Ready or not

Here we go! It's that time of year again.  That time where the design professors load us up with our first projects of the semester.  This is only after they've teased us with a very easy and relaxed first week.  Yep, this happened yesterday and it was no typical first project we were assigned. You see, we're all seniors now which means our projects just got a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more complex.  Our day started with Contract 1 at 9:40am (side note: 3 hour studio courses should not be scheduled that early).  Andy Bills, our Vice President of Enrollment, came in to speak with our class.  Our professor had already informed us that our first project would be to re-design the admissions building, Wrenn, and Mr. Bills was there to tell us all about things he'd like changed and improved.  Sounds fun right?

Well...sort of.

The initial idea sounds great.  A real-life project, that someone is actually going to view, and possibly use is something we all love.  It gives us a little extra motivation to push through the project.  However, the scope of this project is much larger than anything we have done before.  We basically are taking the most historic building on campus, and proposing renovation ideas to showcase it's full potential.  This includes preserving the history as much as possible, while also bringing it up to code, making space for more offices and tour groups, along with trying to add as many of his personal requests in as possible (like golf-cart storage, an auditorium, etc). Yeah, this will be fun..right?

It's going to be a VERY busy next few weeks around here for us.  We've never done a project this large, and I'll be honest, it's pretty overwhelming.  But, this is what we do, and this is how design school works.  You stress, you push through, you design, and when it's over you celebrate sleep.  So, we'll be designing like crazy, probably not getting nearly enough sleep, and becoming reacquainted with Norton very quickly.  Ready or not... here we go.



Coming soon:  A tour of our home away from home: Norton.