This is a vertical studio combining students in their second and third year of the MArch program with students in the MAAD program, and those in the final semesters of the undergraduate architecture program. 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 DESCRIPTIONThe agricultural promise of 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 “salad bowl”. With its many microclimates [ecological zones] the state produces over 400 different crops. Equally diverse are the cultures who have been able to settle here and create community. The studio will profile one of these communities in the Arroyo Grande Valley. The site is unique in that it is a communally owned, two acre piece of land within an orchard which historically housed a school, community center and kitchen and was the central gathering space for a marginalized group of Japanese immigrants in the 1920s. During World War II when increasing restrictions were imposed on Japanese Americans in terms of living on the coast, the land 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, the key question is how to develop the property for the benefit of the greater community 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 look at 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 to the ground by arson in 2011. As part of a larger general plan project involving the suburban tract home development of an eleven acre 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 the fourth generation of this still cohesive community. Working within the integrity of the land, 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 buildings moving forward.  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 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 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 the resources of 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 critically assess the potential of an integrated approach to ecological stewardship and regenerative agricultural 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?Notes:
Travel requirement: Students are expected to join a field trip to Arroyo Grande, from Friday, 10/6 to Saturday, 10/8. 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. 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.

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