Testing Whole Building LCA: Research and Practice

Research and Practice Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be used to evaluate the environmental impacts of a building resulting from manufacturing, construction, operation and maintenance and the end of life demolition and disposal/re-use. Tracking impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions and smog formation, LCA can enable comparison of building proposals testing options of material use, system selection and system performance.

From Disaster to Resilience

What is changing in the world so that the word “resilience” is so frequently used? 2015 marks the ten year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the five year anniversary of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The Gulf Coast Community Design Studio has been working on the Mississippi Gulf Coast since Hurricane Katrina and their work provides the vantage point of this paper. The Gulf Coast Community Design Studio is an off-campus research and service center of Mississippi State University College of Architecture, Art and Design located in Biloxi, Mississippi. It was created to respond to Hurricane Katrina and has evolved from disaster response to long-term efforts of resilience. The design studio’s evolution is not an isolated story. It is part of a national move toward resilience.

The Columbia Building Intelligence Project

In a short editorial in Wired Magazine just after the Crash of 2008, “The New Economy: More Startups, Fewer Giants, Infinite Opportunity”, Chris Anderson suggested that what led up to the latest economic crash was not just another dip in the ebb and flow of reliable past economic cycles, but rather the last gasp of big-business models that were struggling to adapt to the new pace of change.

Triakonto BB100: Dynamic Systemization Meets Big Bamboo

Bamboo has long been used as a vernacular building material in tropical regions all around the world. Methods of construction have typically involved ad hoc, inexact processes of in situ cutting, drilling, notching and lashing, relying on local building cultures and knowledge. However, in a globalizing economy, this traditional means of building has become associated with poverty and/or cultural nostalgia. Bamboo construction is not widely accepted as a viable, modern means to making buildings in tropical markets, despite its many environ- mental benefits.

The Campus as a Living Laboratory: Post-Occupancy Evaluation and a Digital Repository as a Teaching Tool

In 2013-14, the California State University system funded 23 grants on 14 campuses in an effort to spur innovation in sustainability. The funding for these grants came from leveraging $250,000 of system-wide resources slated for energy efficiency improvements towards the support of educational initiatives that bridged facilities and the academy2. The intent of this initiative was to inspire applied research that tied teaching and learning to campus buildings, landscapes, and infrastructure in ways that would inform future project investments related to cost and energy savings as well as sustainability practices and increase the understanding of facility performance while utilizing high-impact educational practices.

Applicable Experiments: Collaborative Models for Material Research

Before the 19th century, a buildings tectonics was largely unified. Categorical distinctions among so-called “systems’ – structure, enclosure, interior and exterior walls, and circulation were unknown. All of that changed with the advent of the steel frame – vertical circulation, environmental systems, clad surfaces, and curtain walls, newly liberated from any structural role, could be internalized, enclosed, encased, and hidden within other concealing floor plates, walls, and ceiling voids.

The Urban Studio

A strategic alliance between Academia and Practice has been established in downtown Chicago. This unique collaboration between the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and VOA Associates Incorporated has yielded a new program: The Urban Studio of the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.

Practicing Design-Build

The disconnect from academia to practice from design to construction is carrying the Architecture profession out to sea. Students and young professionals are further disconnected from the reality behind the representation of each line. This paper discusses a studio structured to mimic the professional environment while at the same researching through prototyping pre-fabrication, modular building, DfD (Design for Disassembly), and panelization theory including on-site/off-site construction methods.

Mass Timber Design Research at the Nexus of Practice and the Academy

Mass timber is an emergent building assembly technology that advances themes of prefabrication, modularization, parametric design, and renewable materials in architectural practice and education. Mass timber is a collective term for several engineered heavy panel wood products including cross-laminated timber (CLT), nail-laminated timber (NLT), glued laminated timber (GLT) laminated veneer lumber (LVL), laminated strand lumber (LSL), and parallel strand lumber (PSL).

Academic | Practice Partnership— Developing Responsive Architecture

Academic entities have the ability to assemble resources and form ‘local labs’ able to creatively address complex technical problems. This paper describes academic partnerships with professional practice that offer responsive materials design expertise not available in many architectural firms. The following projects are funded by grants, gifts, and consultation mechanisms with architectural firms during the Request for Qualifications (RFQ) and the Request for Proposals (RFP) phase in competitive design solicitations. The RFQ and the RFP mechanisms are high-value low-risk means for architectural firms to add research and development capabilities to their project team. Example are given of two collaborative projects that have brought practice-based research to the architectural office and brought practical experience to students.