Following the Smith Park team over the course of 5 new episodes, Season 2 follows the team making formwork, having busy meetings, mixing and pouring concrete, and making major progress on their mock-up. After a busy first season that saw the team working on mostly construction drawings, season 2 ups the ante and finds the team outside in the heat, working hard, and enjoying every moment of it.
Episode 1
In Episode 1, the team is in the early stages of forming up the bench part of the mock-up. Their full mock-up includes three separate concrete pours starting with the bench and ending with the walking trail. Here you’ll find them preparing the formwork and discussing how they will go about the pouring process.
Episode 2
Episode 2 follows the team as they mix and pour the concrete for the bench section of the mock-up. This was a stressful process, but the results speak for themselves, if you can wait until episode 3 that is…
Meghan broom finishing the benchBench formwork filled with concrete
Episode 3
In Episode 3, we find the team unveiling the bench mock-up and discussing the work, how they could improve, and where to go next.
Amanda removing bench formwork
Episode 4
At the end of Episode 3, the team had just finished the concrete pour for the bench section of the mock-up. In Episode 4, they begin the preparations for the first walking trail pour.
Episode 5 (season finale)
The season finale is finally here. Episode 5 sees the team pouring and finishing the concrete for the trail section of the mock-up.
finishing the concrete for the trail
Season 3?
With so much accomplished in the past few weeks, what could we possibly see the team do next? Maybe pour the next section of the mock-up? Continue drawing the project? Officially break ground on the site? You’ll have to wait and see next time 🙂
It’s been one month since the team went on indefinite hiatus, but with nothing else to do, what else could they do but come right back to where it all began? After finding success with releases such as, Halloween Reviews, Soup Roast, and now Pig Roast, the band is finally off tour and hitting the Studio to work on something the world has never seen.
Below is a subscriber exclusive look at the process behind their latest project: Smith Park.
Pig Roast: The Tour
After the team’s critically acclaimed performance at Executive Review #1, the world thought, “How could they get any better?” Well, they did and very quickly. Getting right back on track, the team spent countless days and late nights in the Studio perfecting their craft and preparing for their next big show: Pig Roast 2025.
Picture this: the stage is set, the lights are shining, and the crowd is going wild. You are second row, it’s loud, and it’s hard to pay attention to anything but your eyes are fixed to what is right in front of you. There stands the team, microphone in hand, about to blow your mind. Not so hard to picture, right? During the performance, the team showed off everything they have worked on since September, hitting all the highlights. Eventually, they ended the set with a tour of the park showing off their proposed design mocked up at full scale, never missing a beat.
Graduation: The Afterparty
Good times can’t last forever, but they certainly last a long time. Coming off stage, the team could have relaxed, could have phoned it in, but what did they do instead? They got right back on that tour bus headed for Auburn, Alabama. As successful as they were at this point, there was one thing they hadn’t done: graduate college.
In Auburn, they were met with adoring fans all packed into the arena just to get a chance to see them in person. When it was all said and done, the band showed up as students and left as rockstars.
Summer: The New Era
The tour was over. The members all took time off flying across the country on vacation. Fans heard nothing but radio silence.
However, there were rumblings in the press about a possible reunion. Team members were seen together back in Greensboro in the Studio. Soon enough it all came out.
The team was hard at work pushing the project forward even when no one thought they would be. They were familiar with fame and after staring into its eyes, they saw an opportunity—an opportunity to take the bull by its horns and push themselves to the next level. Summer is here, the team is in their new era as “leftovers,” and nothing can get in their way!
*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!
We’ve been doing great and we are so excited to show you where we’ve been since December.
Unearthing our potential
Since we last sent an update your way, a lot has changed. After the Soup Roast review, we took our winter break to not only relax but also to dive headfirst into the world of project budgeting. We wanted to better grasp the costs of our proposals and learn what we can and cannot do based on those numbers. This exercise has allowed us to explore a variety of new, and returning, options for play, landscaping, and park infrastructure with a higher level of focus.
Enough money talk! With some refined eyes, our designs have taken major steps forward as well, especially with the park’s major infrastructure. We’ve chosen material for the parking areas, the walking trail and the basketball court along with their dimensions, orientations, and placements on the site. The next step is easy: figure out how to do it!
This project rocks
Along with the budgeting, material selection, and site placements of the new infrastructure pieces, the team began our first phases of site work in mid-January. To begin working on the park’s site, we had to prepare it by removing a lot of the existing infrastructure, including perimeter and baseball field fencing, the existing basketball surface, the field light poles, the baseball dugouts, and numerous others.
Over the course of a week, the team, along with some helpers, was able to completely transform the park into a whole new space. While it might look a bit bare, we have big plans for it coming very soon!
Sowing the seeds for success
Now that the park has undergone its first phases of clean up, we have been moving right along with the project’s design and details. Since January the team has had the opportunity to meet face to face with many new visitors and reviewers.
In February, David Hill, a landscape architect and professor from Auburn, met with the team and pushed us to think about how we could use our existing designs and materials to make the park feel like a cohesive project. In March, we met with Andrew Berman, an architect from New York, and Ted Flato, an architect from Texas, who both pushed the team to think about how to make the park a beautiful space using trees and the shape of the walking trail. All of these meetings have helped the team tremendously with the advancement of the design.
So, what is next? Coming soon, we have our first executive review. This is the first of two formal project reviews that help make sure the project is on track. Between now and then, you can find us working hard but not without the occasional break outside to enjoy the springtime weather.
It’s been awhile (24 days to be exact) since we last got the chance to update you on what we have been up to. In case you missed it, in our last blog we were preparing for the annual mid-term Soup Roast review using all the feedback we heard from Halloween to push the project forward.
Well, that mid-term review has come and gone, and so has the soup.
The missing link
To get ready for the Soup Roast review, the team pushed the pedal to the metal working on all things Smith Park, creating design schemes, new drawings, and a few full-scale material mock-ups. Using the feedback and conversations we’ve had throughout the last couple of months, the team focused our design and research efforts towards the world of children’s play. The team dove into designing of early versions of play equipment using materials from the existing park, earth mounds, and chain link fencing. (We have exciting new uses for the last one!)
It’s all about connections
At the annual Soup Roast, the team was graciously visited by reviewers and long-time friends of the Studio Jake LaBarre, Jim Adamson, Damon Smith, and Tyler Smith who offered up great advice and critique to help push the project to its next destination.
During the two days of conversations and charrettes, we learned a lot about how the new play designs fit into the existing landscape of Greensboro’s parks, how to manage the budget of the project and use it as a design opportunity, and how important the social aspects of a park project are.
What’s next for the team? We are soaking in everything we learned from the final review of the semester in order to fully grasp what direction we are headed. After a quick break to enjoy some apple cider and Christmas cookies, we’ll be right back at it and ready for the new year.
Thank you all for reading and supporting everything Rural Studio this year. We cannot wait to see you in 2025!
