Thanks to support from the San Francisco Arts Commission, our BEETS and teens from YAX (Youth Art Exchange) collaborated with the Advanced Architecture Firm students to design and build an outdoor, mobile meditation pavilion: an outdoor, collapsible and transportable pavilion that holds five to ten people. It will be used for quiet reflection, meditation and teaching opportunities to be built, it is installed in Koshland Community Park.
To begin the project, the students spent time visiting the site and individually presented their findings of preferred locations for the project along with other site conditions. The students then met with Community Grows to understand the organizations needs, wants and wishes for the pavilion and came up with a list of parameters. Individually, through quick model making activities, the students explored spatial concepts, scale and geometries.
Following this initial research and schematic design the students were split into three groups, each covering a unique concept and presented their final designs, through drawings, inspiration images and models to a panel of professional architects and builders. With feedback and collectively assessing pro’s and con’s of each design the students decided to move forward with two concepts to build prototypes.
The last steps for the project are to meet with the high school youth from Community Grows and present the final 2 designs; work with them to gain input and feedback and collectively select the final design concept. Once this was decided the students completed the build out of the pavilion and installed it on site on March 20th, 2019.
The mobile meditation pavilion project has given the students invaluable knowledge and skills that has provided an understanding of both architecture and construction as well as the intersection through project and industry based learning. The youth architecture team has and will continue to explore their role in activating a community; providing social, economic and environmental benefits as engaged youth as designers and builders! Congratulations to this year’s hard working BEETS, you are amazing. Thank you for this wonderful meditation pavilion for the community.
