elop*6 experience

elop*6 experience from Berner Fachhochschule BFH on Vimeo.

elop*6 Final presentations

elop6 final review intorduction from Berner Fachhochschule BFH on Vimeo.

elop6 final review Atsina from Berner Fachhochschule BFH on Vimeo.

elop6 final review Bedouin from Berner Fachhochschule BFH on Vimeo.

elop6 final review Kuchi from Berner Fachhochschule BFH on Vimeo.

elop6 final review Nukak from Berner Fachhochschule BFH on Vimeo.

elop6 final review Sami from Berner Fachhochschule BFH on Vimeo.

elop6 final review Tuareg from Berner Fachhochschule BFH on Vimeo.

Pre-Review III: The Firebird Suite

The week before Review II was productive, but rushed. We were able to rehearse our presentation, and spent more time gaining full understanding of our team's concepts. Some team members were absent from some VCs, we had some scrambling for decisions before the presentation, and were not able to get synthesis of all of the team's ideas into the document. 

Sunday 

We met to digest our coaches' and peers' comments and discuss how to move forward. We had a good VC in which we discussed the core spaces of our program: the spaces for researchers and the spaces for visitors, and the spaces where everyone merges. We discussed the layout of the research space, and asked questions like: "Will they rent the offices?" and "Could it be like a membership?".  The greatest product of this meeting was the necessity of a wishlist, where we could all communicate our thoughts on the program. Heinrich directed us all to submit our ideas to the Dropbox, and he would compile them into an Excel file. Rodrigo aided us by reminding us to remember to concern ourselves with spaces that are of the greatest benefit to our stakeholders.

Tuesday

Our goal for Tuesday's VC was to make fundamental decisions about the placement and orientation of our buildings. We had chosen this diffusion of smaller building volumes for a few reasons: a) seismic safety b) diffusion and porosity and c) integration of the built environment with the natural landscape.

Technical difficulties prevented us from having a productive meeting. For the first 30-45 minutes, a team member's connection was choppy and he was on and off the VC, able to hear us, but unable to be heard. Therefore, we could not gain an understanding of his model for the site.  One of our coaches, Andy, was present and helped to moderate the meeting. The meeting became less of a discussion and more of an argument, and emotions were running high. The team member left the Hangout, and Andy directed us to try and come up with a visual representation of our journey so far.

The team agreed that we couldn't make any decisions that day. We had two diverging concepts for the site and needed to hear everyone's thoughts before we could move on. We concluded that we would reconvene the next day to hear all of the architects' concepts, and discuss what ideas we liked the most.

How we felt after the VC...

Wednesday

We reconvened Wednesday night. This meeting was able to bring us to a better place for a few reasons: 1) Gretchen was able to talk to her local coach, John, and he was able to attend part of the meeting, 2) Rodrigo was able to attend and offer advice as well, and 3) we had less technical issues. By the end of the meeting, both Joris and Morgane were able to present their ideas, explain them, have a q&a session, and receive feedback from the coaches. We were even able to make a few decisions!

After the arguments of Tuesday, Joris listened to Andy's advice and drew a storyboard of our journey as a team over the past weeks. It was a peace offering, and the team felt unified after discussing it.  See Joris' story: here.

Joris, Morgane, and Tibo's work is presented below:

Joris' concept for the transit center

Joris' plan for the site

Plan view of building area

Morgane's explanation + references for her concept: here

Morgane's plan for the site

Tibo's diagrams and explanation of the linear park: here

John and Rodrigo offered their insights, asking us to consider this wishlist heavily, thinking about how we want our linear park to relate to the volumes of the research park, how people will travel across this space, and how we want to connect these differently functioning spaces.

Before we ended the meeting, we voted on the placement of the bus terminal (aboveground) and whether we wanted a diffuse or dense campus of buildings (a combination of both).

Thursday

Today's agenda was also optimistic, but the product of this meeting was very valuable nonetheless. Salvador presented more detailed sustainable design strategies, and Joris elaborated on his plan for the transit center.

Salvador's sustainability presentation: here

Salvador's concept for the building/bridge crossings

Joris' vision for the transit center

Section views of the transit center

We discussed the topography of the site, using these slopes/benches/volumes as both building and bridge and as a way to integrate the linear park with the research park campus. The discussion became stagnant as we realized that we had not completed Heinrich's wishlist, so we could not decide what spaces needed to be placed, and where. 

