had our "Living Unit" critique. Highlights included Erin and Melissa's caffeinated soap model, to which they replied, "It was raining, so we couldn't use resin." The emphasis on this crit seemed to be mostly on water filtration. Lili mentioned the city of Fez in Morocco that is designed to flush out periodically (though its method is impromptu). Other highlights were Morgan and Daisuke's "Living Shower", "monsoons-on-demand" (Kelly & I), living units as stormwater management (Stephen & Filomena), ghats as dwelling (Mike & Christian), manipulative walls (Devon & Colleen), Ji Hyun & Jong's water filtration as a grid, "distinguishing the generational transformation" (Bo Young & Atisha), community and individualism as a network (Shannon & Josh), Lizzy and Maren with their "wall as living unit", and Hao-Hsin's and Sally's idea of wall manipulation for experiential micro-climates.

What We Do

What We Do premiered at RISD on a torrential, rainy April 11th. As you might remember, it was a student-run initiative to show the RISD community and public what exactly we do in our various departments and disciplines. I suspect that the event was a response to either the real or perceived isolation that happens at the school. :)

Maren and Melissa volunteered to give a powerpoint presentation on our trip to India. There was an initial hardware problem, but eventually the WhatWeDo people got the projector working. One of the things presented was the "questions for the studio" probably better known to all of us as "The Mutiny" which happened during our trip. I never blogged about it because I failed to understand why people were upset. Now I can finally understand the hullabaloo from the following slide:

If you can't read it, it says:

• Why Kalighat?
• Why the red light district?
• What is its significance if we are complety re-designing the area?
• How do we know and design for the needs of the people of Kolkata?
• Should this be designed by Indians?
• What can we do with the canal?
• Have you seen the canal?
• Really?
• Are we housing the people we're displacing with the project?
• How do you design a site-specific, hypothetical model to be applied elsewhere?
• How do we treat site-specificity in this case?
• How do we maintain all of the religious needs of the site--processing sacrificed goats, running bodies to the crematorium, etc--while making it a comfortable place for tourists?
• Do we design for those necessities?
• What do we do with trash?
• Do we design a new sewer/sewage system for the area?
• How do we deal with our own emotional and physical discomfort while analyzing the site?
  

The next post will cover our Mid-Term critique on April 14th. Stay tuned!