Established in 1990, Retrospect is an annual public outreach event organized by the Dallas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Hosted at the NorthPark Center (a prominent Dallas mall), its purpose is to introduce Dallas-area design firms to the local community and raise funds for the Dallas AIA Chapter. The exhibition consists of three-dimensional displays demonstrating how designers can lead efforts toward making our cities better places to reside. This was the third year SWA Dallas participated in the event along with 20 other firms.
Our project investigated the quantity of park space in Dallas, both in its entirety and by council district. The outcome was an unbiased survey of one of our city’s most valuable assets—quality open space. Each of our seven frames represented two council districts and highlighted the percentage of park space to total area. The green space was represented by air plants suspended within each frame. The amounts varied greatly from district to district, which meant that the quantity of air plants intensified as the viewer peered through the installation from multiple vantage points. Dallas can currently claim just seven percent of parks space.
The process from start to finish lasted about a month and served as a great opportunity to bring the office together to creatively explore ideas apart from the normal scope of our work. Over the course of a few lunch and happy hour meetings, we honed in on a concept and began figuring out how to materialize it. Week one involved sketching ideas and reaching out to local fabricators for access to more sophisticated machinery to help realize our vision. When digital fabrication proved to be a dead end, we hit the drawing board once again and prepared to make the installation ourselves the old-fashioned way. It was time to get our hands dirty. Week two was spent roaming the aisles of Home Depot purchasing supplies and mocking up the frames and concrete base to help us better understand what we were getting ourselves into.
After working out (most) of the bugs during week two, weeks three and four were all about production. We hit plenty of snags along the way, but each forced us to take a step back, reconsider certain aspects of the project, and ultimately improve our vision. We greatly underestimated the amount of paint needed, and three quarters of the way through hit supply issues with the particular color we were using. Nearly finished with the installation, we had to go back and revise our strategy. Attempting to juggle our busy office schedules with finalizing the design and construction of our installation led to many late nights toward the end of the process, but fueled by Coronitas and home-cooked fajitas (props to Luis Carrera’s family!), everything came together nicely.
Special thanks to Donny Zellefrow, Luis Carrera, Jean-Pierre Casillas, Yuan Ren, Amanda Kronk, Leah Hales, and Jianchun Zhu for their ideas, sweat, and help along the way.
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