The Hatchery | Concept Research

A forest is a mass of elements that depend on one another to grow and thrive. A forest, like anything else, builds from the ground up. It starts out small and quite simple. A few trees, a few plants, a few animals. Then, with time and the help of the components within, it builds on top of itself and begins to flourish into a lush, dense mass where everything helps everything else.

Greensboro's artsy reputation is endearing to its citizens, old and new. I imagine a person, coming to Greensboro for the first time, meandering up and down the streets in between the tall buildings of Downtown Greensboro. In my imagination, this image of this visitor is taking more of an abstract form, so bare with me and try to visualize this. I see them wandering through a forest--a thriving, flourishing forest where everything is interesting, vibrant, and intriguing. The light feathers in gently through the trees as they pick their path, careful to avoid stampedes of cheetahs and monkeys (cars and bikes..heehee). As they walk into different coves (the stores), they are inspired and mesmerized by what they see. (Are you visualizing this? Bare with me, its not over.) The person sees a clearing in the forest ahead. Even though its brighter because there are less trees, it somehow seems darker. As they linger closer, they start to zero in on slight changes in the environment around them. The vibrancy of the forest dims to a dull hue. The trees surrounding the clearing look a little charred, Finally, they reach the threshhold of this strange clearing and realize that there had been a fire here--not a terrible one, but one that destroyed what that immediate area needed to survive. The person sees tiny signs of life, like baby grass growing back on the ground, and moss covering the charred trees, signifying that this poor little clearing it isn't past the point of no return. Its just a patient, desolate plane in the middle of this thriving forest, waiting for new inhabitants to help it become useful and beautiful once again.

Ok, abstraction over. Here's the translation. This person, intrigued by all of what Greensboro has to offer, stumbles upon South Elm street and notices that there isn't much happening on a small part of it. Most of the stores are vacant, and the majority of the ones that aren't, look like they soon will be. Compared to the rest of Downtown Greensboro, that area is a little dead and needs a lot of work. In order to make it thrive like the rest of it, though, it needs inhabitants that are willing to put forth the correct amount of resources that it needs to re-flourish.

That being said, I haven't though as much about the actual design of the interior of the Hatchery, which, we all know, resides in the midst of this poor, desolate, charred area of downtown Greensboro. I know for a fact that I want lots of vertical elements within it, symbolizing the vertical element within any forest that one decides to wander through. There will be a cutout in the middle of the second floor, allowing these vertical elements to shoot up very high, creating that feeling of wonderful vertigo for the people walking around the retail space. So I won't be in the risk of my space looking too much like an actual forest, I am going to adopt inorganic manmade materials. Galvanized steel? Cement? Acrylic? Lacquered walls? I'm still debating, but I know that materiality and color are going to be quite different from an actual forest. As a person walks through the space, I want light somehow to be filtered in from different places above, giving it that walking-through-a-forest feel. The bottom floor would be darker (making that perfect for hanging artwork and aiming lights at it to highlight them) and the second floor to be lighter because it is up in the "canopy" of the forest. These are my thoughts so far--nothing too concrete, but I think I'm going in the right direction...at least I hope I am.

The Hatchery | Concept Research

The above three images were all from http://www.insider-worldwide.com/interior_design_london_tours/

The three images above remind me of the renaissance festival that I visit every fall in Huntersville. The top image reminds me of a castle. The two bottom images look organic, woodsy, and handcrafted. I think this might be a good concept for the Hatchery because the “Renaissance” times were filled with artisans, all collaborating and working together to create new works of art, which is what the hatchery is all about. We are creating this space to expose the very talented artisans within the walls of UNCG to the rest of the Greensboro community.

Material-wise, I want the walls to be gray brick, with predetermined shapes at regular intervals cut out in it and lights (light the picture above) will be placed within them. This might be just one band on the wall near the ceiling, and maybe angled up at the ceiling. I don’t want that detail to compete with the artwork being sold within the retail space. The grey brick walls loosely symbolize castle walls and the materiality within these walls will be a woodsy, organic feel. I don’t want this to be too renaissance-themed, but I do want it to have the same feel with materiality and shapes used within the space.

The Hatchery | Bubble Diagrams

The Hatchery | Inventory Investigation

The inventory of the Hatchery would consist of products from all of the different fine arts departments at UNCG.

The Art department could sell, of course, their works of art. This includes sculptures, drawings, paintings, and other artifacts they create. People specializing in photography can take beautiful photos of Greensboro and sell them as post cards.

Some people in the music school could sell their compositions they have written, if said compositions are particularly outstanding. Or if any students at UNCG have a CD that they have had recorded of themselves and their instruments, they could sell those there.

Students from the creative writing department could sell poems and stories they have written. There would be a great opportunity for collaboration between this and the art students. Maybe the art students could illustrate for the stories. Or the poems could written atop of a painting to make a cool piece of art.

The CARS department at UNCG can design clothing to sell within the shop. That would be a good incentive for them to design well-crafted clothing--the idea that it is actually going in a real store and going to be for sale. A good idea for collaboration between students would be that a graphic artist student could design a graphic and it could be printed onto t-shirts.

This is only a few ideas of pieces of art that can be sold within the store. I think that once we all put our heads together, many many more ideas will emerge. Once the idea was introduced that students from different departments could come together and work on pieces of art, the possibilities for creativity really opened up.

The Hatchery | Precedent Research

Before diving into the design of the hatchery, it is a wise idea to first look at other places that have a similar concept and elements as the hatchery. So lets start with that, shall we?

