Idea Communication

Idea communication can always change and develop. In Fall of 2024, myself and two other students had the opportunity to work with the City of Cordele on a conceptual redesign of Westbrook Park. This park occupies an old building footprint on 11th Avenue in Downtown Cordele, right across the street from Albany State University’s Satellite Campus.

We spoke with our Cordele liaison early in our academic semester to hear the project vision and goals. The idea was to transform this relatively unused space into a venue for outdoor events, dining, and recreation. During the first meeting, our client helped describe their vision by bringing up a location in Macon, Georgia: the Fall Line Brewery. As noted before, understanding the client’s methods of communication is important for communicating our vision. Using real projects would be important.

As our ideation progressed, we used a similar method of communication to present her with new ideas and visions. Referencing real projects allowed the client to understand our intent in a tangible manner; Google Earth Streetview was an effective tool for “walking around” some of these sites. Seeing design intent post-construction on real sites communicated the efficacy of the vision and allowed reference of real-world applications.

As we developed our own designs for the park, we needed a way to communicate our goals and vision without the aid of Streetview. Our client responded well to the ground-level tours of existing sites instead of aerial imagery. This information allowed us to generate 2D illustrations and 3D renderings from a Rhino model to communicate our design. When we presented design alternatives, the plan views of the site were never received as well as their accompanying illustrations.

This proved consistent beyond our immediate client as well. A trip to Cordele in late October allowed us to present our vision of Westbrook Park to the community in person. We printed out large photographs of our plan view designs and model renders and pinned them to large pieces of foam core. We strolled around Cordele until we ended in Westbrook Park, where we presented our visions to the crowd with these supplementary graphics. To people who had not seen our designs or processes to date, the 3D illustrations were the most interesting and conversation-provoking.