Review, Rinse, and Repeat

Last semester, the presentations we gave about the project talked a lot about the history and context of Hale County Hospital Courtyard, explaining nearly all of our research. As we got further along in our design process, we realized that the research-oriented presentation was no longer effective in explaining our design intentions. So over the past couple of weeks, we’ve taken a step back to rework our presentation to form a clear and concise argument for the design.

The first step in our process was to write down everything we know about the project and draw connections between facts. We then categorized what we know into two main focuses: Hospital Resilience and Health & Wellness. From there, we created supporting arguments to back up these two focuses. During the entire process, we constantly questioned how all of our knowledge could be applied through design intentions.

The next step was to story board the presentation. We organized it around the two main focuses, ending on how our knowledge led to the design intentions of the project. The focus of Hospital Resilience is about maximizing the use of their facilities, courtyard maintenance, and expanding community outreach. The focus of Health & Wellness is that the project is designed for a variety of audiences and is a desirable place to work and heal.

After a few days of presentation work, we went back to the drawing board to sketch out some of our ideas.

We concluded the week with a review from Peter Landon, Founder and Principal of Landon Bone Baker Architects in Chicago. 3rd-year professor Emily McGlohn also joined us for the review. Most of our conversation with Peter and Emily centered around our design process and how to move the three schemes we presented further. Their feedback was very helpful and exactly what we needed at the end of a long week. Moving forward, we will continue making minor changes to the presentation, but will primarily work on advancing the three design schemes.