WIDE ANGLE | The Sand Castle | PBS

I am always interested in process and how things get built. It is rare that there is an opportunity to have see how other people and firms work and try to manage processes. Tonight I happen across this fascinating documentary on PBS that follows the architecture firm Snohetta as they develop a masterplan for a new capital city in Ras al-Khaimah, UAE.

It is interesting to follow them through the process and how they present their ideas to the sheik. Through our work with our partners in LANDinc we have had some similar projects that we have worked on in Morocco and Abu Dhabi. We can definitely relate to some of their experiences, especially having to develop ideas often with little information from the clients. This is challenging for us because so many of our projects involve a close collaboration with our client. This helps to guide us and leads to establishing some boundaries. It is these constraints that often lead tthe most interesting ideas. Often I find a blank sheet of paper the most challenging design problem.

The video here is a trailer for the Wide Angle program from PBS.

Check out the full program and other interesting links on the program home page at this link. WIDE ANGLE | The Sand Castle | PBS

Young Designers

Yesterday, we facilitated a series of design workshops at Anderson Elementary School. We had the students design their ideal play environments. It was refreshing to work with them and see their enthusiasm for design.

These workshops are the initiation of the design process for a play environment for the City of Richmond. The city recognized that playgrounds have progressively evolved to the point where they have become predictable and too similar from park to park. A goal of our design for this project is to bring the fun back to children's parks and design a park that has a wider range of experiences. Now its up to us to pull these ideas together to create something unique for the city and community.