pavilion and public garden for a rebounding South Providence neighborhood. Through a year-long planning, design, and ...
2017-2018 Collaborative Practice Southlight 32083
The Southlight project teamed multidisciplinary design students and faculty with key community stakeholder groups to design and construct a transformational performance pavilion and public garden for a rebounding South Providence neighborhood. Through a year-long planning, design, and construction process, students gained leadership experience in all aspects of a community-engaged project. From pre-design community outreach to design charrettes to community build days, students from Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Sculpture were at the forefront of an intensive, multiphase civic project that will provide a lasting contribution to the urban realm. Southlight represents not only excellence in school-led construction, but a new design-build model in which students and faculty confront the social and economic challenges of working in a real-world urban setting along with the everyday material challenges of a hands-on construction process. In recognition of this expanded scope, the typical design-build curriculum was augmented in the following ways: -Expansion of the school’s current design-build capacity to take on a community-engaged permanent public construction involving sustained dialogue with client groups, community and government stakeholders, technical consultants, and permitting authorities. -Sustained, multi-semester engagement with community that began with pre-design and continues past project completion to include partnered programming of the facility along with continued coursework to ensure and expand upon the success of the project. -Integration of students into the project management process, including budgeting, procurement, billing, fundraising, event planning, and communications. This approach serves as an example of how school-led design-build efforts, though traditionally confined to the classroom and semester-based scheduling, may now have greater capabilities than traditional practice models in providing long term, communityengaged design solutions in complex urban contexts.
S O U T H L I G H T
The Southlight project teamed a multidisciplinary group of design students and faculty with key community stakeholder groups to design and construct a transformational performance pavilion and public garden for a rebounding South Providence neighborhood in need of safe, welcoming public spaces. Through a year-long planning, design, and construction process, students gained leadership experience in all aspects of a community-engaged project. From pre-design community outreach to design charrettes to community build days, students from Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Sculpture were at the forefront of an intensive, multiphase civic project that will provide a lasting contribution to the urban realm.
PERFORMANCE PAVILION AND PUBLIC GARDEN PROVIDENCE, RI FALL 2015 - FALL 2016
DOWNTOWN PROVIDENCE TRINITY SQUARE
CONTEXT
The Southlight project is located in Trinity Square, the meeting point of three of the most diverse neighborhoods in Providence. In the past few decades, the neighborhood has seen an influx of residents due to the development of new affordable housing. However, the neighborhood lacks adequate public spaces to serve these residents. The Southlight team collaborated on the project with the Southside Cultural Center of Rhode Island (SCCRI), the cultural and social anchor for the community. The cultural center worked with Southlight to rethink the use of their parking lot, much of which was no longer required by zoning. Seeing that SCCRI had already expanded beyond the limits of its current space, the two groups began to collaborate on a new, three-season performance venue that could activate this void in the urban fabric and become an amenity for the whole neighborhood.
ABOVE: PHOTOGRAPH OF SCCRI AND TRINITY CHURCH LEFT: AERIAL PHOTO SHOWING PROJECT CONTEXT
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
From the very beginning, the students and faculty of Southlight opened and sustained a dialogue with SCCRI, its tenant performance groups, and community stakeholders. This conversation, though at times contentious, allowed the team to explore multiple avenues to creating a project that would work for the site’s many constituents. The process, over time, allowed a consensus to emerge over how to reconfigure the site to best serve the needs of all involved. Students were at the forefront of the process, leading interviews with local residents, community design charrettes, design progress meetings, and a final presentation to the SCCRI board of directors. The students formed a community outreach team to identify and reach out to critical neighborhood stakeholders who needed to be brought into the process, including local residents, community developers, urban agricultural groups, homeless advocates, and other community activists.
DESIGN PROCESS
Students and faculty harnessed the feedback received from community meetings with information gathered through research and observation to identify problems and opportunities and to develop design solutions in response. The team began by identifying five different possible design interventions, eventually combining several strategies to create a final design that would have the maximum impact given the constraints of the project. The multidisciplinary team of students and faculty, which included architects, landscape architects, fine artists, and lighting designers, developed a design that was simultaneously imaginative and robust, working carefully through schematics as well as the technical details of the project to ensure a successful result. The team carefully explored different approaches to material, scale, and form, along with issues of sequencing and constructibility, to make sure the design could be built during the summer construction phase.
