Project Details

The Fall 2007 graduate architecture studio led by Phoebe Crisman collaborated with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) to design a new Education Center for their educational outreach activities in the Hampton Roads region. The project includes public exhibit and event spaces, staff offices and conference rooms, outdoor education spaces and a dock for their 42' educational vessel. Each student proposed one important addition to the program that could spatially, formally and socially transform this place of learning and working. Students analyzed several sites under consideration by CBF and made a critical design proposal for an educational field station at the threshold of land and water. The research investigation focused on several issues: the ethical and ecological responsibility of architecture, the didactic possibilities for architecture, opportunites generated by the programmatic combination of public and private activities, scalar juxtaposition and its architectural manifestation from the individual human subject to the River, the liminal zone between land and water, the making of rich and appropriate rooms and assemblies of rooms both inside and outside, temporal change, importance of the bodily senses to architecture, and rich tectonic and material development. The design research was presented to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation Board of Directors in January 2008.

Publications

Crisman, P. "Environmental and Social Action in the Studio: Three Live Projects along the Elizabeth River," in Agency: Working with Uncertain Architectures. F. Kossak, D.Petruscu, eds. (London: Routledge, 2010): 32-46.