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.San Francisco’s ‘Alemany Exchange’, also known locally as the ‘Alemany Maze’ and the ‘Spaghetti Bowl’ refers to the jumble of highway double-decker ramps, entries, and exits allowing for movement to and from US 101 from the south and the I-280 to the northeast. For many, it is their first introduction to San Francisco from the south. It is a notorious bottleneck in the highway system giving drivers ample time to look around. When they do, they look down on the roof of the Alemany Farmers’ Market, also known as the ‘People’s Market’, the first farmer’s market in California, which has operated continually on this site since 1947, and the Bernal Height neighborhood beyond. Thus, for this studio, ‘The Alemany Exchange’ takes on a more nuanced and complex meaning. In what ways might a singular piece of architecture –here, an enormous open-air roof structure and associated interior community programs– foster and enhance civic exchange: the exchange of modes and speeds of travel from cars to pedestrians; the exchange of scales from highway infrastructure to a vender’s carts; the exchange of goods from delivery trucks, to vender, to the community; the exchange of greetings, food and hands. LOCAL ARCHITECTURE: Given the history, vibrancy, and visibility of our site, our work calls for an architecture highly attuned to the specifics of place. This may be expressed in terms of physical qualities of the site, its presence and function in the city as a bridge between the highway and the community, or its local micro- and macro-climates, geology, topography, and ecology. It may be expressed through local materials, construction craft, and techniques. It may also include less tangible aspects of the local economic workforce and material supply chains, as well as site-specific social, historical, cultural, and ethical considerations.SUSTAINABLE ARCHITECTURE: Of specific interest to our studio is the intensive use of a locally available, sustainable, and adaptable building material –wood. For inspiration, we will focus on age-old and new wood manufacturing technologies in a wide range of contemporary buildings. While the project is local, our precedent research early in the semester will take us far and wide –Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe– to learn about experimental wood systems, and hyper-local architecture. This large-span wooden roof structure acts as a welcome sign to San Francisco from the highway and surrounding hilltop neighborhoods, a potential energy, water collection, and food source for the community, and shelter and community hub for the market vendors and their patrons.COMMUNITY ARCHITECTURE: We will explore this research through the redesign and enhancement of San Francisco’s Alemany Market. In more recent times in the US, the farmers’ market has become an alternative to the chain grocery store, the shopping mall, and the challenges associated with the industrial food complex. For many communities, farmers’ markets become a critical stop-gap solution to food deserts in urban settings. The Alemany Market program will accommodate its current uses on Saturdays as a Farmers’ Market and on Sundays as a Flea Market, and expand them to support the local community throughout the week including the Womens, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutritional programs, Market Match (a California healthy food incentive program), the SF Food Bank, Off-The-Grid food truck evenings, and La Cocina business incubator programs for women of color from resource poor communities.PROCESS: As an Integrated Studio, this studio will take you beyond Schematic Design into Design Development. We will explore how to develop and maintain your architectural ideas at multiple scales through the stages of the design and documentation. Further goals for this studio include developing your ability to integrate the full complexity of elements of architectural design and construction –and understand how these elements relate to one another– to begin to detail a building in a way that supports and furthers the design concept at multiple scales and integrates building technology systems with the design. Regular input from outside architects, engineers, and building technology experts will strengthen and assist this development. You will work in teams of two. The complex processes and products of this studio are organized into a final portfolio-ready format, the Integrated Studio Workbook (ISW).

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