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.