CE
NT
SOUTHLIGHT
RA
LS
T
TRINITY CHURCH
SOUTHSIDE CULTURAL CENTER TRINITY SQUARE
BRIDGHAM ST
PROPOSAL
The design proposal that resulted from this process consists of three major elements that sought to make better use of the SCCRI parking lot while making for a more welcoming public face for the center and its tenants. A new lawn and landscape was proposed to cut across the parking lot, mitigating stormwater runoff while connecting Bridgham and Central streets and creating a more welcoming public space for the neighborhood to enjoy. A new cedar fence and signage at both ends of the site would announce the building, its tenants, and its cultural programming to the neighborhood at large. The centerpiece of the design is a three-season public pavilion - a flexible space that opens on all sides and creates a beacon within the neighborhood both day and night.
DRAWING TITLES
Above: Site Plan Left: Students presenting proposal at SCCRI
CE
NT
RA
LS
T
CEDAR FENCE
RAIN GARDEN
PERFORMANCE PAVILION
CONCRETE BOLLARD/SEATING
TRINITY CHURCH
PAVER ENTRY PATH
ENTRY RAMP TO BUILDING SOUTHSIDE CULTURAL CENTER LOW GARDEN
HIGH GARDEN
NEW FENCE AND SIGNAGE BRIDGHAM ST
SITE PLAN
THE SOUTHLIGHT PAVILION
The Southlight pavilion is a luminous, flexible space that opens up in all directions using twenty-four monumental swing doors. The 25’ x 50’ space is constructed from a greenhouse kit in which small modifications were made to the structure and facade in order to transform an economical preengineered shed into a building with civic presence. The standard gable truss of the greenhouse was inverted to reduce the pitch of the roof, and standard galvanized steel profiles were combined with a tongue-andgroove translucent polycarbonate cladding to give the facade a more monolithic appearance during the day, and an uninterrupted luminous glow by night.
OPEN PAVILION
IMAGE TITLE
PAVILION SECTION SHOWING INVERTED GREENHOUSE GABLE TRUSS
IMAGE TITLE
FLEXIBLE USE
Wedding
Center Stage
The openness of the pavilion allows it to be used for many different types of events. SCCRI is home to five tenant organizations, each representing different cultures as well as different types of performing arts. On a given night, traditional theater, in-the-round storytelling, folkloric dance, or improv comedy might be performed, requiring rapid reconfiguration of seating, lighting, and stage elements. For larger events, the lawn or adjacent paved areas might be used as spillover seating, or the pavilion itself might become the backdrop for a performance or a cinematic projection surface. In addition to serving the needs of the resident performance groups, the project was seen as a neighborhood venue for weddings, potlucks, farmer’s markets, and other events, allowing SCCRI to both expand its programming and generate rental revenue for long-term viability. In addition to designing the space for maximum flexibility, the Southlight students worked with SCCRI to develop a programming and marketing plan to ensure the long-term success of the space, and consulted on the implementation of an online event calendar and booking tool to help streamline event requests.
Outdoor Performance
Informal Gathering
DETAILS
Simple, standardized details allowed quick fabrication of the pavilion’s twenty-four doors and minimal facade trim.
LANDSCAPE
By removing 10,000 square feet of asphalt from the existing parking lot, the Southlight lawn and garden serves simultaneously as public space, event venue, stormwater mitigation, and educational tool. Six thousand square feet of lawn stretch out on either side of the pavilion, creating spillover space for large events and a pleasant outdoor space for the public to use when the pavilion is closed. The rain garden at the north end collects runoff from the parking lot, as well as an attractive backdrop to the pavilion itself. The gardens facing Bridgham Street feature drought-tolerant, locally native plantings that provide a low-maintenance but lush entrance from the adjacent public way. Paved and gravel paths cut across the space, creating multiple trajectories through the urban garden.
IMAGE TITLE
LANDSCAPE DETAILS
Above: Diagram section showing relative heights of plants Below: Landscape plan with paving details and quantities
STREET PRESENCE
On both street fronts, the existing chainlink fence frame was re-clad with a custommilled cedar batten fence, allowing visibility from the street but also creating a clear boundary to the space. New signage was stenciled onto the surface, interacting with the angled profile to create a different appearance depending on angle of view. Large scale vinyl banners were designed and attached to the existing building to create an augmented street presence, and to announce the institution and its tenant organizations to the neighborhood.
