At the beginning of this semester, we were granted a tour of the Neuhoff meat packing plant and other parts of the campus. As a class we were assigned different parts of the site, some with existing buildings and some without.
My partner, Olivia Poston, and I took on the prospect of turning a 6 story slaughterhouse into a place where people would want to come and enjoy artisan stores, learn a different art, or sit at a beer garden on the roof and peer over the Cumberland River below.
We then dove into the building itself, finding geometries within the forest of columns, knocking out stacks of brick and replenishing them with glass panes, but still trying to keep the ethics of the building which is the underlying grit and angst. Through many studies of the building we realized that in order for this site to be a success we need to create a night life for it, make people want to leave Nashville and come to the outskirts to enjoy their Saturday night. We also realized that we need to address the growth of Nashville, and with that growth comes more cars and need to find different means of transportation. Therefore, we want to introduce a water taxi, where a boat can pick or drop off people form Nashville. Hopefully creating a clear path of transportation between Nashville and the cultural campus in Germantown. The last idea we wanted to introduce is a connection between the meat packing plant and other buildings that will soon inhabit the site.
Continuing with the semester, Olivia and I focused on the main core ideas of circulation, either between buildings, the river, and within our own building. We addressed it by adding paving patterns, using the old brick that was once the shell of our building, and laying it in a pattern mimicking the structure of the slaughterhouse, we also added a bridge, connecting the bridge building and the slaughterhouse into one. To address the river, we added paths that cut into the steep hill side with retaining walls, creating a terrace effect, with the retaining walls to be made of polished stone, in order to reflect things like the Nashville skyline, the river, and the cultural campus. We wanted to make these aspects a slow circulation, adhering to the sense of wonderment for tourists, or a nice resting spot for couples to come for a picnic. Within our own building, we carved a large square within the middle of the massive building, to add light, life, and a clarity to the building. The use of this outdoor square will be for an open air staggered courtyard, creating these wonderful diagonal views, peering into potential store fronts and maker workshops. The circulation of the building came around this large square, always reminding the visitors that this carved out piece is the center of the structure, and ties different aspects of the building together.
In the end of this project, we as a class created a cultural campus for visitors to come and either live, visit, and create.
