Physical Kick-off: Part One

Team Bedouin's paintings

The physical kick-off week flew by. Our days were filled with ideation, metaphors, and a lot of octopi. We gathered together on Sunday evening, salivating at the thought of dinner, and didn't spare much thought to who we were being grouped with for the next few months. Like everyone else, we just wanted to stuff ourselves full of barbeque.

On Monday, we started to get to know each other. We shared our transdisciplinary and transcultural heroes. Every group member presented their personal hero, and similarities began to emerge. We noted that many of our heroes were empathetic: they were able to put themselves in others' shoes and see things from many points of view. They also defied the boundaries that society, industry, and culture tried to impose on them. Most of them had many areas of expertise, and had several fulfilling careers throughout their lives. This concept of blurred boundaries allowed us to cooperate well in designing and constructing our egg drop structure: The Bungee Egg.

Team Bedouin hard at work on their winning egg drop design.

Our finished product: The Bungee Egg

On Tuesday, we reflected on our visit to the site. We taped several site maps up on the walls and every group member, armed with Post-Its, offered their observations of the site, its climate, atmosphere, ambience, and more. Once we finished, we sat down and formulated some unified feelings about the site, and some larger concepts began to emerge.

Joris works on a map of the site.

We found that the site was a contradiction. In some ways, it felt like a desert island: a no man's land. Yet, it also served as a nexus between Palo Alto, Stanford, and the surrounding communities (Menlo Park and Mountain View) by the central corridor of El Camino Real. The identity of the site was a mystery. The Caltrain station, MacArthur Park restaurant, American Red Cross office building, and empty green space have different users and different purposes. Joris brought up the concept of heterotopia: a place with different identities, like a cemetery or a garden. We also found the site's flow to be a little confusing. The site needs a unifying landmark and a coherent circulation plan.

Exploring some metaphors...

After discussion, we began to explore some abstractions and metaphors. We began discussing the different characteristics of the octopus. We noted that its tentacles are connected to its core, its ink is used for protection, its skin can be used for camouflage, and it can change its shape to adapt to its surroundings. From this idea we jumped to other biological examples: schools of fish, crocodiles, turtles, and birds. We grasped onto the idea of different species cooperating together for their mutual success. These concepts of symbiosis and reciprocity tied together many of our examples, and we found that these ideas served as a good metaphor for the players concerning the site (the residents of Palo Alto, Stanford students and faculty, independent researchers, etc). Many of the organisms we discussed cooperate in order to achieve mutual success, safety, and, most importantly, survival. The last concept that occurred to us was that of dynamism. These biological ecosystems are ever-changing, and will not always connect and interact in the same ways.

The next day, we formulated these abstractions into more applicable models for our site. Some of the concepts we all related to were: symbiosis, reciprocity, trust, dynamic, layers, Möbius, and palimpsest.

Gretchen explains how reciprocity affects the different players on the site.

From these concepts and ideas, we drew out four that truly represented our feelings and hopes for the site: reciprocity, trust, layers, and dynamic. We broke up into smaller teams and built 3D models, shown below:

Clockwise from left: Trust, Dynamic, Layers, and Reciprocity

Closeup of our Trust model

To synthesize these four concepts and develop one unifying expression which represents our project , we revisited our previous metaphorical exercises, concept maps, and graphical representations. From these, all of the team members offered their thoughts on ideas that brought together our four separate words. Some of these ideas were: modularity, regeneration after a fire, ecological success, poetry, transition, revelations, flow, and evolution. Salvador brought up the concept of ecological succession, wherein external changes are imposed on an ecosystem and the species adapt and change in response.

In the end, we came upon the concept of  "symbiotic succession". This concept represents our hopes for the site. We want to produce a design that allows all of the different people on the site (commuters, students, residents, businesses, etc.) to work in harmony like an ecosystem. These different players should both give and take, making the site symbiotic. We also want the solution for the site to be a launching pad from which new ideas and solutions can develop.

Salvador explains the concept of ecological succession.

 Then it was time to present. We elected to tell our team's story through the use of a narrative. On the board, we drew the winding road that we had traveled over the past few days, and explained our key metaphors, words, and concepts through a story.

The path we took

Stay tuned for our next blog post about our final model!