COURSE SECTION DESCRIPTION:This studio focuses on the integration and development of building systems with the spatial, theoretical, and contextual ideas of architecture. Work focuses around a rigorous semester-long team project that includes development of environmental systems and structural systems and details for a large, complex project. This is a vertical studio combining advanced level undergraduate and graduate students. Studio options vary from year to year.The impacts of climate change are being seen and felt all around us, and architects will need to change the way we think, design and build in response. Best practices already require choosing building materials and design approaches that do the least damage to the environment as possible, in order to limit future climate change, and using design strategies that contribute in any way they can to restorative processes such as energy production and carbon sequestration. In addition to those goals, we must respond to the effects of climate change that are already being experienced, adding design criteria  recognizing the architectural impact of extreme weather events, wildfire, and other environmental changes that have already begun. The 2021 Dixie Fire that destroyed the California town of Greenville and surrounding areas presents a specific case study with a challenging set of questions that will be explored in this studio: should we rebuild, and if so, how can the new structures lead the way for rethinking building uses, structural systems, and materials choices that are appropriate for the future?The question of whether rebuilding in this area should happen at all will be addressed through programming research that includes recognition of this rural community’s past, current and future contributions to the larger population through harvesting of timber, minerals and other natural products, development of value-added and services, care for recreation and environmental resources, and the intangible cultural production of any community of people from small towns to large cities. While our studio will focus on the design of a single building, it is a goal of the community for this project to serve as an example and catalyst for further rebuilding of all the civic infrastructure, thus our studio will play an active role in helping to establish and highlight these future ambitions. For the larger question of what to rebuild, excellent conversations about what structures and functions  are needed are well underway in Greenville, as a result of community leadership and the contributions by CCA students and faculty in several courses last Fall. This spring, our studio will continue this engagement by exploring several options for a community building that houses multiple organizations and functions that will be central to the rebuilding efforts of Greenville, and also will become a model and thinktank for helping other communities that are recovering from and protecting themselves from future wildfires and other changing environmental factors. Each design team’s building will respond to slightly different program goals, but all will use innovative approaches to mass timber structural systems, fire resilience strategies and micro-grid energy production.This is a real project being explored by the non-profit Dixie Fire Collaborative, and involves a comparative evaluation of multiple site parcel configurations, and multiple combinations of potential uses and users. To best contribute to the exploratory dialogue with the community client, our studio will work in six or seven small teams to propose slightly different approaches to site and program, though all with a similar shared core site and functions. Our studio will produce a set of ideas,  documents and artifacts we will share with the community to help them further evaluate and develop the next steps of planning for this important seed building in the heart of downtown Greenville.

Visit Workday to view this information.