Round One
So I have begun my final studio project as of this week, the design portion anyhow. Over the last few months I have been developing a program for the project on the topic: "Visionary West Coast Urban Architecture." The project will be a trading floor for the energy industry in the western United States, conceived with the notion that such a building would promote trading renewable resources. I selected a site in the San Francisco financial district at the corner of Pine and Sansome streets, the old Pacific Stock Exchange building and adjacent buildings, to be adapted and re-used for this new purpose.
I began this project with no understanding or the energy industry or trading, so I have spent much of the last few months learning, learning, and learning... How are trades transacted? How is commodity trading different from stock trading? What are futures contracts? Who is buying and selling energy/energy resources anyway? Why is it important to have the trading floor when such complicated matters could be conducted electronically? How has the history of trade led us to the point where we can buy or sell something without it ever seeing it, touching it, or sometimes even owning it?
Several people have been of great help to me in this learning process, mainly my brother Sam who is a trader for a natural gas company in Denver, and Brent, a fellow student in my class here at the University of Oregon, who was a broker in a past life, believes in my project, and helps me a tremendous amount.
This week we began a two-week charette, initiating the project with trying to design the inside of 1-3 important spaces in the building (each of us has written a different program and so has different types of spaces to design). I naturally selected the trading floor room as the space to concentrate on, dividing it into three components: the pits, the broker booths, and the gallery (all of which should be linked to one another with but suggested boundaries). I tried to get a sense of what the character of each was in relation to one another.
This task felt incredibly difficult to me; I began grasping for a better understanding of what was going on in the space because it seemed this was the first step to decide how this iteration of the trading floor as a place would be different from, or similar to, those that have existed before it. Would the pits have card clockers in the center? How would technology be integrated into the space (this seems like a BIG issue to contend with)?
However, I was repeatedly told by Hajo (my professor/advisor on this project) and Alexander (our guest critic for the charette who has come in form Germany to participate) that I need to be freer in exploration of the design at this point. I know it is true, and usually it is never a problem for me to go off on some artful theoretical tangent, but for this project it seems more difficult than most. I think it is because I don’t understand the intended use of the space as well as I would like to.
At the minimal level of development of this interior space that I am working at, I have decided upon an ideal character for each of the three subspace types: the pits should feel centrifugal, active, and open, the booths should seem confined, relatively quiet, and somewhat calm, and the gallery should be lofty and outward—looking.
I had an interesting discussion with my friend Casey last night at happy hour; he is of the mind as a designer to make choices just because he feels like it, concerning himself with what he refers to as the “how” of things. I am totally the opposite and must have a “why” for everything, as if the more information I have in my head about the space, the better conceived the design output is. Kind of like Kant’s idea of how reason must inform the artistic gift a person has ("genius") in order for it to be communicable. Maybe this viewpoint is what has tripped me up this week, but I regret that it is inescapably my way of approaching design, or at least an approach I am not willing to give up without a fight.
I began this project with no understanding or the energy industry or trading, so I have spent much of the last few months learning, learning, and learning... How are trades transacted? How is commodity trading different from stock trading? What are futures contracts? Who is buying and selling energy/energy resources anyway? Why is it important to have the trading floor when such complicated matters could be conducted electronically? How has the history of trade led us to the point where we can buy or sell something without it ever seeing it, touching it, or sometimes even owning it?
Several people have been of great help to me in this learning process, mainly my brother Sam who is a trader for a natural gas company in Denver, and Brent, a fellow student in my class here at the University of Oregon, who was a broker in a past life, believes in my project, and helps me a tremendous amount.
This week we began a two-week charette, initiating the project with trying to design the inside of 1-3 important spaces in the building (each of us has written a different program and so has different types of spaces to design). I naturally selected the trading floor room as the space to concentrate on, dividing it into three components: the pits, the broker booths, and the gallery (all of which should be linked to one another with but suggested boundaries). I tried to get a sense of what the character of each was in relation to one another.
This task felt incredibly difficult to me; I began grasping for a better understanding of what was going on in the space because it seemed this was the first step to decide how this iteration of the trading floor as a place would be different from, or similar to, those that have existed before it. Would the pits have card clockers in the center? How would technology be integrated into the space (this seems like a BIG issue to contend with)?
However, I was repeatedly told by Hajo (my professor/advisor on this project) and Alexander (our guest critic for the charette who has come in form Germany to participate) that I need to be freer in exploration of the design at this point. I know it is true, and usually it is never a problem for me to go off on some artful theoretical tangent, but for this project it seems more difficult than most. I think it is because I don’t understand the intended use of the space as well as I would like to.
At the minimal level of development of this interior space that I am working at, I have decided upon an ideal character for each of the three subspace types: the pits should feel centrifugal, active, and open, the booths should seem confined, relatively quiet, and somewhat calm, and the gallery should be lofty and outward—looking.
I had an interesting discussion with my friend Casey last night at happy hour; he is of the mind as a designer to make choices just because he feels like it, concerning himself with what he refers to as the “how” of things. I am totally the opposite and must have a “why” for everything, as if the more information I have in my head about the space, the better conceived the design output is. Kind of like Kant’s idea of how reason must inform the artistic gift a person has ("genius") in order for it to be communicable. Maybe this viewpoint is what has tripped me up this week, but I regret that it is inescapably my way of approaching design, or at least an approach I am not willing to give up without a fight.
posted by MSR at 4:59 PM
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