LT Ranch project space: the distance between the user & maker diminishes
Kotov, Kristina (2012) LT Ranch project space: the distance between the user & maker diminishes. In: Architecture Live Projects Pedagogy Symposium, 24-26 May 2012, School of Architecture, Oxford Brookes University. (Unpublished)
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A brief overview of week long making workshop sessions and account of the learning environment as a student led entity in this rural landscape.
LT Ranch Project Space is located in a remote rural area in NE Lithuania. Several events have occurred in recent years, most recently; Summer School 2011. 10 students (from 5 countries) contributed from: UALChelsea MA ISD and UCA-CSA BA. Since 2005, this Space and its infrequent inhabitation has begun to shape the landscape, localness and mischief through inventions of making and stuttering discourse. The clients are students, artists, friends, myself (translator and contextualizer). Duration: between 5-7 days. This is a self-sustained environment and collaborative place. Well water, a barn-hotel/house, cooking prep: indoors/cooking on the fire at the dining area, WC without a flush handle. There is phone reception but no internet, a lake fifteen minutes walk away in case the well runs dry or the Soviet electrical infrastructure of the hamlet fails. Problem solving within the everyday rural condition plays a part of the tacit learning. Participants become quickly aware of the fragility of these relationships. Those who choose to travel there are the primary creators of various projects, encouraging the imaginary, testing ideas, filling in a 'lack' (playground, swing, robots etc), dining area. Dialogues occur in several languages, gestures and dialects. The validity of ideas, individual experiences brought to the Space are profoundly relevant and encourages peer-based learning. These ideas evolve by the end of the first day, providing a taxonomy of materials and processes the project requires, assessment, improvisation, budgeting and sourcing, implementation, siting, celebration (not always in that order). The dissemination of these events is within an on-line archive of images, films, texts, storytelling. Each years plans evolve from the year before, conversations from the meanwhile and feedback from participants. This case study will attempt a dialogue of why this Project Space may be successful through failure and the meanwhile of creating place.
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