ARCH_511a Comprehensive Options Studio: ‘Extreme Environments’

The temperature is rising, both in the atmosphere and the oceans. Human activity, including fossil-fuel burning and deforestation, is the major cause of air pollution and subsequent greenhouse effects. As a result of anthropogenic climate change, we are experiencing serious environmental fluctuations around the globe. Some of the most evident consequences are warmer years on average, accelerated sea level rise, frequent and intense heat waves and droughts, stronger and longer wildfires, incremental precipitation and flooding events, as well as more extreme weather patterns such as hurricanes and tornadoes. This poses an additional associated impact on the growing number of people and ecologies in the affected areas.

Buildings provoke massive environmental impacts, ranging from the materials and methods of construction to the operation and maintenance of structures. According to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), buildings account for an average of 41 percent of the world’s energy use. Consequently, architects and construction industry leaders are positioned to greatly influence how buildings and other structures affect the environment. A number of design decisions directly and indirectly impact the way buildings disturb their sites and the ecosystems around them. Architects and design professionals have a social and environmental responsibility to minimize such impacts.

The research in David Gissen’s book “Subnature: Architecture’s Other Environments” offers an alternative view to the dynamics between the natural world and the built environment. Rather than regarding adverse environmental forces such as dankness, smoke, insects, and dust as detrimental to the enterprise of architecture, Gissen examines ways in which the relationship between adverse elements in the natural world and the construction of the built environment have been radically rethought to expand the possibilities of architecture, elements of the environment, and habitation.

This studio explored how architectural design can respond to extreme environmental conditions while helping to mitigate the impact of buildings on their habitats and ecosystems. Students were challenged to research, assess, and respond to the dynamics between natural and built environments through the realm of architecture. Emphasis was placed on tectonics, structure, materiality, and performance, as well as a sectional understanding of environmental conditions and a sectional response via architectural intervention.

Students identified and researched an extreme environmental condition and developed an architectural response that permits habitation in response to a specific adverse condition. Each student also identified a site within their extreme environment where a group of 20 researchers and/or artists could collectively live, work, collect, display, and interact—a “base camp” where scientists, writers, artists, and musicians may dwell to advance their work and research. The architectural interventions were also required to serve as a means of understanding, experiencing, and responding to a specific component of the natural environment.