HaleCountyHospitalCourtyard2

Knox and Hill come to Hale

January 24, 2020

Over the past couple of weeks, we (the Hale County Hospital team) have been working a lot closer with two of Auburn’s landscape architecture professors David Hill and Emily Knox. During “neckdown” week, David and the 1st-Year Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) students came out to our site to show us how to transplant rose bushes and prune vines. The following week, David and Emily came back to Rural Studio to do a day-long design workshop with us. Their feedback has been incredibly helpful and their presence is always enjoyable!

The first thing David Hill and the MLA students showed us was how to transplant the rose bushes in the marble planters. Because rose bushes have to be transplanted during the winter months while they are dormant, we are moving all eight of them to the front entrance of Hale County Hospital.

We also learned how to prune the Confederate Jasmine vines which have become overgrown on the trellis structure. Trimming back the vines allows the sunlight to filter through the trellis and creates more visibility into the courtyard.

This week, David Hill and Emily Knox came out to Rural Studio to spend a day with us developing design ideas and coming up with our spatial agenda. We began with a review of our presentation and spent the rest of the day charretting different schemes. David and Emily chose five “winners” for us to develop further and build in model form.

After two intense days of designing and model building, we re-presented the schemes to Emily and David over a call. We were unable to identify any clear winners or losers of the five schemes, so we will be developing all five of them further over the next few days. This go around, we will test how flexible all of the schemes are for maintenance, diagram how they would be used throughout the day and seasons, create small and large gathering spaces, and build more articulated models.

Having Emily Knox and David Hill assist us on the Hale County Hospital Courtyard project has been a huge help. We look forward to working with them more in the coming months!

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Super Soup Roast!

December 10, 2019

This past weekend was the biggest event of the fall semester at Rural Studio: Soup Roast! It’s a time to say goodbye to our 3rd-Year friends who are only out here for one semester, show our family and friends around this crazy place we call home, have a big review of everyone’s projects, and celebrate the life of our dear friend Johnny Parker.

The first part of our review included a walkthrough of Hale County Hospital. This gave people the opportunity to see the interior of the hospital and familiarize themselves with the courtyard.

The presentation and review took place in the Greensboro Boys & Girls Club, a 2012 Rural Studio project, which is located right across the street from Hale County Hospital. This was the first time many of our family and friends had seen our presentation, so it was fun to share what we have been working on for the past two months. We also had a large group of reviewers who came in from all over the world.

We got a lot of different feedback from the reviewers, so we’ll be taking it into consideration as we continue our design process.

At the end of the day, we headed to Faunsdale Bar & Grill for Johnny Parker’s Memorial Dinner. Members of the Rural Studio family shared their favorite Johnny Parker stories, which made us both laugh and cry. The event was one of a kind, just like Johnny Parker. Thanks to everyone who came out this weekend and helped to make it so special!

In a few days, we’ll head home for the break to have some rest and relaxation. We will return to Hale County after the new year refreshed and ready to go!

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Serious Snaking

December 4, 2019

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve spent a lot more time at Hale County Hospital meeting with our clients and working on site. We got to attend the Hospital’s logo launch, present to our clients, and make some progress on the courtyard’s drainage problems.

On November 13th, Hale County Hospital had an internal logo launch and celebration breakfast. Along with the new mural in Downtown Greensboro, you can now find the Hospital’s new logo on staff name tags, letterhead, t-shirts, and more! We love how the logo embodies Hale County Hospital’s motto of “Neighbors Helping Neighbors.”

Last week we had our first official presentation with our clients. We presented our research on Hale County Hospital and initial design ideas. It was helpful to get their feedback on the Hospital’s history and insight on how people use the courtyard today.

In order to find out if the end of the french drain is clogged, our friend Tyler came out with his mini-excavator to do some major digging. After digging about eight feet deep, we exposed the drain and were able to open up the end cap.

Now that the end of the drain is day lighted, we were able to snake the pipe to search for clogs. We found a bit of sediment build up 70′ out from the end, but we will have to drive a pipe crawler camera inside the drain to get a better look. Once the pipe crawler goes in and we have an exact location of the build up, we will know where to excavate to fix the drain.

With Soup Roast only a few days away, it’s time for us to put the finishing touches on our presentation and get ready for our guest reviewers. We can’t wait to celebrate the end of the semester this weekend with our family and friends!

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Mural Madness

November 20, 2019

As part of Hale County Hospital’s efforts to expand their visibility in the community and show off their new logo, we painted a mural on the corner of Tuscaloosa Street and Main Street in Downtown Greensboro!

The first part of making the mural involved measuring out the 16 foot circle on the wall and painting it all white. Next, we made a giant stencil of the Hale County Hospital logo from flimsy chipboard and nailed it to the wall. After that, we traced the outline onto the wall so we would be ready to start with color the next day.

Our favorite part of doing the mural was getting to spend all day painting! It was great to see members of the Hale County community come out and say hello while we were working.

We finished painting just as the sun was setting.

We’re glad the mural has been well received by the community and brings awareness to the great work going on at Hale County Hospital!

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Halloween Happenings

November 8, 2019

Halloween in Hale is unlike any other. Not only are we working all week on presentations for Halloween Reviews, but we are also racing to build our costumes in time. We decided to be Mr. Potato Heads for Halloween. We can’t remember exactly why we chose Mr. Potato Heads, but we all thought it would be hilarious and ran with the idea.

This year, the guest reviewers were Marlon Blackwell, Mike Newman, and Katrina Van Valkenburgh. They made us think hard about what elements we want to keep inside the courtyard and how to improve the existing. Presenting a project becomes a lot harder when you are inside a giant Mr. Potato Head, but we made it work.

Teams do their best to keep their costumes a secret, which makes the big Halloween reveal all the more fun. It was great to get caught up on what everyone has been working on and celebrate our hard work!

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