COLDscapes written up in Cleveland Magazine

There was a brief yet very nice write up about the COLDscapes project and installation in a recent pressing of Cleveland Magazine where I have a really stupid line at the end. Oh well, any press is good press I suppose.

Cold Comforts (the article) via Cleveland Magazine.

COLDscapes Exhibit Opening & Book Release - 2013.11.15

So while we have been organizing the shop/gearing up for assembly of the COLDscapes pavilion (and trying to make the shop leak less in this incredible wet fall/winter transition) the good folks at the CUDC have been busy putting together the Opening Reception and it is now official.

COLDscapes Opening Reception

Nov. 15, 2013

Star Plaza, Cleveland, Ohio

5-7pm

Where you can see the winners of the 2013 COLDscapes Competition and get your very own copy of the new Urban Infill book.

See you folks there!

COLDscapes underway

Yesterday the first shipment of materials for the COLDscapes installation arrived at the shop from the mill.

We are gearing up for the installation. Pasquale and Derek from the CUDC dropped by to check out the newly arrived parts.

Date of the opening reception is November 15th, 2013 in Star Plaza. Keep the date open.

TOIstudio gearing up for fabrication of COLDstudio Snowball Pavilion for 2013 Winter deployment

Lots of things have been happening at the ol' TOIstudio homestead translating to the recent all quiet on the social media front.

The Kent State Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative has hired TOIstudio as design/fabrication consultant for the installation of the COLDstudio Competition Display Pavilion (We have been calling it COLDscapes). What began as graduate studio project has evolved into an actual physical and deployable structure.

The intent of the COLD Competition was to explore ideas to improve "livability" in cold weather cities. Ideas from protective structures to events and techniques to activate public space were explored resulting in over 80 international entries, and 3 selected winners.  The COLDstudio graduate program (of which I was an invited juror) explored creating temporary display pavilions that would illustrate cold weather living. The idea is to promote active urbanism even in inclement weather.

The selected pavilion design to display the selected competition entries is based on the design by KSU CUDC graduate student's Pasquale Esposito and Timothy Larke's "Snowball Pavilion" for the COLDstudio semester project.

COLD Studio | SNOWBALL PAVILION from KSU CUDC on Vimeo.

The CUDC team, headed by David Jurca with graduate students Pasquale Esposito and Derek Behm, in collaboration with TOIstudio are currently finessing the design to be installed for 29 days starting November 15th, 2013 in Star Plaza (1302 Euclid Ave. Cleveland, OH). The updated design remains honest to the original intent and thoughts of the team's initial proposal with some minor tweaking to increase success of functionality, constructability and deployment.

The new pavilion is being modeled in Rhino by the students and will be fabricated from CNC milled plywood mechanically fastened together for create the pavilion shell and is being studied via drawing and 3d modeling (because it is a design project). We hope to be pre-assembling the structure in the new (and undergoing renovation) Shop that TOIstudio will be moving fabrication into (more on that whole project/process later).

Assembled test model - lets us sort out which connections we still need to figure out

TOIstudio's role so far has been limited to lightly finessing the design in response to the site/use (the student team is doing all the heavy lifting) and sorting out construction issues/details in preparation for creating mill cutsheets and assembly/fabrication. We hope to preassemble the structure into "components" (you can call them "chunks") which will be delivered to the site for final assembly, almost like a large puzzle with van sized portions already figured out with the end goal of deploying the entire pavilion on site in one day. Currently we have the pavilion designed to be assembled into 12 components (which should easily fit in a van or on a trailer) and optimism remains high.  Best case scenario is that it will snow the day after the pavilion goes up.

More news on this project as it continues. So far it has been a blast and I am really excited with the process and cannot wait to start putting the full sized structure together.

pARTy in Gordon Square - 2013.06.08

pARTy in Gordon Square
Saturday, June 8th, 2013
West 65th and Detroit Ave.
Gordon Square Arts District
Cleveland, Ohio
2-11pm

Tons of events, food, food trucks, etc. While down there you can see the remains of the Binoceros (2011) installation and the Greening Gordon Square (2012) installation which is still under study (which didn't make the map/flier/etc.)

Schedule via GordonSquare.org

Join us for pARTy in Gordon Square Day  6/8/2013!