Some Bedouin Thoughts:

"We found peace with our metaphor (symbiotic succession), and we are finding good ways to connect to it with our concept. We have found a productive way to make decisions, and we survived another forest fire. We were able to get some coach feedback, came to an innovative concept (interactive museum), and were able to use the landscape to interact with the architecture to realize our concept of symbiotic succession." - Carina

"I think we have achieved great symbiotic succession after all these fires! I feel that, in a way, we were about to lose the interdisciplinary essence with so many individual proposals, but now that we talked about integrating them, and everyone is participating, I think we're back on track!" - Salvador

"I think we hit another rough patch, but our desire to keep our team unified helped us circle back into another iteration of the design process and come to a better understanding of each other's visions. I think our next proposal will be very powerful and have a much deeper connection to our metaphor and better reflect our team process." - Gretchen

Tomorrow...

So, Gretchen converted Heinrich's Excel wishlist sheets to a Google spreadsheet, and the team has been tasked with voting on their desired spaces/functions, and Heinrich will compile and analyze our concepts.

As a team, we feel much better because we are moving forward by both making our opinions heard and making decisions. 

Presentation Recordings Review 2

elop*6 Review 2 Atsina from Berner Fachhochschule BFH on Vimeo.

elop*6 Review 2 Nukak from Berner Fachhochschule BFH on Vimeo.

elop*6 Review 2 Sami from Berner Fachhochschule BFH on Vimeo.

elop*6 Review 2 Tuareg from Berner Fachhochschule BFH on Vimeo.

elop*6 Review 2 Bedouin from Berner Fachhochschule BFH on Vimeo.

elop*6 Review 2 Kuchi from Berner Fachhochschule BFH on Vimeo.

elop*6_Review 2

elop*6 review 2 presentations from team Nukak, Atsina, Sami, Kuchi, Tuareg and Bedouin.

Review I: Preparing for the Presentation & Digesting the Constructive Criticism

It looks like there is more burning in store for Team Bedouin. Our Review I wasn't a complete disaster, but after presenting for more than twice our allotted time, bombarding our audience with too many words and too much data, and losing sight of our unifying model, we have a lot of work to do before Review II.

The weeks prior to the review, we had a litany of VCs. Our first misstep was the format of these meetings; we were presenting to each other, but team members outside of the presenter's discipline were often not fully understanding the presentations. We would try to pack as many presentations into each VC as we could, which resulted in not much time to allow for questions. Due to these time constraints, confused team members would choose to not ask questions, because they didn't want to sit through a three hour VC.

At first, it was proposed that our team use Prezi to create a more interactive, stimulating presentation for the review. Gretchen prepared a template and inserted her subgroup's information, and asked the other subgroups to follow suit. Unfortunately, many team members had never used Prezi before, and so, a week after the VC in which Prezi was discussed, no one had added their information. So, the decision was made to just use Powerpoint and convert it to a PDF. 

The formatting of our presentation was attractive, but our slides were too packed. Some coaches remarked that we had too much data, not enough sketches, and most were dissuaded by the sheer number of words on each slide.

We also lost sight of our great work from the physical kick-off. We kept referencing our four visionary words (dynamic, reciprocity, layers, and trust), but became too focused on the necessary deliverables for the review, and neglected to make connections to our metaphors and our physical model. This left our audience overwhelmed with data and lost without ties to our vision. One coach imparted some good wisdom: "FILTER your data. Find what is the most important."

View our full Review I document here.

Following the review, we began a thread on the Facebook group to digest the comments from the coaches, voice our feelings of frustration and encouragement, and figure out what to do next. 

A screenshot of some of the discussion

Going forward, we felt that we needed to:
1) Bring back our narrative.
2) Meet virtually more often, and in smaller groups. 
3) Make sure each team member understands the concepts when others are presenting their ideas/findings/analyses.
4) Include our coaches on more of our meetings.
5) Find a balance between technical topics and conceptual ideas.

