International Workshop

By Laura Cragoe and Halley Bartlett

This week (Feb. 11th-15th) NDSU students collaborated with architecture and landscape architecture students from Lebanon (ALBA) and China (CQJTU) on a week long project focusing on redesigning eight different sections of the Brussels Canal.

Before we began, we were fairly intimidated to prepare for a fast paced design process as well as cultural differences and language barriers that were to come. The first day we were introduced to the other schools. Each school introduced themselves through various means. The Lebanese students presented their previous semester final project, (which was very in depth and made us feel mildly unprepared), we presented a video parody of The Office that gave a quick tour of Fargo and a humorized version of what being a student at NDSU is like (there were no students other than those from NDSU that understood the reference), and the Chinese students showed traditional artwork by their professor and spoke on their excitement to be collaborating. Following the introductions, we all listened to presentations by professors and architects from Brussels to help us prepare for our upcoming projects.

The following day all of the students were divided into groups to focus on eight different sections of the canal. We walked from north to south through of the sites. This is where we met our groups and began site analysis. This helped us to begin our first day of design work within our groups on Wednesday. Initially the design process was unorganized. A few topics needed to be addressed before we could really get started. These included: who could communicate the most clearly in which language, which programs people were proficient in, what was expected by each school's professors, and how to budget the little time we had in order to present by Friday.

Each group approached the design process differently. From dividing the project into three different sections according to schools while focusing on separate laptops, to all working together on one chalk board to think out design ideas.

After two full days of work, and a busy morning of finishing presentations, each group presented in the up and coming Centre Pompidou branch in Brussels. The presentations were about 15' each and were open to the public.

Reflecting on the experience: the biggest stressor was that many of us, NDSU, ALBA, and CQJTU students included, were overwhelmed with such a quick design turnaround. Although in the moment differences were sometimes frustrating, it proved valuable to be pushed out of our comfort zone in order to understand different ways of communicating and cultural cues. Often times, the most collaborative moments were while drawing out ideas. Graphics in themselves proved to be the best means of communication.