Week 2: Is it beer-thirty yet?

The neat thing about Nashville Civic Design Center is that there are so many different projects going on at once, and it is much more complicated than just urban design.  We have social scientists that study how people function in a city, what types of spaces we need in Nashville, and case studies on other successful cities.  Then we have urban designers that translate this information into design.  But since dealing with a whole city is at such a large scale, NCDC’s Plan of Nashville is a plan for what needs to happen over the next fifty years.  So there are several projects going on that are all essentially part of the big picture, which is the Plan of Nashville.  This white board in the conference room shows what the projects are, who is involved with each one, and the time frame.  So the projects are Shaping Healthy Cities, Designing Action (which is the one I am helping with), Living the Plan of Nashville, Metropolitan Planning Organization (transportation), and other fundraising.

Part of NCDC’s work is to raise awareness and educate the community about different things and to get people involved and excited about the direction our city is going.  So this summer once a week at the downtown library NCDC is hosting a film series.  This week it was a documentary on obesity. Who would have thought that obesity and design have some correlation?  What we learned was that the government’s role is to solve problems collectively that cannot be solved individually.  So by designing a city that is more walkable and has more green spaces, we could help solve this crisis of obesity.  This really is a huge issue, no pun intended, and something like two thirds of our country is overweight or obese.       

My main task this summer is to design the exhibit for the Designing Action competition that we announced last week.  Entries are due in August and the exhibit will be up for the month of September.  This is an outdoor exhibit that is across the river from the site of the competition, and I think it will be really neat.  So this week I have been coming up with concepts/ideas for the exhibit and have put six different designs in 3D for my superiors to look at and approve, which will be sometime next week.  I have also been researching local fabricators/materials/costs for our low budget. If anyone is interested the link is below, and first place gets $5,000!!!

http://www.civicdesigncenter.org/

http://www.designing-action.org/

This is Gary Gaston, the Design Director and my supervisor.  He is a UT arch grad and studied urban design in Poland.  Gary has been on numerous committees and has done countless things in Nashville including Leadership Nashville (which is a huge honor and extremely hard to get), but he is very modest and would never tell you that!  Gary really spends a lot of time with the interns, and he is a very strong leader.

Friday was a fun day because NCDC just got a technology grant so we got all new Macs.  Also, occasionally when everybody has been working really hard they say it is “beer-thirty”, so for the last couple of hours on Friday we just relaxed and hung out with each other and drank some Yazoos, which was a nice way to end the week:)

Comments

[MBR]

Thanks for the introduction of Gary -- an outstanding leader indeed! I really appreciate the introduction you give about what the NCDC is about. You may want to share a little history and the important connection to the college. I wish Knoxville had a parallel in its strength to unify a community and having such a comprehensive plan. The image of the conference room white board is quite helpful. I realize that NCDC is not a typical design firm with contractual project phases, but could you take the project you are involved with and give examples of how your work is phased? Anything to show that you understand the importance of how work is phased and expectations would be great.