[15^15] [Re]tail-told-lationships

As I briefly explained in class, our group chose to look at the program areas and create a relationship matrix. Now at first glance it might be interpreted as an adjacency diagram and you are partially correct in that assessment. The chart goes beyond area proximity being the only criteria: it includes all relationships possible. It should be noted that we did not look at the floor plan available to us nor did we design how the the areas interacted with each other. Quite honestly, that had nothing to do with what we were trying to accomplish. We simply discussed each critical area's relationship with all of the others. After this discussion we were able to narrow down the list for each area to what we thought were the most important relationships. This part is completely subjective and open to each group's own interpretation.

We felt this was an excellent way of breaking down the information on an individual level between the areas because the focus was on understanding the relationships and not on "space planning" or "laying out the space." Those phrases make me want to vomit.