This is a vertical studio combining students in the fourth and fifth year of the BArch program with students from the architecture graduate programs. The studio asks students to translate an architectural concept into a comprehensive, integrated building solution, with special consideration given to how building performance systems can help address climate change. Students work in teams, and in collaboration with outside consultants, to develop a detailed architectural project that incorporates building envelope, structural, environmental, and life safety systems, as well as synthesizing user requirements, regulatory requirements, site conditions, and accessibility considerations.The promise of agricultural work in California was a central draw for many immigrants throughout the twentieth centuries. The valleys of California constitute one of the largest areas of fertile soil on earth coupled with an ideal temperate climate. Successive cultural migrations created a legacy of communities scattered throughout the rural valleys, made possible by their abilities to work the ground, leaving a cultural impact still visible today. While the midwestern grain fields are called “America’s breadbasket” California is sometimes known as the “America’s salad bowl”. With its many microclimates [ecological zones] the state produces over 400 different crops. Equally diverse are the cultures who worked these fields and settled here and created communities. The studio will profile one of these communities in the Arroyo Grande Valley. The site is unique in that it has been a communally owned, two-acre piece of land, originally purchased by a group of marginalized Japanese immigrants in the 1920’s. The site was located within an orchard which historically housed a school, community center and kitchen and was their central gathering space which still farms the valley after four generations. During World War II when increasing restrictions were imposed on people of ‘Japanese descent’ in terms of living on the coast, the location became a refuge. After the US imposed relocation of the entire community to incarceration camps, the property acted as a place to which community members could return as they transitioned back into an area which still looked at them as the ‘enemy’. With the passing of generations and the integration of the Japanese American community into the extended culture of the city, a key question is how to economically develop the property without erasing the integrity of the site and the legacy of its activity?The interaction of the ground (living systems, soil, water), the cultural history (agriculture, settlement, culture), and the economic future (architecture, building systems) are three equally important factors to be weighed in this studio. Like the traditional game of “rock, paper scissors” each of these elements can be thought of as operating simultaneously on the site, with no one aspect overwhelming the other. Game theorists understand this type of arrangement as self-balancing. The community center, the last surviving building, which operated as a boy scout meeting hall and Judo dojo was burned down by arson in 2011. The land has stood vacant since. As part of a larger general rezoning plan involving an eleven-acre suburban tract home development on an agricultural field to the west, the land was incorporated into a new set of guidelines allowing for greater uses and densities previously prohibited. The studio will work within these guidelines to give form to the complex histories and future potentials for this still cohesive community. Working within the present integrity of the land, the history and future forms, the studio will explore how these three scales of time can be brought together on site to suggest flexible and evolving architectural systems. Programmatically the focus will be to provide an archive, a commercial gathering space, various housing types and a retail space, all of which will support agricultural educational gardens. Primary wood structural systems will stress economic simplicity, aligned with the architectural logic of vernacular pragmatism and Japanese spatial flexibility. The studio will be agnostic as to specific materials for enclosure to allow for a range of formal experimentation, but will operate within an underlying awareness of the implications of the embodied energy of the designs. Performatively, this environmental recognition will carry through to the integration of passive strategies and details for conservation of energy and water resources.The studio will draw on an existing archive of local documentation and recorded oral histories, will look at agricultural practices and architectural strategies that are adaptive and promote ecological awareness. As one of the few remaining parcels of city land in the alluvial valley untouched by asphalting and development, the site becomes a strategic location to educate and critically assess the potential of an integrated approach to ecological stewardship and regenerative practices. While the studio may be highly specific and localized, the questions it addresses are more universal: How can you architecturally materialize a past with the capacity to ground a regenerative (sustainable) future?Travel Requirement: This studio is anticipated to include a required four days, three nights travel component to Arroyo Grande, California on September 26 to 29, 2024. Students who are unable to join the trip due to unavoidable personal obligations or extenuating circumstances can request to be excused from attendance in person, and will receive alternate research/project assignments in exchange, but it is understood that every effort should be made to attend. In order to participate in the field trip, students must complete the CCA Student Travel Emergency Contact Information and Release Form, which will be shared with them in advance of the trip. Students should anticipate spending no more than $40-$50 for this trip.

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