Architecture and Design - Alive at Keene State College
Over the past few months I’ve been a guest speaker and adviser to senior students in the architecture department. Their thesis project was to develop a program, and design the buildings and grounds for The Water House, a destination spa and environmental education center being built in western Massachusetts. The studio was sponsored by the New England distributor of Marvin windows, A.W. Hastings. Prizes were offered to the top three designs, judged by me and and a dozen other landscape professionals and regional architects.
The critiques took place in the spanking new TDS Center building, a beautiful, light filled LEED certified space on the north side of campus. For the awards ceremony we dined in a well appointed banquet hall in the Student Center. Peter Hedlund from Sasaki Associates was the keynote speaker. I was warmly welcomed at Keene State by faculty members and made to feel a full participant by my co-jurors in all the proceedings. Special thanks to Donna Paley, Bartlomiej Sapeta and Chris Rawlings. Also Patrick Gordon and Walter Nicolai. Peter Newman set the tone for a constructive and thought-provoking critique. It was a pleasure to meet students and be included in their process of discovery and design. The “old” Keene of memory has been swept away. Long live the “new” Keene!