*Below is an interview of the Smith Park team conducted by the Rural Studio Dining House team and edited for clarity. The speakers are listed as Dining and Park below. 

Dining: Hello, how are we all doing?

Park: Great, actually. It’s been a while, but we’ve been so busy, it’s been hard to make time to write the blog. 

Dining: Yeah, we get it: we’ve been the same way. Well, let’s just get right into it, the people are waiting! 

Park: Sure, why not? We would hate to leave the people waiting. 

Executive Review #1

Dining: Shortly after your last blog you had your first Executive Review*, a tradition around these parts. How did it go?

(*Executive Review is when the 5th-year students present their work to the school faculty, admin, and leadership for evaluation. This review determines whether the project is in the appropriate place in development and the Studio has the resources to support the project.)

Park: Well, to try to keep it short . . .

[Ahem: They didn’t.]

Park: It went well. We were pretty prepared. We showed them everything we have done, like ever. OK, well not everything, but mostly everything. Essentially, we showed some new drawings [see below] and a lot of information justifying our decisions up to this point. The response was positive. We got good feedback on the work, and eventually a decision was made to move the playground to a separate phase / another team of students. 

Dining: How did that make you feel?

Park: At first it was a little . . . surprising? We knew it was a hard and complex part of the project, but we’d been trying to make the playground work for a while. When we heard it was going to be moved out of our hands, we were a little disappointed. However, when we took some time to reflect, we realized this change is best for the project: up to that point, we had talked about play being important, but we were giving it the least amount of our budget, which was limiting its potential. 

Dining: That’s nice to hear. Being able to let go of something you’ve worked hard on is difficult. We get it. 

Park: Yeah. I mean, honestly, it’s exciting to imagine another team of students in a few years and giving the playground their all, really letting that piece of the project become its own when it’s not stuck behind a short schedule and budget.    

The team’s recent community meeting 

Dining: We see that you had another meeting with the community, which would be the first time the neighborhood around the park has seen the design. How did that go? 

Park: Fairly good. We had a decent turnout, and the weather was nice. We talked for about an hour and a half. The neighborhood feedback was positive and helpful. Hopefully, we got people excited. 

Dining: What important takeaways did they share? 

Park: Surprisingly, most of the conversation was about things we weren’t expecting. We thought it was going to be about either the playground or the trees, but the community was pretty receptive to all of that. Mostly the discussion was about our decisions on the new utilities like water and power and, specifically, how they interact with the pole barn space and the bathroom area. Anyway, it will lead us to improving the project. 

Dining House’s third set of questions looked towards the future  

Dining: So, what’s next? 

Park: Good question. We just started looking at our construction mock-ups.

Dining: This early?

Park: Well, Pig Roast is in about four weeks, which sounds crazy. But yeah, we have been measuring out and painting the walking trail, the basketball court, and some of our other pieces at the site. We are hoping this will allow us to really understand those spaces in real life, and then we can make changes based on those discoveries. We are excited about that. 

Park: After that, we’ll probably just speed ahead toward Pig Roast and the second Executive Review. Also, we’re putting together the construction documents for the first bid package so we can get dirt moving on site, with hope of pouring concrete in the near future.      

Conclusion

It seems to us that the Smith Park team is quite busy. We got some in-depth answers to our basic questions. In our opinion, the team has been working hard, and it is awesome to see them operating at such a high level. They have been in meetings with consultants, the community, and their client, and each time, they come out with a better project. We’re eager to see where the team takes the project from now until Pig Roast and even through the summer. We think next time they might actually interview us, but we don’t want to spoil anything. See you then!

– The Dining House Team