This is a vertical studio combining students in their fourth and fifth year of the BArch program with students from the architecture graduate programs. The studio focuses on the integration and development of building systems with the spatial, theoretical, and contextual ideas of architecture, inviting innovation within its practice. Work focuses around a rigorous semester-long team project that includes development of environmental systems, structural systems, and details for a design project.
 SECTION DESCRIPTION“...broken world thinking asserts that breakdown, dissolution, and change, rather than innovation, development, or design as conventionally practiced and thought about are the key themes and problems facing new media and technology scholarship today.”       “Attached to this, however, comes a second and more hopeful approach: namely, a deep wonder and appreciation for the ongoing activities by which stability (such as it is) is maintained, the subtle arts of repair by which rich and robust lives are sustained against the weight of centrifugal odds, and how sociotechnical forms and infrastructures, large and small, get not only broken but restored, one not-so-metaphoric brick at a time.” - Stephen J. Jackson, “Rethinking Repair”Introduction:Stephen Jackson’s words, though meant for technology, apply equally to the state of the built environment when considering the framing of  environmentally driven problems produced by climate change. Here in California we see first hand how the effects of drought and wildfires threaten lives and livelihoods and displace whole communities. One place where climate change is acutely felt by humans is the wildland urban interfaces (or WUI) where the natural and built environment intermingle. This transition zone between land developed by human activity (whether urban, suburban, or small town) and unoccupied land is at higher risk for devastation of the built environment from wildfire and flooding. The Dixie Fire in 2021, which destroyed the small town of Greenville, California, is a recent example of such a catastrophe in a WUI zone. Greenville will be our ‘broken world” site for the semester. What to do in the aftermath of such disasters is a question we as a society are just beginning to face: one that will arise more and more as climate driven disasters become the norm. How can architects think about repair in such situations? Can a different approach to rebuilding offer a better future to these affected communities? Problem Statement:How can the methodology of repair and regeneration ground and forge new civic, social and environmental connections? Architectural Approach (Time Frames Thinking) : Student teams of two will develop an architectural framework (both literal and metaphorical) for change. The project challenge will be to design a building to account for multiple intended uses over time as Greenville recovers. While community support, resiliency, and repair will be among the primary overall drivers for the project, climate response and fire protection will be among the primary technical  drivers. With wood as the primary building material, students will research and explore how locally sourced components, much of it from trees burned in the fire, can be used in a mass-timber building for the town. Projects will plan for materials to be replaced or reused to address evolving needs. In addition, a project might explore a kit of parts approach to open up the potential of reworking the spatial configuration of uses to fit changing needs over time.Case Study Locations (Highway 89) : Two sites on Highway 89, the main through road in Greenville, have been selected in collaboration with the Dixie Fire Collaborative to be explored this semester. Each team, working on one of these building sites, will offer a different vision for rebuilding to the community. Carefully tuned to the hardy four-season climate and the unique needs where the entire built landscape is destroyed, each project hosts essential activities while contributing to rebuilding the town.  At two to three stories tall (current zoning) the buildings each will have a mix of uses: public and commercial spaces on the ground floor, with housing above. Final Notes:Travel requirement: Students are expected to join a field trip to Greenville, from midday Thursday, 10/19 to midday Sunday, 10/22. If absolutely necessary, students with previous engagements or other unavoidable obligations will be excused, but it is understood that every effort should be made to attend. Affiliated courses: This course will share knowledge, resources, and partner contacts with Janette Kim’s studio. We will build on work created by CCA students as interns working with the Dixie Fire Collaborative and previous studios and seminars at CCA, including Janette Kim’s fall 2022 Property in Crisis studio and two IBD studios taught by Peter Anderson (spring 2023) and Mark Donohue and Margaret Ikeda (fall 2022).

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