We’ve been hard at work creating our project book. Although we miss working together in studio at Red Barn, we’ve been able to use a multitude of digital tools to make collaborating online successful. The first step in creating the book was discussing what information was important and necessary to include. We identified our audiences and made the decision to create two books that could be printed separately or together.
The first book is written for a broad audience, including people without any architecture or healthcare background. It explores the causes and consequences of rural healthcare’s decline and how Hale County Hospital has remained resilient and impactful in a rapidly changing world. The second book is intended for the next student team that will design and build Hale County Hospital a new courtyard. It explores the people, community, and work that made the project possible. It also documents our understanding of context, working as a team, and posing as landscape architects.
The next step in the book making process was writing a rough outline that detailed what topics to write about in order to explain our narrative. Then we made a Google Slide presentation to order the Chapters and Section as well as write out more detailed information.
To make sure we were thinking “big-picture” we created mind maps on Mindomo to connect the non-linear ideas of the project. It was especially helpful when figuring out how to explain our design process for the courtyard.
While Jake created an InDesign template and developed graphic standards for the book, Ingrid, Nicole, and Kyra began the lengthy process of writing all of the text for the book. Once we finished writing all of the text, we sent it off to Nicole’s mother, Natalie Brown, to be proofread. Natalie has a Bachelor of Science in Education, specializing in secondary English, and a Master’s in Counseling. Her professional career included teaching and counseling for over twenty years, and she has been extremely helpful in editing our project book.
As for the layout of the book, Jake and Ingrid have been hard at work creating the spreads. We are including diagrams, images, architectural drawings, and highlighted texted throughout to add more layers of detail and understanding.
We printed off copies of the first rough draft and marked them up individually. Then we met as a team over Zoom to discuss. It took us two entire days to go through the edits all together, but the hard work was definitely worth it.
We’ll be spending the next couple of weeks creating some more diagrams, finding and inserting images into the InDesign layout, and making final edits. We look forward to sharing our final book with you soon!