St. Augustine: Experience Reconstructed

PROJECT 1 : re-thinking a promenade

The semester will begin with an analysis of the city of St. Augustine and the construction of two urban interventions. We will engage with the city of St. Augustine at a many scales and times to produce an analytical interpretation [from analysis to synthesis] that will serve as the armature for interventions. The first two weeks are reserved for the analysis part of the exercise which will be the mapping, re-thinking and re-construction of a promenade connecting two sites that you will choose for your interventions.

The programmatic charge of the interventions will be developed by you as a narrative constructed upon the specific place characters of the two sites. The re-constructed promenade between the two sites will be an imaginary / speculative / synthetic armature based on the memory of the two sites merging into the experiential qualities of the walk space between them.

Thus, your own experience of both the sites and the itinerary between them is the necessary starting point for the exercise. Understanding the notion of ‘analysis’ in terms of ‘probing’ questions specifically asked to ‘do’ something, to ‘intervene’ with the original object rather than ‘representing’ it will be a main pedagogical concern throughout the term.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Along the River at St. Francis Looking North

Looking north. Not quite straight, hard, thick edge, moves toward the horizon but shifts left and disappears around the edge of palms and homes. Wide metal planes extend over dark horizontal gaps segmented by vertical posts doubled in height by rippled glassy reflection. Beyond, the thin line of bridge is colonized by chunks of construction that block and slash the horizon. It extends across the water with effort.

Over this edge...

The water has receded leaving the hard edge made by the wall with less to do. Rigid skeleton homes of shellfish periodically puncture the surface of shimmering satutated silt, at times in clusters. A pocket of miso water with edge smooth rounded and teeming with flicking and fluttering critters is trapped away from the body of water, amputated.