Competitions

For the last two weeks, the studio has temporarily put a hold on work and has taken up a few design competitions. As the CSS is foremost a design studio they every so often enter a handful of design competitions.

This is a whole new experience for me and I was very observant for the first few days while I tried to figure out what was happening in the fast paced brainstorming sessions. The team I have been placed into is entered into a competition  presented by the Journal for Architecture and Urbanism titled Planetary Urbanism- Critique of the Present in the Medium of Information Design. The competion has a broad focus as connecting a heartland to its hinterland and how it relates to the urbanization of the surroundings. The brief of the project is aimed at highlighting the interconnectedness of New Orleans (heartland) with its coast land (hinterland) and the river that supports it all. We decided to focus on the shipping and port industry located in New Orleans and highlight how disconnected the city has become from its port and therefor hinders the cities urbanization on a global scale.

We must come up with a 3-4 page board including maps and designs to showcase our idea. I have been working a bit with GIS and photoshop which helps me keep up with what I learned with the programs. However, I mostly contribute to the project by finding the data to use in the maps by doing a lot of research on New Orleans, census data, historical maps etc. I never knew there were so many things to learn about for one city.

It has not been easy and there have been a lot of late work days but we can see the light and it looks as if all of our work is coming together now. However it has been a new and exciting experience for me to learn how competitions work and all the ideas and designs that come out of it. We hope to finish the projects by Monday so we can continue our work with the Water Campus exhibit.