Grab a printed sheet of this schedule & guide w/ map at the information booth and use this website to navigate the events as well. Below are digital copies to help you plan & get familiar with our community.

Download the pARTy in Gordon Square Day 2013 Program Guide & Map

PDF of 2013 Guide & Map 

Front page Guide JPEG 

Back page Map JPEG

DATE/TIME	EVENT
06/08/2013 10:00 am - 8:00 pm	EcoCle 6507 Detroit Ave. – Eco CLE, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 10:00 am - 12:00 pm	FREE Classic Cartoons at Capitol Theatre Capitol Theatre, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 10:00 am - 5:30 pm	Shuttles to University Circle for Parade the Circle Lolly the Trolley Trips to Parade the Circle, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 10:00 am - 6:00 pm	Sustainable and Local CPT Parking Lot – Urban Sustainability, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 10:00 am - 2:00 pm	Talespinner and Face Painting Capitol Theatre, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm	Watch Parade the Circle CPT East Store Front, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm	Kilbane Town Tour 7200 Detroit Ave. Craciun Berry Funeral Home, Cleveland, Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 7:00 pm	Arts Exhibit CPT Parish Hall 78th Street Studios Galleries, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 8:00 pm	CLE the Best Location in the Nation - Gordon Square Arcade The Arcade 6516 Detroit Avenue, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 8:00 pm	Cleveland Designs 6501 Detroit Ave. – Zone Ward Office, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 7:00 pm	CPT Backstage Tours CPT Gordon Square, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 11:00 pm	CPT Beer Garden CPT Parking Lot – Urban Sustainability, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 7:00 pm	Food Trucks West 64th & Detoit Ave., Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 8:00 pm	GSAD information station CPT West Performance Installation, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm	Haiku Mistress The Church at CPT, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm	Health Mobile West 67th Street – NWT Stage, Cleveland, Ohio Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm	Historic Walking Tour 1390 W. 65th – Outside Capitol Theatre, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm	Housing Tours 1390 W. 65th – Outside Capitol Theatre, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 8:00 pm	Live Music on the Street 6501 Detroit Ave. Zone Office, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 8:00 pm	Near West Theatre Stage Near West Theatre, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm	Neighborhood Family Practice West 67th Street, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 8:00 pm	Reddstone Beer Garden 6702 Detroit Ave., Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 8:00 pm	Spaces Gallery Exhibit: PULL!  CPT East Store Front, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 8:00 pm	Superman’s “The Planet”  6706 Detroit Ave., Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm	Zygote Press The Arcade 6516 Detroit Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio
06/08/2013 3:00 pm - 8:00 pm	Art House, Inc Art House, Inc, Cleveland Ohio
06/08/2013 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm	Kilbane Town Tour 7200 Detroit Ave. Craciun Berry Funeral Home, Cleveland, Ohio

GGS update - "extreme weather caused truck damage"

Greening Gordon Square update:

So Cleveland got some snow.  Not an exceptionally large amount if taken over the proper duration of time, but some white stuff was dumped on us rather quickly. As I was sitting on the train on the way home it dawned on me that the Greening Gordon Square installation was probably in the path of plow trucks, having been installed on a municipal lot and all.

It was.

Not too badly though. There was some minor "reshaping" on the eastern edge of the "garden" but the detention rings were unscathed. Most likely the snowplow operator didn't even feel he hit something.

Slightly smooshed east end

West side and rings are fine, yay

Sans snow

So this past Saturday I loaded up the XBox with various tools and headed on over to assess the damage. Once all the snow had cleared I could really see that the damage was minimal (above photo). 30 minutes later everything was fixed and the site had been cleaned, ready for the next snow fall and auto impact.

This being the second time that a vehicle had damaged an installation on a parking lot I will admit to being surprised that the GardenSoxx has held up so well. There are a few splits, probably from installation as we were dragging them over the concrete and asphalt, but after meeting a honda and snowplow (that I know of) the Soxx are doing great.

The next batch of soils testing will probably be done in April, just to maximize runoff from snow and rain to see just what is going into our watershed from parking lots. In the meanwhile I am looking for good ways to measure water going through the Soxx and moisture retention (I suppose I could weigh it dry and at saturation and extrapolate based on volume). Also, if anyone has a great resource for tracking historic rainfall data that would be swell!

Ta-da! Fixed (and much cleaner)