General Technicalities
This piece of artwork will be applied to is the exterior wall of the Acopian Engineering Center facing the Markle Admissions Building.
Figure 11: Exterior Façade of Acopian as captured by Nia Holland ( 2018)
As shown in the image above, this wall has 16 rectangular, glass windows on it. Each window is a single hung window with a fixed window above meaning that only one of the glass sections is movable (Wilford-Hunt, 2018b). These windows helped us to narrow down our design ideas because we did not want to build or make anything that would cover them. This is because, currently, Acopian already has few windows that provide a view to the exterior and natural light. Many students, as we learned throughout our student panelists sections, states that they did not believe Acopian provides enough natural lighting into its classrooms. Another part of Acopian that condensed our design ideas was that Acopian is already a standing structure which means that we had to figure out a way to work with the space that we were given since the skeleton or location of the building can not change.
The wall is a brick surface that is a flemish bond brick structure design. This means that the bricks alternate from having its long side, or stretchers, towards the exterior and then its face, or headers, towards the exterior. Brick walls have a variety of different physical characteristics that require different types of maintenance and construction strategies to improve the quality and appearance of the wall. The three main maintenance and construction strategies include repointing, efflorescence, and expansion control. Repointing is a process that occurs because over times the joints in between the bricks will begin to decay as a result of allowance of too much water to enter in between them. Efflorescence is when a type of white or greyish salt like powder appears when too much water evaporates from the surface. The last is expansion control which is the expansion of bricks. Naturally, bricks will expand and move as they are exposed to water or snow. Also, temperature forces bricks to expand and contract. To help alleviate the pressure that the movement of the bricks causes on the surface and stability of the wall, expansion joints are placed in areas where the bricks are expected to crack, such as near windows (Wilford-Hunt, 2018a).
The combination of the amount of windows that is on the surface of the wall and these three main consideration points regarding the material, brick, that is used to build the wall have shaped the way our group researched and created different ideas for the art piece along this wall. In addition to not wanting to cover any windows, the maintenance of both the wall and the art piece is something that must be considered when deciding on an alternative. Generally speaking, we have developed three alternatives; whereas, each one addresses one of the main consideration points or it is removable to allow maintenance for the wall or for the art piece to be recreated. Since we are proposing three different solutions, each has its own technical context.
General Economic Context
In order to explain the economic context of this project, we have decided to describe the specific economic context of each alternative separately; however, there are more general aspects of the project that apply to all three contexts such as funding, the broad breakdown of project expenses such as materials and labor, and economic benefits from investing in an art project utilizing Acopian as a canvas.
This project would most likely be funded by either the school or a donor. However, we expect that the project would be funded through grants that are given to the engineering department through donors and alumni. If this is not the case, then this project would have to be taken from the general engineering budget that the school sets aside. Since we are proposing three different alternatives for this art piece, it is impossible to generalize and give accurate numbers now to what this project will definitely cost since each alternative is a framework of a type of design that can be implemented and carried out in the future; therefore, each price heavily depends on the project’s future. However, in each alternative’s specific economic context we provide numerical estimates and ranges regarding the materials needed to fulfill these frameworks. In addition, we expect that another part of these expenses for each of the alternatives will stem from installation fees meaning transportation of materials, hiring an artist or artists, and actual labor fees; whereas, labor fees also include any cleaning or prepping that the surface may need before undergoing this project and not just the actual project itself.
Even though there is time and investments needed to make this project project possible, we believe that incorporating one of our alternatives to Acopian will create benefits that outweigh these expenses in the long run. For example, this project has already incorporated students and professors from a variety of different majors outside of just engineering. Therefore, the process of this project has already served as a connector between the engineering education space and its students with outside students and professors that typically do not step foot into Acopian.
In addition, student panelists have responded that they believe that having an art piece outside of Acopian will improve the aesthetic of Acopian and therefore, making it more desirable to walk to, to look at, and to be inside of. Increasing this desirability will hopefully increase students’ and professors’ productivity. If an increase in the productivity of the students and professors occurs then the school will begin to gain more publicity and receive higher rankings for its engineering department which currently is rated at eleven by U.S News. Currently, the system for becoming ranked is based solely off of deans across the country and their opinions and knowledge of the reputations of each engineering program. Therefore, if the reputation continues to approve our rankings will continue to rise which will make more students want to apply to Lafayette to get the best education possible.
In addition to drawing more students through this fashion, admissions would be able to broadcast this project to prospective students to promote what it means to be an engineer within a liberal arts college. Because this wall faces the admissions building, where tours of the campus typically begin and end, it will be easy for tour guides to explain and talk about how the project came about. They can describe the process in which engineers worked with a variety of different people within the Lafayette community such as professors and students outside of engineering to improve what it means to be a student at Lafayette College. Therefore, the school will be able to broadcast the connectivity of the majors across Lafayette’s curriculum because of this participation from students and professors throughout a variety of disciplines. In addition, having a project of this nature embodies what it means to be interdisciplinary, a value that the school projects onto its visitors, prospective students, and current Lafayette community. The combination of increased rankings and this marketing strategy can really help Lafayette draw more prospective engineering students to not only apply and consider Lafayette but to choose Lafayette over other colleges which is a major benefit for Lafayette’s expansion plans.
To read about our first design alternative, click here.