How do you draw a building you cannot measure?

One of the biggest struggle with working in the church is measurements and understanding what is happening inside the building.  We are not allowed in the church, as currently there are two massive cranes taking new pieces of the church each day.  The condition of the church is not structurally secure, therefore we do not want to risk going inside.  So how do you make drawings?  We counted a lot of bricks... well we did measured what we could and then we used images to fill in the rest. 

We did basic floorplans and elevation AutoCAD drawings, but more interesting was we worked on a SketchUp model.  The space is a huge volume to help us understand that we decided to model it.  Below are some pictures of model of the condition before the cranes started.  Let us know what you think.

We will be posting new construction pictures in a few days so check back!

Hello there, old friend(s)!

We can’t believe we’re almost halfway thru March!! Where, oh where, does the time go?

The past week or so has been very busy for us.  Between spring break (yes, you read that correctly, we had spring break) and helping out at our favorite place, Peaslee, it feels like its still, well… February.

Peaslee has asked us to help out with their new Safety City set up.  It is important for Peaslee to make Safety City long lasting yet effective in teaching the kids the magnitude of safety.  So, channeling our inner child, we came up with a road map template (see image below) that Peaslee will be able to use over and over again. The road map also serves as a drawing template base plan that the little ones can use for coloring or describing what they have learned. 

We also traveled up north to Dayton to meet up with Miami Professor Mary Rogero and visit Urban Krag. Did you know Urban Krag is an old church in the Oregon District that was converted into a Climbing Wall Facility? It is actually the tallest Climbing Wall in the state!! Although the church is about half the size of our church, they could fit a max of twenty-four people on the wall, and needless to say we were inspired to pursue our urban retreat facility in our church. Thanks so much to Urban Krag for giving us the behind the scenes tour, we really appreciate it and had a blast! 

Okay okay, here are some pictures of Urban Krag! You're Welcome!!

Speaking of churches, have you seen what has been happening on ours? The top clock tower of the church is now gone, and the steeple is boarded up.  We aren’t quite sure about the new roofing trusses, they are a bit hard for us to understand.  However, they are bricking back up the sides, so it is nice to see more revitalization efforts instead of old, broken roof trusses being cut down.

Again, thanks for stopping by.  Have a great week!

What could a church be re-used as?

This is the questions was have been working on for the past few weeks, we finally have an answer for you.  We want to turn it into a CLIMBING WALL FACILITY.  It might sound strange at first, but think you need high areas with an open floor plan...which is what a church is.  We have found other churches that use this idea.  We will be working next week on the design, so if you have any input let us know!

Below are links to some other church turned climbing wall facility.

Urban Krag- Dayton, OH

Awesome Wall- Liverpool, England

The moment you've all been waiting for...

… designs!  And, not to mention, we have some awesome construction photos of the renovation of the church roof (we know you’re as excited as we are)!!

We have been quite busy the past couple of weeks, charretting and designing away, sending numerous pieces of trace paper flying.  In our last post we told you about our Friday charrette, where we got our creative juices flowing about the church and the infill site to the north, which we fondly call “NorthSite.” 

Since then, we have been developing and pushing those ideas even further towards a reality.  Regarding NorthSite, we explored ideas ranging from a mixed use development, elderly housing and assisted living, to an urban farm for the community, an anchor site for a Walgreens or market rate townhouses catering to young professionals.  Taking into consideration the ideas presented, and what was essential to the neighborhood and what it needed most, we have decided to pursue elderly housing and assisted living.  Collectively, we feel this is the most needed for the neighborhood and what the neighborhood would benefit the most from. 

Below are a few of the elderly housing and assisted living schemes we have come up with thus far:

And as promised, here are the pictures of the church (below).  As I am sure you are all aware, there has been major construction going on with the church.  The stabilization of the roof has begun, however, we hear the roof was in complete failure, so the big gaps you see are where the stabilization efforts are being made.  And no, that is not a wrecking ball you see, it is a balance weight for the crane.  We are excited to see what will happen in the near future.  

