2000 Band Stands : Project [DBB]

The initial design-build Studio consisted of a project for the non-profit Mountain Town Stages, a group promoting free outdoor music in the downtown of an historic resort town and ski area.

For the project, a group of 13 graduate students were given the task of designing and constructing three bandstands.

For the students it was an eye-opening experience in which practical issues of construction, theory, materials, acoustics, and the realities of public oversight had to be resolved simultaneously.

For the program, the experience was equally startling as the introduction of such an experimental approach to teaching, one based on active participation, was often a contentious fit within a larger academic program that valued a more detached and theoretical method of training.

The end product has not only been welcomed and enthusiastically used by the Park City public, but it also proved that the opportunity for students to assume a more active role in the architecture of their own education and design of their local communities can be a valuable and viable method of learning, not to mention connection with and the all important real sense of place and accomplishment.

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