For the next review, we plan to:
1) Run through the presentation multiple times to ensure that time constraints are followed.
2) Start with our vision/model/program/concept, as these were given much less time during Review I.
3) Filter our data and only include the most pertinent/suitable/relevant analyses.
4) Develop a deeper vision and concept for the site.

View our plan for the upcoming weeks here.

Our first VCs

Once Team Bedouin had split up and returned to our respective home countries, the real work began. Here are some methods we have been using to keep in touch.

1. We made a Facebook group. 7/8 of our group already had Facebook accounts, so this made the most sense for chatting and other virtual communications. Most of our team members post updates on their individual work and coach meetings at their university. Important info, like meeting scheduling polls through Doodle, and links for downloading potential software, are also distributed here. 

2. We began to effectively make use of our Dropbox. At first, it was a free-for-all. We had lots of folders, but they weren't organized. We would get online for a VC, and would have to wait while everyone found the presentation files and downloaded them. Bandwidth issues began to arise frequently. So, Heinrich revamped the folder organization and created an "exchange" folder so that, before each VC, everyone would upload their files, and the team would download them before the VC started. This has proven to be a much more efficient use of our time.

3. Oh, Scopia. Do we love you or do we hate you? The first weeks were great. We learned to mute our mics when we weren't speaking, we would type messages for clarification, and we were using the non-verbal signs quite well! But then, you made things difficult. You kicked us offline, you said the ports were full, and so we had to be creative. One time, Morgane had to Skype with a few of us so we could listen to the team on Scopia! This had to stop. 

A screenshot of a Scopia session

4. We moved to Google Hangouts. We were tired of having to be tied to our computers for VCs, and liked that GH allowed us to use our smartphones to conduct conferences. We tried it out for the first time a couple of days ago, and plan on utilizing it for future VCs as well.

Physical Kick-off: Part Two

Sometimes, to create, you must first destroy. Team Bedouin acquired firsthand experience at doing both during the final days of the physical kick-off.

When faced with creating our unified physical model, we all had big ideas. We were anxious to support everyone's thoughts, and did not want to shoot any idea down. Some people grabbed maps and glue, and began to papier mache the base foam core. Some took string and began to braid cords. Some made construction paper chains. Heinrich went to the site and gathered rocks, leaves, and even a palm frond. After four frantic hours, we had created Frankenstein's monster:

Too much love!

After hearing some helpful (if hard to hear) words about our baby, we took some steps back and realized that the model had too much going on, and was not conveying a unified message.  We began to strip off some of the more confusing elements.

An intermediate step in the paring-down process

 We began to realize that the main component of our original model that conveyed meaning to us all was the palm frond. We identified with the frond; its shape, its connection to the site,  and its texture spoke to us in a way the colorful detritus did not. And so, once we had removed all of the excess, we were left with a simple, elegant model:

After the burning

By this point, it was well into the evening. Tensions were high. Some team members had left to go to the bookstore, and returned to see the model had been seriously altered. Some were offended that their hard work had been thrown out. One of the team members was catching a cold and felt awful. It was not a good environment for positive thinking.

Despite this, we banded together and went forward. The stripped model was good, but it lacked some of the connections to our four words: layers, reciprocity, dynamic, and trust. For this reason, we went back to an element of the original model, the braided cords.

Strings from the first model

 These cords conveyed trust and reciprocity to us. We felt that by arranging them in a root-like manner showed our team coming together from different disciplines, building trust, and providing a support structure for our future work together. 

The final model

The palm frond, with its exponential shape, symbolizes our upward trajectory, breaking through the foam core layer. In the beginning, we started below the site, developing metaphors, gathering information, and exchanging ideas and concepts. Once that core understanding was solidified, we would break through to the actual site, combining our expertise and tying our concepts together to create an optimal solution.

Review 1 Day 2

Presentations from teams Nukak, Bedouin and Tuareg from elop* review 1 day 2.

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!

Welcome to the elop*6 blog

Welcome everyone to the elop*6 blog. This is your platform for virtual collaboration. Enjoy the project and don't be shy to share your ideas !!

elop*6 Project Crossroads / Crossfunctions - Stanford / Palo Alto 
Physical kick-off: 6th-13th October 2013 at Stanford University
for more information see www.ahb.bfh.ch/elop

Welcome team Bedouin