Synthetic Proposals

You have done well in proposing designs that are infrastructural proposals, that is, considered the potentials of your design on the larger city. There is still much work to be done in developing those proposals. Yet, the ideas and basic structures are present and have been presented in ways that all can engage in the ideas'imaginings. Therefore, we are going to fold exercises 5 and 6 into one. The greater work to be done is on the schematic design for the Fens.

Your primary task is to synthesize all of the scales and modes of working into a design development level proposal for the Fens. "Synthesize" should be taken to mean that you will combine the many scales and ideas that you have explored into a complex whole. It should be a whole that is not only a composite of those parts but also an intermingling that makes something new and unique, something more than any of the individual ideas or parts would be on its own.

Your synthesis will be a new mapping. Inherent within it will be your Boston experience. It will contain a fully articulated program. It will be informed by the detailed development of one element. And its potentials on an urban scale will be evident, that is, as you develop your design for the Fens you will demonstrate how your design could be extended, transferred, or transformed onto the larger city in such a way that it enriches the city beyond the bounds of the Fens park.

"Design development" should be taken to mean that all who view your graphic and written documents have the same understanding and aesthetic imagining of the experience of your proposal. Your documents should convey clear ideas of materials, sizes of spaces, heights of elements, clear forms of all proposed physical structures, and how the person in them should feel. The expectation of "design development" is not that the proposal could be built from your documents. However, a good estimator should be able to give a very rough estimate of the cost of your proposal.