Week Three

This week our work was mainly divided into finalizing the submission for the NCARB Competition and continuing to develop our preliminary drawings for the church on 1429 Race Street. After another meeting with CR architecture + design’s marketing group, a few more proofs, and many more tweaks, by Friday, our NCARB submittal boards were finally looking polished enough to be turned in. Now we can begin to devote all of our attention to the Atelier Project.

We were surprised to hear at the beginning of the week that we were in fact going to be able to do a site visit of the 1429 Race St. church on Friday with Brad Rodgers, the structural engineer. We wanted to have our existing conditions drawings of the church as developed as we could for our meeting with Brad. Our tape measures could only reach so high, so we had to rely on counting bricks to draft up the exterior elevations. The interior, however, was still a mystery. Despite getting a hold of more photos showing what has happening inside the church, the lack of information has made it very hard to draft up plan and section drawings, leaving us guessing about many aspects of the building. We were very excited to get to go inside the church and see what was really going on in there. Unfortunately, wisdom prevailed and it was decided that we wouldn’t get access until after the stabilization. Instead, we were able to meet with Brad on Friday at CR architecture + design. He was able to clarify a lot of our questions regarding the layout of the church as well as inform us about the structural condition of the church.

On Friday we also had a mixed-use planning session with Graham Kalbli and Sari Lehtinen at CR architecture + design. We gained a lot of valuable information about how to design for a mixed-use urban site such as the one on the corner of 1505 Race Street, across from the church. In essence, parking will play a major role in shaping the layout of our design. We will also have to take a formulaic approach to coming up with the ideal mix of unit types, retail/office space, and parking spots to make such a project feasible.

This Saturday, some of us went to another design charrette hosted by Architecture for Humanity. The Charrette was to be held from 9am – 12pm at UC’s Niehoff Studio and would cover 2 urban gardening projects in Over-the-Rhine. Stay tuned for an update!