LIGHTING
The pavilion itself acts as a beacon to the neighborhood, both through its civic scale and visibility and through the integration of a timed, energy efficient lighting installation that allows it to glow at night. This lighting not only announces the pavilion’s activity to the neighborhood at large, but illuminates the parking lot overnight. Integrated lighting in the landscape and fencing creates added visibility and extends the life of the space into the evening hours.
CONSTRUCTION PROCESS
Students worked with faculty, staff, and local contractors to construct the entire project in the course of eight weeks. Though foundations and electrical work were performed by licensed contractors, students planned, procured, and constructed all other elements themselves. Students worked intensively through the first month of the Summer to refine the construction details and develop shop drawings for custom wood and steel elements and to source other products. Students also actively participated in the management of the project, coordinating directly with suppliers and permitting authorities, and participating in the observation and direction of subcontractors. The students also formed a fundraising team to solicit in-kind donations of materials and services, including concrete pavers, cedar fencing, and lighting fixtures, from local suppliers. These activities allowed students to gain experience in all aspects of project execution while helping to bolster ties between SCCRI and local businesses.
PHOTOGRAPHS OF CONSTRUCTION PROCESS.
COMMUNITY BUILDING
Community outreach activities did not stop at the end of the design process, but continued through construction and postconstruction. Students organized two community build events, including a community planting day in which the gardens were collectively planted by students, faculty, and community members. The second community build day brought the broader academic community out to put all the finishing touches on the project in advance of the opening event. In both cases, the events helped communicate the aims of the project to a broader audience and to bolster neighborhood investment in the project. A small, focussed seminar class continues community outreach into the Fall 2016 semester. Students and faculty participating in the seminar continue to work with the Southside Cultural Center to complete punch list items and project handover and to ensure that the project’s success continues beyond the design and build phases. Seminar participants are simulatenously working to document the project and the process that brought it to fruition so that future collaborations between the school and community can build on its success.
OPENING DAY ACTIVITIES INCLUDED FOOD VENDORS, A RIBBONCUTTING, AND PERFORMANCES BY TENANT ORGANIZATIONS.
T H A N K
Y O U !
RISD Project Credits Design Leads Aaron Forrest, AIA (Assistant Professor, RISD Architecture; Principal, Ultramoderne) Yasmin Vobis, RA (Visiting Assistant Professor, Cooper Union; Principal, Ultramoderne) Elettra Bordonaro (Critic, RISD Architecture; Co-Founder, Light Follows Behaviour) Katy Foley, PLA (Critic, RISD Landscape Architecture) Design-Build Lead Sina Almassi Faculty Administrative Lead Laura Briggs (Department Head, RISD Architecture) Administrative Support Scheri Fultineer (Dean, Division of Architecture and Design, RISD) Jonathan Knowles (Professor, RISD Architecture) Daniel Hewett (Exec Director of Research & Partnered Programs, RISD) Sarah Sullivan (Vice President of Institutional Engagement, RISD) Sara Willett (Senior Administrative Coordinator, RISD Architecture) Architect of Record James Barnes, AIA (Professor, RISD Architecture) Structural Engineer Wilbur Yoder, AIA PE (Professor Emeritus, RISD Architecture) Design-Build Advisors Colgate Searle (Professor, Landscape Architecture) Brett Schneider (Assistant Professor, Landscape Architecture) Steven Metcalf John Bacon (HB Welding) Kyle Lloyd (Shawmut Design and Construction RISD Student Design-Build Team Yin Fu Sarp Arditi Daniel Stone Qi An Genevieve Marsh Rahul Ghera Feiyi Bie Natasha Ruiz Xichen Que William Gant Marco Aguirre Cameron Kucera Kevin Crouse Zhurong Qian Vuthy Lay Adrian Medina
Grace Gelei Mai Wenda Shen Saba Yazdjerdi Alexander Kim Yifan Kong Khue Truong Peter Kim Jingyan Zhang Jing Li Tianyu Xu Amy Long Song Du Nandi Lu Senbo Yang Robert Sugar Chloe Renee Jensen Gian Villareul