Elsewhere
Elsewhere is a museum in downtown Greensboro. It is very peculiar, but in a good way. Elsewhere is FILLED with stuff. Everywhere. As soon as you walk in, you feel like you've been enveloped by the place where your socks go when they disappear from the rest of your clothing in the dryer. Or maybe you feel like you've just fallen into the abyss between your sofa cushions. Confused? Me too. What happens in this space is that artists from all over come to elsewhere to morph its "stuff" and use it as inspiration for their works. The space is constantly shifting--its different every time I go in (which isn't a lot because, frankly, I feel like if I go too much, my chances of getting lost forever are much higher..)



The reason elsewhere is part of my precedent research is because the Hatchery is all about collaboration and the arts. In elsewhere, you can find everything you aren't looking for. There isn't a surface that isn't covered with stuff from way-back-when. The items are mostly all from decades ago, and its fun to sit and think about the people that used them or the kids that played with them. All of those things started out in different places all over the world, and now ended up in this weird space to serve a purpose far from its original intent--to inspire. When I walked in about a week ago, I was inspired! I started snapping pictures with my camera right away and ended up with these pictures that I find beautiful pieces of art in themselves:








So the moral of this story is; I think Elsewhere is a great place to remember while designing the Hatchery because it is a collaborative space that inspires people as soon as they step foot inside its doors. The hatchery should be inspirational to people too.

For more information about elsewhere, visit their website here. Or just go there!


Fairy Flair Boutique
^This is the facade of the store. Picture taken from here.^
^A fairy dress. This picture taken from here^

This boutique resides where my mother lives--in Mooresville, NC. It is a quaint little store that sells, you guessed it, fairy paraphernalia! Fairy-like dresses, wings, books, little statues, you name it. How cute. Reason its a precedent, you ask? Well. The woman that owns the store actually makes all of the clothing that she sells. While walking through the store, I can tell she focused predominantly of the textures throughout the store, many of which lie with the clothing. Sandy Hlavin, the owner/designer, works closely with clients to design the perfect dress for them. She understands the importance of listening to her clients and working hard to achieve an attractive outcome. Do you want a fairy outfit too? Here's her website! Click here!

The Coffee Break
^Both of the above photos taken from the Coffee Break website^

The Coffee Break is close to campus and serves delicious coffee. It provides a quaint atmosphere for lounging comfortably while sipping a hot mocha, whilst reading the Carolinian, doing a crossword puzzle, or facebooking on a laptop. What I really like about the coffee break, and why I've chosen it as a part of my research is because their is always local artwork for sale that is hanging on the walls. That's actually the main reason I go there a lot--to look at the artwork. It seems to bring in a lot of business.

The Carolina Renaissance Festival



^Pictures taken from the Carolina Renaissance Festival website^

Located in Huntersville, North Carolina, there is a fair that happens every October and November. It is filled with artisans of all types that come together and create an experience for its paying visitors. It has a fantasy-like Renaissance theme. As one walks through the fair, they pass by glass-blowers, pewter figurine-makers, painters, musicians, quirky plays, dancers, and many, many more. They each have a different talent to give and all of their talents add up to an amazing experience. For me, just being in the presence of so many people who have a passion for the arts makes me want to go straight home and pick up my sketchbook and start sketching away. Hopefully the hatchery will evoke that same feeling of inspiration in its visitors.

Etsy.com
^pic taken from Etsy.com^

This is a website that allows people to sell their own artwork over the internet. It works kind of in the way ebay does. You put pictures up of your art, show your price, and people who love it contact you and voila! You're artwork has been sold. Even though this precedent differs from the Hatchery because of the fact it is online, it still has kind of the same idea. There is a tab on the site that says "Customs." Once one clicks on it, they can choose from an array of different artists and request from them a custom piece of artwork. The Hatchery also has the consultation area within it for this exact reason.

The Hatchery | Intro

This new project is one that I am SO excited to start. We showed up to class about a week ago, and a grad student, miss Ashley Boycher, was waiting patiently to start her presentation. A while ago, I'm not sure how long, some people in Greensboro collaborated to design a space in downtown Greensboro that would showcase student work, as well as let people buy some of it. This space is called "The Hatchery." It would have four different spaces within it: A retail space for student work to be sold to the public; A collaboration area that would allow people from different departments to, well, collaborate, and create art together using their different skills; A consultation area for students to meet with clients; and an exhibition/performance space, which is pretty self explanatory.

It's an amazing idea because this space would bridge gaps between departments, as well as let the Greensboro community know what is going on within the walls of UNCG. Our whole city is known for its artistic vibe, and this space would only accentuate that.

Painting the Shoes Red

Over the weekend, Diana and I dipped lots and lots of shoes in red paint! They're for our guerrilla marketing project for the new Salvation Army store that we are helping to design. We are going to set them up in installations in high traffic areas around the store. We had SOOOO much fun doing this--I mean, this is something that we've never been allowed to do before. Whose parents would have dared let their children dip their shoes in paint?? None that I know.

What really made me happy about it was that the actual dipping of the shoes was also kind of a guerrilla marketing strategy in itself. Students (along with a couple visiting families) did a double-take as they passed, made a u-turn, and started chirping questions to us about what the heck we were doing. Hopefully, the image of us dipping shoes in red paint was weird enough of a memory for it to stand out to them, and they will pass it on to their friends later. Voila! Now people know a little more about Salvation Army by word-of-mouth. Anything to raise awareness. Hopefully we'll keep getting shoes so we can do this again next weekend and confuse more people. In the meantime, here are some cool images from the weekend.