High School and College Architecture

I'm not talking about campus buildings, although college and university buildings tend to be far more exciting than those run-of-the-mill prison boxes called high schools; what I mean is education.

I have taken architecture courses in my school where I generate houses such as the one in my previous post. At the time, the class seemed fairly in-depth, although it mainly focused on the design of residential homes; it taught students the program Auto CAD Architecture, the historical styles of architecture (Egyptians developed the post and lintel system), the appropriate room placements in a house (living room is always near the front entrance), as well as the basic skills of sketching (use multiple overlapping short strokes).

Then I went to Cornell University Summer College to study architecture. The instructors told us students immediately and bluntly to forget anything we ever learned about architecture in high school. "Nah," I thought, "I learned so much I bet I'll have a leg up on everyone else." But, I was so very wrong. In my high school architecture class, we began designing homes and floor plans on the very first day. At Cornell, we never designed cubes and vessels, but not buildings. In high school, we thought about walls and stairs. At Cornell, we thought about space and dynamics. In high school, we did everything on the computer. At Cornell, we made everything out of chipboard and glue.

There are countless other things. I do not feel like going over it all. I will end saying that CUSC was an amazing experience for me.

House Design

Here's a house I built using AutoCAD Architecture 2009. There weren't any specifications or restrictions. I just designed a house. I focused more on the interior spaces, so the exterior design did not turn out as well as I wanted. I have to make sure not to do that next time.

SE isometric rendered view.

I'm not content with the roof, but I did what I could.
Ignore the landscape and how it gives the impression of a house served on a square plate.

The second floor is like a catwalk with an open square above the kitchen. It's hard to tell what is on what floor because the materials are the same.

Bird's eye view of house without roof

Image of left face.

You can see the curtain wall of the study, and the second crutain wall above it looking into the high-ceiling foyer.

1st floor plan

2nd floor plan

Hollywood Helpers

Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico, in combination with the breaking of New Orlean's levees, devastated millions of lives in 2005. Even Brad Pitt's. After visiting the area, Pitt was inspired by the debris and destruction to rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward, a sector of New Orleans that sits along the river. In 2007, he hosted an architectural design competition with Global Green for rebuilding with sustainable design. There are a total of 13 different architects of local, national, and international founding to mix local culture with fresh ideas. The architects include:

Local
Billes Architects – New Orleans, LA
Eskew Dumez Ripple – New Orleans, LA
Concordia – New Orleans, LA
Trahan Architects – Baton Rouge, LA
John Williams Architects – New Orleans, LA

National
BNIM – Kansas City, MO
Kieran Timberlake - Philadelphia, PA
Morphosis – Santa Monica, CA
Pugh + Scarpa – Santa Monica, CA

International
Adjaye Architects – London, England
Constructs – Accra, Ghana
Graft – Berlin, Germany
MVRDV – Rotterdam, Holland
Shigeru Ban Architects – Tokyo, Japan

So far, 8 homes have been completed, out of 91 currently-sponsored homes, but a total of 150 homes are planned.

An artistic offset of the Make it Right organization is The Pink Project, in which 150 pink structures dominate the Lower Ninth Ward, representing the future of the neighborhood because of Make it Right.

MoMA

I went to MoMa, the Museum of Modern Art in NY, a few months ago and they had an architectural exhibit. They had sketches, plans, and, most of all, models. Here are my pictures from it:A particularly interesting design was Hotel Habitat (immediately above). A plaque read, "The design concept for Hotel Habitat is "your room in a tree". The building is encased in a steel "energy mesh," with each of the mesh's five thousand "leaves" comprising a photovoltaic cell, a battery, a processor, and an LED capable of emitting red, green, or blue light. During the day, the photovoltaic cells collect energy from the sun, charging the batteries, at night the LEDs emit a color, which varies according to the amount of energy the cells have collected. The stell skin- architecture as performance- then becomes a cloud of artificial light around the hotel, and a kind of thermometer."
In the model, the building is glowing neon green, but by the LED lights, they actually mean the slightly visible dots that make up the mesh netting.
Here's more techinical details.

In light of Earth Day...

There is green design, or sustainable design, which aims to minimize buildings' effects on the environment, and then there is biophilic design, which incorporates nature into the buildings. Biophilic design emerges from Edward O. Wilson's biophilia (literally meaning "love of life") theory that humans have an innate attraction to all things natural and living. It uses nature to instill feelings of peace and comfort, focusing more on the aesthetic aspects between nature and buildings. So, while green design recycles and conserves energy, biophilic design sprouts pretty plants.
The two are not mutually exclusive, though. For example, increasing natural lighting inside not only saves electric power, but also creates a biophilic environment. The Alice H. Cook House at Cornell University (where I will be this summer!), is a residential hall that meets both sustainable and biophilic requirements very well. Plants and grass grow on the roof, which also helps insulate the building. A lake provides chilled water, lowering the amount of energy needed for cooling. In addition, all materials are recycled, made locally, and use as few chemicals as possible.
Here are other examples of biophilic design:

Prisma building, Nuremberg, Germany

Greenhouse Nightclub, New York, New York