Last night, we attended the annual award banquet for the regional chapter of CEFPI (Council for Educational Facility Planners International). CEFPI is a great group of architects, educators, and business folk who “seek to improve the places where children learn.” I’ve known of them for years now, and last year, was one of the speakers at their annual conference. After hearing about Studio H, the chapter president offered two of our students $1000 college scholarships, though they could not be awarded until this year (now our year 1 students are seniors, going to college next year). The purpose of the scholarship is to financially support students going into related fields (engineering, architecture, etc) who might eventually become members of CEFPI in a professional capacity.

Colin and Kerron, students from last year, were both accepted to NC State, Colin for Biology and Engineering, and Kerron for Computer Engineering. As two of the hardest-working students and leaders from last year’s Studio H cohort, they were natural choices for CEFPI. We all attended the banquet and were greeted by Roger Leeson and Robert Sotolongo from CEFPI, who presented the scholarships.

We are so proud of Colin and Kerron and know they will do great things in whatever field they choose to pursue, hopefully with a secret arsenal of creativity and real-world production skills thanks to Studio H! And a huge thank you to CEFPI for your important mission and for supporting young talent as they continue with their creative careers. We are forever grateful.

Before the farmstands are installed roadside, and before the school year ends, we invited one and all to come celebrate with us at the Studio H shop behind Bertie High School in Windsor, NC. The two farmstands will be on display, and our students will be there to tell you all about them.

Come on down on Tuesday, May 15th from 5-7pm to meet us, meet our students, check out the work, ask questions, and celebrate! Light refreshments will be provided.

Map to the Studio H shop here (don’t believe what Mapquest tells you):

The boys (Team Genie) are moving along on their farmstand, now with all the ribs/bays in place, ready for floor decking, siding, and built-in counter top. This farmstand will be installed in front of Town Hall in Lewiston, on or around May 17th.

The counter structure (above) will support a 30″-deep surface for selling and displaying produce.

Siding was individually rip-cut and painted, then laid out in a randomized pattern. This will be the exterior “skin” of the farm stand that you will see from the outside.

Our Project H dogs, Aidan and Junebug, cool off under the siding.

The girls’ team has their two walls up and attached to the base, and now only need their metal roof and built-in countertop space. This farmstand will be installed off of highway 308 for use by a private farmer who sells a whole array of veggies and greens.

Originally the design included three walls, however the final design is only two to allow for better access. Each of the boxes can be used for storage, or some might be closed off with flat planes to be used as signs or bulletin boards on the exterior.

Our Project H dog, Aidan, approves of the design.

The girls’ team, “Team Quad-X” has finished 1 of their 3 farmstand walls, and celebrated yesterday with some cute photos. They tested multiple configurations of the modules to make up the wall, and once decided, tilted it upright. The farmstand will consist of three of these walls and a roof in a simple (but complex!) cubic form.

Farmstand construction continues this week: target date of installation in Lewiston and on Hwy 308: May 15-17.

Team Quad-X (girls): modular cube-walls being assembled, three total will form farmstand

Last year, Studio H students designed and built (and started, as an enterprise) the Windsor Super Market: a local community farmers market for Bertie County. After a hugely successful season last spring/summer/fall, the market re-opened on April 21st for its second full season. With over 30 vendors in the association, there is an assortment of produce, homemade baked goods, crafts, jams, pickles, shrimp, and more.

We also recently added the green (W) logo on the front of the building, which was designed to be a billboard for the market and the town of Windsor.

Visit the Windsor Super Market website via Facebook here, and come on by every Saturday from 9-1am.

With just one month left of school, our “boys vs. girls” construction challenge is about half-way complete. The two farmstands are starting to take shape after many rounds of design development, prototyping, and the production of working shop drawings. Here is the breakdown:

Girls (aka “Team Quad-X”): The girls’ design consists of a three-walled cube made up of smaller cubes, set on a base. The entire structure will be picked up and moved, as a single unit, to its destination in either downtown Lewiston-Woodville or on a rural road near a family farm (this ability to be moved on a trailer bed was one of the design requirements and also dictated the 10-foot x 10-foot maximum footprint). The girls have been hard at work constructing the smaller cube modules, which will be stacked together in semi-random patterns to form the three walls.

