Following the success of last year, this proposed study will traverse both fall and spring semesters. Fall semester students may elect to continue into the spring, though concurrency is not required. The series of seminars and studios will focus on the design and construction of medium-scaled ecologically sensitive mixed residential/academic developments. Key to the course is the Incorporation of high-performance active and passive energy systems into very well-conceived and executed building and site design propositions. High Performance Building faculty and students will participate in the spring and serve as consultants to the studio throughout the year. The work from the previous year will serve as the foundation for advanced studies at all scales. We will challenge some of the assumptions made thus far, invent new ones where needed, and refine each proposal by describing in detail various systems and environments.
We will divide the semester into two parts:
Part 1 will run for 6 weeks and consist of case studies, programming, massing, siting for a new 35,000 sf net zero campus research center which will include housing, labs, offices, community/social space, and auditorium and connect to the larger ecological system on campus. We will work in groups on 3 campus sites, and complete this effort before midterm.
Part 2 will move from the scale of the building to façade and furniture studies. We will interface with Industrial Design and make a trip to New York to learn by seeing and touching what makes great architecture, and visit some of the very best rooms and walls the city has to offer, from the scale of hotel rooms and apartments all the way up to rooms that function at the monumental scale.
