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.