Drexel Studio Project (Year 4)

Valley Forge National Park, Pennsylvania

2011

 

Valley Forge National Park is a historic park located outside of Philadelphia.  As part of a studio project we were tasked with mapping the entire park and using that information to locate sites for a potential building.  Our focus in that year of studio was site analysis and this was the final and most complex project we were assigned.

 

First I walked the site to get a feel for how it was utilized currently, writing down observations on use patterns, locating potentially interesting areas, and marking down under-utilized areas.  Afterward I used a combination of resources including the USGS, EPA, National Park Service, Google Maps, and various websites with typical weather data to familiarize myself with the site more completely.  Finally, I mapped what I could and wrote down what couldn't be mapped to create a final analysis and located three potential sites for a multi-use building.

 

The park is very large, the walk-through took at least 5 hours, so this was a particularly challenging assignment.  It did highlight the need for a more data-driven approach to certain projects otherwise it becomes impossible to fully understand how they can best be utilized.  Understanding how people use the site, where undesirable (even dangerous) places are on it, and where current structures are all informed my final site locations.