This was an undergraduate student project by Matthew Persinger for OCMA (Ohio Concrete Masonry Association) Block Competition, as well as ARCH 342 course, Winter 2005. The focus of the OCMA masonry block competition uses concrete block to develop a community center on South High Street. The project of a community center for south Columbus started with a desperate reading of the current condition: the automobile has left the place in a state of urban denial and of economic and social flux. A (re)introduction, by example, using the car, and the common language of the sign, along with the given material concrete block a dialog begins to occur between the monument to the car, the drive-in screen and the monument of the city, the high-rise. A micro-densification of the city is sited at once to interject and define as well as become a translator of the new script, an exploiter of relationships, and a recruiter. Sprawling ideas of personal ownership and disconnected-ness are unified by layering and squeezing space back together using vehicular circulation. The road's binding properties create clear boundries and organize with organization. The plan to section moves become the diagram of a shift - a collection and recollection of pieces - like the singular masonry block is useless without the force of weaving with others to create a coherent whole. In order to address the larger problems at hand, residential and it supplemental programs were added. -- Matthew Persinger This work is a part of the online collections of the Knowlton School of Architecture Student Archives, The Ohio State University. It is part of an effort to make accessible student work ranging from the first student that graduated from the program in 1903 to the present. The effort to preserve and digitize drawings in the Student Archives was sponsored in part by the Graham Foundation. Keywords: student work, KSA, drawings.