Week 5

Well, we're already on week 5; the time is flying by. 

Tom Dutton has taken to hijacking Miami speakers as they arrive at the Cincinnati airport, and bringing them to speak at the Center for Community Engagement.  Thanks to this, we had a discussion with columnist Leonard Pitts Jr., bright and early Monday morning.  There were representatives from the Atlier, Miami, OTRCH, and the Homeless Coalition.  We talked to him about the effects of the internet and free news sources on the field of newspaper journalism.  He spoke about what the decline in Newspaper journalism has done to the reliability and scope of local newspapers. It brought attention to how things like that can effect the Over the Rhine area.  He also commended the efforts of smaller papers, such as Street Vibes, and discussed the importance of having more than one news source.   After the meeting,  the Atelier group stuck around and worked on tying up some loose ends at Buddy's Place.  We worked in the 4th floor social work office: sanding, hanging blinds, fixing window aprons, and some creative plumbing.  On Tuesday, we had to pretty much hit the ground running to be ready for our charette on Friday with some of our CR associates.   We've pretty much been working on developing our own design ideas.  Most of them relate to the bubble diagram in the last post.  So far, we have a lot of cool ideas for the church, and some kind of vague ideas about what to do with that big North lot.  Graham came over mid-day Wednesday to give us some direction on how to lead a charette.  We spent the rest of the time making some plan and section sets of the church building, and some site diagrams to hang up at the charette.
On Thursday night, there was a CANstruction fundraising event hosted by CR and Quandel Construction.  It was a laid back event where we got a chance to talk to some CR people, as well as a few outside contractors and related professionals.  

Church on Freeman and Findlay

Another church that has recently been adopted through OTR ADOPT is first German Reform Church on Freeman Avenue.  The church was adopted by a group, who have plans to convert it into a restaurant and music venue. Nathaniel Hammitt, a UC student with an interest in Over-the-Rhine, meet the owners and offered to help them with measuring the church out.  I had introduced him to our project, so he took me to the church and we walked around the church.  This church is in much better condition then our church.  It was interesting to see how different each church is, which make reuse a struggle.  If you are interested in participating in helping with the church Sunday, February 13 · 1:00pm - 5:00pm they are asking people to help clean it out. There is a facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=138570759540552)  if you are interested or contact us for more information.  I know for sure I will be there and some other Atelier members might join as well.

Week Four

This week was a short week due to weather.  We only worked in the office for a day in a half.  We are starting on schematic designs for the church and the north lot.  We have been thinking about turning the church into a bar, a hotel, apartments, and even a pool.  The challenge with the north site is parking.  We have two existing buildings, but the most efficient parking lot is a 120x180 foot.  There has been a lot of discussion on how do we get the parking to fit, do we get the parking to fit, etc.

Below is the diagram of the ideas we have been thinking about.

 On top of pre-design we meet with Jennifer Walke, from Model Group.  Jennifer worked with the City of Cincinnati and was in charge of the Over-the-Rhine area.  She gave us some insight into the building, as she had been inside many times.  It was nice to hear someone perspective who had been involved in the area for an extended time. She was involved in the clean up from the storm that took the clock tower down.  She has seen many proposals for the building over the years.  She has worked with the city and know the type of funding we could look into for the project.  The most important thing we got from the meeting with her was the desire to save the church.  It is a corner stone in that area and has been a marker for the residents for years.

The site visit to the Banks was interesting to see new development within the city. The Banks is a large development project right next to the Reds Stadium.  It is a mixed use project with retail, offices, and multi-range economic apartments.   We have been focusing on re-use that seeing the potential our infill project on the north site could have.  We walked through a normal apartment, a feature apartment, the retail space, and the parking garage. It was a great experience to see the new proposed city center in the building and design stages. 

 Apartment Views                               The Banks from a distance                Retail Space