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SDC
Environment
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View
from N. Central Avenue
May 8, 2002
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Program
Statement
SDC
Home Page
Sojourner-Douglass College web
site
Master
Plan Notes
| The
Program of the Sojourner-Douglass College Campus
environment
is derived from its history, mission,
location, today’s social-economic
circumstance and a VISION of the future. The purpose
of the SDC Campus is to support the process of
that vision becoming reality and to be a living
example
of it NOW; the Campus is to be the
experience of what life is to become through individual
education and betterment. This is true for student,
educator and administrator alike: in physical environment,
in symbol, in spirit, in governance, in thinking and
learning styles; the Sojourner-Douglass environment
demonstrates the College’s thesis. |
| Architecture is
the embodiment of idea in form. It is the
symbol of ideals and the reality of our
ability to achieve them. There are many reasons
for education:
personal betterment, increased earnings, the broadening
of understanding, the building of a creative and
just
society... The overreaching reason is the maturation
of a human. This is an aspiration. The environment
that
this is done in is far more than a utility; it is
the proof of that aspiration; a piece of what human
life is and can become. What we build is one measure
of our commitment to making this educational ideal
real. Else, great effort remains an abstraction. To
build with economy and without compromise; to dedicate
the effort to create a space for true learning and
creativity; to manifest, artfully, the values of the
institution; this is to practice the supreme art of
place-making. To do so over
time, with the
experience of using the envionment determining the
next phases of design and building, is to practice
the Timeless
Way of Building. |
| The
how an environment is built is as important
as the design of it. If it is built as a thing, as a
commodity, as a means only to acquire money; if it is
built with conflict and non-attention in a mean-spirited
way; it will remain an object with no soul or meaning;
it will fail except to provide for the most base of
human needs. |
| How
a building is used is not without consequence
to the spirit. Occupying the physical environment is
as important as the designing and building of it. It
is using that makes practice out of thought; living
memory out of experience. How humans employ
it is the measure of a building’s
success. |
| The
place the building makes in the world, on the
Earth, and the impact it has on the greater environment
is not neutral or insignificant; the opposite is true.
Do you teach economy and respect in an environment that
wastes and pollutes? Does, in sum, the building add
to life or take from it? How does it fit in the ecology
of it’s place and the social-economy if it’s
region? These questions have to be answered successfully
by how the building functions. |
| The
building facilitates the activities within it while
giving them meaning by connecting them to the purpose
they add up to. The building is the frame within which
each act is taken; the stage for human life. |
| The
SDC Campus serves a diverse and complex community. To
do this successfully, the Campus must bring together
a unique set of functions and capabilities rarely found
in a project of this intimate
scale. |
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Matt
Taylor
Palo Alto
August 28, 2002
SolutionBox
voice of this document:
INSIGHT • POLICY • PROGRAM
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posted:
August 28, 2002
revised:
April 24, 2003
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20020828.821912.mt
• 20021110.222581.mt •
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20030424.776129.mt •
(note:
this document is about 5% finished)
Matt
Taylor 650 814 1192
me@matttaylor.com
Copyright©
Matt Taylor 2002
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