What is Community?

What defines a Community? The people that form it? The space that contains it? The networks created? The physical artifacts? How are communities formed and what is it that makes a community a community? Is it just being in the same space, using the same tools, sharing the same goals or ideals?

The Design Development studio this semester is the ideal place to begin to find answers to these questions. This semester, engineering students from the Bedford Studio have joined the DD architecture students in the DD studio.

Very few people from the Rensselaer student body actually understand what goes on in the Greene building. Very few have actually been beyond the first floor. With the Bedford studio, suddenly a group of engineers have been introduced into the close-knit community of the school of architecture. The engineering students are working with the architecture students to design the structure for the design development projects.

Over the course of the semester I have been documenting this developping community. Would it just be a working relationship, or could it lead to something more?

To begin, I documented the space of community:

The studio is predominantly a place of work. It creates a matrix/infrastructure for work in small groups/partners. However, the carried over community structure of the architecture class breaks through these boundaries. We visit each other and talk across the desks.

The problem is that this structure doesn't accomodate the addition of the engineers. They aren't part of the firmly established "archie" community, and the space doesn't even allow them to work in the same vicinity as their architects.

The engineers tend to work at the tables at the end of the studio or even outside the studio. Even getting into the studio is a challenge for them, with the card access scanner; though usually the door has been propped.

But the question remains, is this a community? A work community, yes. But can it be more?