Model of girls’ farmstand

Boys (aka “Team Genie”): The boys’ team was inspired by the motion of a magic carpet (some say it looks like an elephant, too), hence their team name, “Team Genie.” The structure itself is formed by parallel ribs which come up and over a central selling space and fly out in a cantilevered awning. The rounded shape of the ribs is formed by cutting individual segments out with a jigsaw, then bolting them together with steel reinforcement. Atop the ribs, the siding will run horizontally, creating the smooth external surface for the farmstand. The boys are working on assembling each of the ribs, and have also cut out many of the siding strips, which will be painted in dark gray with the occasional green strip. Because the structural ribs require steel enforcements, the boys are also learning new skills in the metalshop- welding, cutting, and grinding the required steel pieces.

Model of the structural ribs (without siding)

After our critique, we voted on the farmstand design schemes that would be most interesting and most realistic to build within 8 weeks and deliver on site. After combining a few concepts and taking into account budget and materials, we landed on two schemes (rather than 3 farmstands) to build full-scale, with a third mini-project that would include built-in furniture and other related components.

The first scheme was a combination of Ryann’s “vented” structural component walls and Leanna’s lattice-work structure. The second was a revision on Davis and Austin’s “magic carpet” design with a curved profile that went from floor to walls to ceiling. As it turned out, and as we worked through the team dynamics with students, trying to figure out who would be on team Ryann/Leanna, and who would be on team Davis/Austin, it was naturally proposed that we should run this construction phase as a “battle of the sexes,” with one team of girls and one team of boys. Because we have an odd number, Raleigh was left to decide if he wanted to be on the girls or boys team. He chose the girls team.

As we began moving from design development to construction, the teams also thought it was a good idea to name themselves, the girls choosing the name Quad-X, and the boys Team Genie (in reference to their magic carpet design). The girls did not waste time, however, before changing the boys team name, written on the board, from Team Genie to Team Wenie.

Both designs are buildable primarily because of their component systems. Each one can be broken down into reasonable parts that can be produced in great quantities on either on the table saw, laser cutter, or chop saw. These components can then be assembled by the team. In this case, the precedent studies were very helpful in building students’ understanding of structural systems that could be realistically produced under the tight constraints of time, budget, and material.

We will be building the two farmstands in class the next month or so, with final delivery to the town of Lewiston-Woodville and an individual farmer out on Highway 308 in mid-May.

On Friday, we loaded up the Bertie County Schools activity bus (here’s where Matt’s school bus driver’s license comes in especially handy) and took a field trip 5 miles down the road to the Windsor Super Market, the farmers market structure designed and built by our Studio H students last year. We thought it would be a good precedent to examine as our current students move from the design phase to the build phase of their own farmstand structures for around the county.

Matt walked students through the structure, touching on a few highlights: the height of the building for ventilation and “grandeur,” the structural requirements in the hurricane and flood zone, the locally sourced materials, the design of the rear vendor entry as loading dock, the slope of the pedestrian access ramp, code requirements for hardware used, and more. Students had great questions that almost all started with “Why…..?”

We talk a lot about being deliberate about design, and we ask students not to make design decisions merely for form or merely for function, but to think through why a solution is smart. Last year, for example, we were forced to build the structure at three feet above base flood elevation, which is not ideal, as it means the deck of the building must be high and thus posits certain access requirements that can result in higher construction costs. However, last year’s students saw this as an opportunity for vendors, many of whom load up their goods in the back of their pick-up trucks. The truck beds were at roughly the same height as required deck height, so the rear of the building acted perfectly as a loading spot in which vendors could unload their goods directly into their own booth. On the front side, the slope of the site created some challenges for pouring the foundation, but also led students to the very smart decision to set the pedestrian path into the ground to follow the slope of the site, rather than be a freestanding and less “natural” structure.

After our discussion, we asked students to spread out and draw the building from afar, from within, as an object, and in detail. Since we have learned how to do both gestural drawings (quick sketches of something’s “essence”) and also diagrams (of light, ventilation, circulation, siting, etc), students had multiple tools at their disposal to best interpret the building in two dimensions.

Seeing this full-scale piece of architecture will hopefully provide some inspiration for this year’s students as they move forward with their own designs. We want our students to see their design and architectural work as deliberate, response to a context, and a representation of their own vision, and the farmers market from last year’s students certainly stands as a good example of all three.