Green Corridor

June 17th, 2010, 3:12 pm

Playing around with the Birdhouses and Birdfeeders

It was a busy night this past Tuesday! Since it was the last working day of class, we had to get everything done and started to prepare the final presentation. During the first two hours of Tuesday’s class, our group combined everyone’s parts of the legacy report and did some minor editing and formatting in order to print the report on Wednesday.

After that, we began to finish up the work we left last Thursday—putting bird feeders and bird houses on the post. We punched holes on the sides and bottoms of the bird houses so that they could be screwed onto the post with ease. We went to the Ecohouse site; the concrete base was quite solid. Consequentially, it was time to put our bird houses and feeders against it and see how it would look. Rod gave us advice on how it is important to keep in mind the various angles one can examine the post from. Every angle represents a distinct meaning and focus of the post. At that point, we purchased more bird houses, and we attached them in various positions and angles in order to see how everything would fit together aesthetically. Moreover, we received a picture of a bird perched at the top of the post! Although we did not have enough time to attach the bird houses on permanently, we have left detailed plans in our legacy report on how everything will fit together. It will be a minor project for the next group of students to take on and should be completed within several days.

Mission Accomplished! That's a bird on top of the post...

Jumping Out Of The Box!

June 12th, 2010, 3:19 pm

Being Creative...

This Tuesday, our group went through the toughest night of the semester. Unfortunately, our designs for the signage were turned down again. It was suggested to find or create our own image for the sign instead of using the ones we had found. At that moment, we were very nervous and anxious for the success of our project. We felt it would not be completed by the end of the semester, since we spent over half of the semester just on the initial stage for the sign. Although hundreds of suggestions had been given by our instructors and we explored many venues, we were lost in our direction. Time does not wait. Only three classes were left to the end of the semester, and the pressures to finalize a design and erect the sign within a week were high! We took the professor’s advice, and immediately went to the Wildflower site in order to refresh our minds. Here we thought up some crazy and creative designs for the sign. Being on site, we were able to think outside of the box, literally, and new ideas just kept coming to us. The process felt very different, as though we were using a part of our brain that had been forgotten since we were 5 years old. With just under an hour, we got fifteen designs! No pain, no gain. Finally, one of our designs evoked some interest, from our professors, for which it was suggested that models be made. This would allow us to analyze our designs and give us multiple angles from which to view the sign. If approved, the next step would be to make the models into reality.

Some ideas