URBANFRAME

This July the students of URBANFRAME set out on a challenge to design and build five 12-foot towers that captivate the unassuming commuter and provide habitat for the Chimney Swift, a native bird on decline. This photo essay attempts to capture the milestones along the way, through the eyes of the student designers. Design can be taxing. Designing with 38 minds for one project seems impossible. Before any design takes place, we acquaint ourselves with one another. What better

We woke up extra early this morning because today is the big day! The shop was buzzing with everyone making final touches. The 12-passenger van is taking a group of people to the site right this moment. Even though the exhibition is 5 hours away, we are arriving as early as possible because there may be unforeseen challenges with the site we don't know about yet. Better to be safe than sorry! Meanwhile, the meta group is dilligently hanging up origami birds for the exhibion.

The final few days of the construction is all about aesthetics. In an effort to create motion and change in this series, we have decided to go with a vertical "venetian blinds" effect. During the modeling stage of this concept, we paint the fins two different colors: pink on one side and green on the other to demonstrate different experiences from the commuter's perspective during inbound and outbound rides. But... what about when its dark? And that is when we think of applyi

From now on, we build! This morning we met at the MIT workshop on Mass Ave. to set up a place for tools, lumber and everything in between. Surprisingly, hanging the tarp to keep out the rain during those wet days ahead took much longer than expected. On the upside, being outside was a nice change from drafting/sketching/modeling in studio. This week will be about building the internal structure for the Chimney Swifts to nest and roost in. We will be using special modified pan

It is Friday, the last day of designing. We came back from a relaxing lunch after discussing our design idea of having a series of evolving chimneys that also have two-colored vertical venetian blinds. As people were trickling back into the studio, Dan told us that we would have an hour long "charette". Of course, this foreign term freaked us all out on some level. He proceeded to explain what a charette was, saying that it was a term used a long time ago where a man in a whi

In a span of a day, 5 teams came up with 5 distinct, solid ideas that incorporated topics we talked about the previous day: distortion mirage symmetry transformation illusion sensitivity balance reaction aaaaand..... "natural" to urban soft to hard light to dark unclear to clear order to disorder static to dynamic small to large Being in small teams allowed every idea to be placed on the table. Each team was able to incorporate one or several of these concepts in their design

Prompt: "make a series of 10 compelling objects". Materials: unlimited sheets of paper, glue, ruler

The job site visit was something everyone was looking forward to. Dan somehow managed to keep everyone on their toes wondering what circumstances we had to work with (or against!) until the afternoon before we left for the site next day. Marching to the railroad in our hilighter yellow t shirts, we brightened Everett a little more, especially in the dark, rainy day that greeted us. Along with the visit came a challenge: getting past a locked fence. We all got pretty creative

Today we gathered at the steps of beautiful MIT, and then headed over to an open area in the back to get to know each other and particpate in some opening activities. In this picture, everyone is doing an activity in which each person chooses someone else (without telling them) and needs to position him or herself so that there is one person between them and the person they chose. The only hint Dan gave us was that it was a geometry problem (and we all thought school was over