Sunday, March 1, 2009

Fantastic Four

Tasked with interviewing four students around campus I asked each of them the following questions:
1. Department
2. How do you define community?
3. Do you feel it exists at RISD?
4. What do you feel are the most important spaces on campus?
5. Why do you feel these are the most important?
6. Do you think these spaces encourage/strengthen community?
7. Was this the intention of these spaces?
8. How do you feel about the spaces around campus designed to encourage community?


I.D. Junior:
I.D. Building
161 South Main St

1. Industrial Design

2. A group of people that in some way provide support for their members. I think of archetypes like small church communities or old small villages.

3. Yes, sort of. I don’t feel like there is an institution of community but we do all have some sense of community with our department and with the friends we have made outside it. For example I feel like peter reiffler was part of my community here.

4. The shops in the ID building. I meet with my friends there and it provides my only sense of community.

5. Without them I would feel lost and have no home. They are the most important because that is where I spend the most time.

6. Yes

7. No. It is natural, people need help, people provide help, community starts to get knitted automatically.

8. I think that the portfolio does this okay, probably because they identified a place were lots of people would meet and then designed it to allow this activity. As far as a place that encourages community, the library has those small meeting rooms that are really nice. I think that a lot of people meet there who would not because of those spaces.


Furniture Grad:
Metcalf building
South Main St

1. Furniture

2. Groups of people brought together by common interest(s) and desires that mutuallybenefit one another.

3. Sort of. More through faculty/staff and less through students. I think it happens more through a shared passion for creating. It functions more like a family than a community, some are close some are estranged but we support each other cause that’s what families do.

4. The shops and places of production related to current studios and their needs.

5. Specific disciplines require relationships to be created between hands, tools and people. Hands working create a vehicle for emotional connections.

6. They can. Machines require trust and interaction between users.

7. No

8. The Tap Room means more due to its student driven, organic nature. Provided spaces are less successful. The lower the student involvement the less successful a space is. Frequent change is good. A sense of ownership is key to the sustained success of a space. Ownership develops a sense of pride in a space and means it will be taken care of by its occupants without this ownership the space cannot survive or thrive.


Apparel Senior:
Apparel Studios
Market Square (above Auditorium)

1. Apparel

2. It exists in physical space and also the intangible space created between people interacting. It forms through people relationships with both as well as the commonalities that bring them together.

3. Departmental community is easier. Institutional community is not as personal.

4. Studios & workshops, Interactive spaces outside of studio. Also Liberal Arts, which allow casual interactions outside of work.

5. They are open places where you can be yourself or interact with others or escape or come up for air or all or some of these.

6. In studio it happens out of necessity, it is sort of forced to happen. It also happens in places like the Tap Room it happens voluntarily. Neither is bad just different.

7. Yes but in a broad sense

8. We need more. There is not enough space to fulfill the needs and desires of the RISD community. Club Groups’ spaces are arbitrarily decided week-to-week. Consistency of space allows awareness of its purpose to grow. The Tap Room has been successful at this for one-time events.


Painting Junior:
What Cheer Studios
160 Benefit St

1. Painting

2. It is intangible. Don’t know how to define it but you recognize it when you experience it. I guess the textbook definition would be a group of people wit similar interests, goals and values helping each other accomplish them.

3. Not last year. I have a new philosophy this year: you get what you give. It is naïve to think it simply exists and you can have it for nothing.

4. Wherever you need them to be. Places you can eat pizza or places outside to get some air.

5. Don’t sh*# where you eat

6. Any space can be a catalyst for the growth or strengthening of a community, It can happen anywhere and in unexpected ways. I’m leary of assigning potential to specific spaces.

7. N/A

8. They are underutilized. They’re like the teen rec centers that towns create to stop the teens from hanging out in front of the 7/111, yet they still hang out in front of the 7/11. The more contrived a thing the less desirable it becomes. “YOU CAN’T FAKE THE FUNK!”

The general sentiment around campus regarding space and community seems to flow along the same path. The responses are all variations of the same answer. It seems community exists in pockets around RISD but not campus-wide. Mostly the designed community spaces are lacking or ineffective. It would be great to be involved in a larger RISD community! We are so busy there really isn’t time etc, etc, etc. I find it at once disheartening and motivating. Many a feel distinct lack of RISD-wide community, and wish there was. What seems to be lacking is a catalyst, a space, a personality or both. To the way you fabricate a man-made diamond is t place a tiny spec of real diamond at its core.

Once again considering questions of spaces and community around campus while reading Relational Aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud this statement, regarding installations, rings in clear reflection of concepts put forth by Jane Jacobs “They create free spaces and periods of time whose rhythms are not the same as those that organize everyday life, and they encourage an inter-human intercourse which is different from the ‘zones of communication’ that are forced upon us”. The challenge of those attempting to encourage community is; how does one design that which must grow organically, how to create environments that allow, what Jacobs refers to as, casual, public contact? Jacobs believes this cannot be institutionalized, that it must evolve naturally with the help of public characters. Much of what Jacobs said rings true, at least in my view, and yet I believe there must be a way. Perhaps it cannot be institutionalized, but it can be encouraged and certainly nurtured. How could we foster that sense of ownership? I personally do not believe that a large, expensive “student union” would work at RISD as it does at other universities. The climate at RISD, though not unique, is very different from a “normal” university. We do not really have a lot of non-academic reasons to gather or that encourage a school-wide sense of belonging, like interschool sports competition (at least not seriously) for example. What do we have? WORK. We take, perhaps an unhealthy, pride in how much we work. What is our work? Creative expression. For this reason the concept, put forth in Relational Aesthetics, of an installation creating a temporary space conducive to casual social interaction seems an appropriate avenue of exploration. Creative works are a plentiful resource here at RISD. Apparel senior “It exists in physical space and also the intangible space created between people interacting” Perhaps it is the permanent space combined with an ephemeral experience that makes a social space successful. Can an ephemeral space with a permanent experience be just as effective? Perhaps this is part of the appeal of the workshops around campus the space and characters are constant but the work is constantly changing. A new experience to be had with each encounter with said space. It is in the novelty of experience, be it people or objects, contained within the familiar that we find appeal because it is comfortable and different at the same time.
-Diau

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