By Scott Boylston

YOU KNOW

…if you had already joined our Kickstarter campaign, you’d be done reading this already! (before you read on, join it NOW!)

First, thank you to all of our early supporters! This is the beginning of a beautiful relationship! We are all new to each other, so a good place to start with our Kickstarter updates might be a few thoughts on identity, and that’s especially fitting because we are launching some of our branding…right now.

Emergent Structures has been exploring how place shapes, not just individuals, but whole communities; unlike so much of what dynamically swirls around us in our daily lives, place has within itself a promise of constancy that literally grounds us. That’s not to say that place doesn’t change; anyone who sits through the passage of a sudden thunderstorm from the shelter of a porch understands that place is as mercurial as anything it plays host to. Yet place is constant nonetheless; a constant witness. And people like us love to listen to what such witnesses might be inclined to share.

So, we named the greenhouse project E.34…because it’s situated on East 34th Street in Savannah.

Not so deep, we know.

While obvious, simple, etc. it’s nice to visualize this one spot on the map as a point of convergence; for all of these materials, and for all of the people involved with this project (our collaborators, the neighboring community, the students, etc.).

And it’s also nice to imagine the greenhouse as a passageway—the reclaimed materials that have existed all around Savannah for over 70 years in other iterations are convening on this one spot, maybe for a few decades, maybe for 70 more years—and when all their individual parts come together in the next 4 months they will make something entirely new; something entirely surprising to those who nailed the material into their original places. Imagine if the builders of the original buildings sensed that the materials they held in their hands would one day be a greenhouse for inner-city youth! The greenhouse is a passageway; for materials; for individuals; for a community.

The greenhouse will shelter and transform those who learn there. And…70 years from now…what then?

So, even as place remains constant, it is more than mere witness to transformation; it is transformed itself, and even more so than witnesses usually are. The image above is our greenhouse project T-shirt (they’ll be printed in the next 2 months!) The shirt has a stack of lumber on it, with the words ‘this is a greenhouse.’ The stack was rendered from a photo that we used to announce a volunteer opportunity (below). That stack of wood spent 40 years on the ground-floor walls of a 142 year old house on E. Jones St. before we pulled it down and stacked it like that.

And in 2013—with your help—that stack of old wood will converge with other material streams and be transformed into an educational greenhouse.