The last month has been a pressure cooker at Yale : the second part of spring semester is spent on the Building Project - an intensive design charette in which teams of seven conceive, design, and detail a multi-family home for the city of New Haven in four weeks.  Next Thursday, one of these designs will be selected to be built!  The excitement continues to build as we all learn the fascinating, fruitful and frustrating process of collaboration.

Last week, we had midterm reviews, and this week (in fact, tonight (Archinect is my procrastination technique)) we are finalizing the designs to go into full production mode on Monday.  It has been enlightening in learning about group dynamics (which has been supplemented by some carefully timed School of Management workshops) and introducing the importance of client (the Neighborhood Housing Services), budget, context, and constructability into the process.  I think the strength in Yale's first year lies partially within this project, as it requires us to reconcile the world of academia with the world of praxis.

More to come in the next week.  There is also a website that will be going up shortly which will track our progress in more detail after one project is chosen.

Enjoy the photos below, shot by our own Ivan Farr.