ALL / ARCH / URB / LAND

ARCH_500-600 Comprehensive Options Studio: ‘Extreme Environments: Radical Architecture’

Valerie Greer, Professor of Practice & Philip Holden, Professor of Practice

Rising temperatures in the atmosphere and oceans increasingly precipitate destructive weather events such as heat waves, droughts, wildfires, flooding, hurricanes, and tornadoes, leaving a fast-growing population of people struggling to maintain basic health, safety, and livelihood.

 

A 2018 report by The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that human activity has been responsible for approximately 1.0 degree Celsius of global warming from pre-industrial levels. At the current rate, global warming is predicted to hit an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius between 2030–2055. Activities such as deforestation, overfishing, waste mismanagement, and water and soil contamination further jeopardize the future of humans and the world’s other 8.5 million species. 

 

The IPCC estimates that nearly 40 percent of global energy related carbon dioxide is produced by buildings, which generate massive environmental impacts, ranging from the materials and methods of construction to operations and maintenance of structures. This positions architects and designers to work with social and environmental responsibility, not to simply minimize the effect of buildings, but also to reimagine how interventions in the environment might positively contribution to ecosystems, ecologies, and the human condition. 

 

Students in this studio explored how climatic disruptions require a more environmentally integrative approach to architecture, and how specific extreme environmental conditions provide an opportunity to rethink the process of architectural design. Working with four different sites and four extreme conditions—air quality, invasive species, unsettled ground, and water—students were challenged to think successively and radically about four different aspects of architecture—light, gravity, thermodynamics, and site. After proposing successive, focused, radical design propositions, students integrated their thinking and design proposals across a wide range of architectural considerations. 

 

Within those parameters, students were tasked to design a research facility where 20 researchers or artists could live, work, collect, and display. The architectural and landscape interventions had to offer a means for understanding, experiencing, and responding to a specific extreme condition

Anthony Iovino

Anthony Iovino

Anthony Iovino

Anthony Iovino

Anthony Iovino

Anthony Iovino

Anthony Iovino

Anthony Iovino

Jacob Sanders

Jacob Sanders

Jacob Sanders

Jacob Sanders

Jacob Sanders

Jacob Sanders

Jacob Sanders

Jacob Sanders

Dennis Dine

Dennis Dine

Dennis Dine

Dennis Dine

Dennis Dine

Dennis Dine

Dennis Dine

Dennis Dine

Donielle Whitecotton

Donielle Whitecotton

Donielle Whitecotton

Donielle Whitecotton

Donielle Whitecotton

Donielle Whitecotton

Donielle Whitecotton

Donielle Whitecotton

Donielle Whitecotton

Donielle Whitecotton