Summary Description

There were two sponsors for this project: the East St. Louis Park District provided the site, construction support, and funding through a HUD administered Community Block Grant; the University of Illinois East St. Louis Action Research Project, a consortium of faculty and students from the School of Architecture, Department of Landscape Architecture, and Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, provided additional operational and resource funds. The aim of the Action Research Project is to unite the ideas and energies of the university design community, in order to help identify and initiate improvements in the impoverished East St. Louis community.

The goals of the architecture design studio were as follows:

1. Develop teamwork as an essential component of the design process.
2. Emphasize design as a social activity - the designer has a responsibility to the environment, to the people, and to the community in which the design activity is taking place.
3. Sensitize the student to the phenomenon of architecture: space, light, materials and their connection. How the material presence of a structure can relate to our emotions and to all of our senses. How these materials, when thoughtfully brought together, can express an important idea.
4. Recognize that creativity can occur at all phases of a design project, from conceptual design to construction.
5. Explore the possibilities of whole-to-part design relationships into an actualized building project on a specific site.

Short Answers

1. A total construction budget of $2,500 was made available through a HUD Block grant awarded to the Park District for this project.
2. Any park structure needed to be designed to withstand punishment.
3. Designs were to avoid the use of shingles - they have been used as frisbees;
4. Movable or chained picnic tables have been stolen - any furnishings should be of heavy construction, or integrated into the structure.
5. Any metal will be stripped off and re-sold;
6. The Park District is open to a variety of formal and programmatic ideas;
7. The park is heavily used on summer evenings and on weekends for the following activities: family picnics, church gatherings and softball games, basketball, children's play, passive activities. The pavilion designs should address these activities, as well as proposing additional uses.

2. Success of Entry The final design integrates a large table and benches seating up to 16 adults with a translucent canopy of corrugated fiberglass. The interlocking 2x4 structure combines delicacy with strength. The organic, tree inspired form nestles well into the tree filled site.

The designers equally considered construction techniques, material choice, site conditions, and client requirements in the final design. It is their hope that the constructed pavilion is proof that a small public park structure can be both inspirational and durable.

3. Innovative and Significant Design Proceedures/Public Participation in Design Process

As the architecture studio began their work on this project, a master plan for the placement, budget and scheduling of site improvements for Virginia Park was being developed by Prof. Gary Kessler and his Research Assistant, Mindy Cohen, both of the UIUC Department of Landscape Architecture. Their ideas, the result of earlier meetings with the East St. Louis Park District, were presented several times to the architecture studio. Out of these presentations, several master plan concepts were developed.

To initiate the pavilion design process, the entire design team then met with East St. Louis Park District officials, city council members, and residents to discuss the master plan concepts. As a result of these discussions, four sites were identified as possible locations for pavilions.

In order to emphasize the studio objective of design teamwork, a cooperative design process was followed. Each of the four students selected a different site to begin the design exploration. Each site proposal tested program requirements, structural concepts, and site forces. After three days, the schemes were discussed, exchanged, and improved, and then discussed, exchanged, and improved again. After two weeks of this process, the projects were presented to the park district and residents of the Virginia Park neighborhood. One project wes selected for construction.

Because of the short period of time available for development of the design, construction and erection (three weeks), portions of the selected project - foundation, structure, and roof - were developed by individual team members. Meanwhile, the structure was critiqued by a professor of structural design. The construction sequencing and material list were developed to insure that the project was within the budgetary guidelines.

The pavilion components were shop fabricated by the students at the School of Architecture, in order to take advantage of the studio workshop. The construction was supervised by the Wood Shop Resource Assistant, who served as Research Assistant on this project. The truss configuration was laid out in masking tape on the floor, the pieces cut to size and bolted together. This process was repeated for the columns and table components.

Role and Contribution of Federal Office, Officials, and Staff:

Document author(s) : Design Studio, Summer 1994, School of Architecture
HTML by : Yinyuan Qing
Last modified: 24 October 1995 / Abhijeet Chavan

East St. Louis Action Research Project