New Case Studies 2015 - Integration at its Finest: Case studies of 3 GSA high performing buildings

This report was funded by the General Services Administration (GSA) Office of High Performance Green Buildings. It compares and contrasts 3 GSA projects, all AIA COTE Top Ten winners recently completed using stimulus funding. The report focuses on the leadership strategies, team decision-making and logistical/process tactics leveraged to create projects that were extraordinarily high performing and beautifully designed.

Performance based metrics is becoming more commonly used in the building industry and these projects exemplify several options for how those goals can be a positive force in complex projects.

Research team included: Chris Wingate, Dustin Harford, Carrie Dossick, Laura Osburn

Click to download full report

Case Studies on Collaborative Practices, 2013

The Research Partner simultaneously embarked on eleven major modernization projects totaling in excess of $700 Million. The simultaneous start of multiple large-scale projects, operating with shared High Performance/Green Building goals, provided a unique opportunity to compare and contrast projects. The goal of this study was to identify factors that had strong positive or negative effects on the collaborative culture of the project teams. The comparison of design and construction projects is inherently complicated by circumstances unique to each project. Given the potentially endless number of factors that can impact project delivery, this report focuses on selected team-performance outcomes and highlights the presence or absence of "ingredients" that influenced those outcomes.

Var Vac + Hex Wall

Our design research explores the growth of surface complexity through careful attention to program and technical performance criteria. We contend that purposeful difference along the length of an architectural surface can offer locally fine-tuned solutions to the fluctuating situational needs of occupants. This approach is in direct opposition to conventional construction logic. Therefore, our materials research challenges traditional, static construction methods, replacing them with flexible techniques that produce inexpensive, differentiated surfaces. While this type of research is not new, our recent approach to building difference through dynamic mold making is.

Architects are taught that construction works best when it is premised on a strategy of economy and repetition. Construction units (bricks, sticks, sheets, and rolls) are produced and distributed as components that reduce in cost based on volume and standardization. Variation, whether in the form of cutting, specific placement, finishing, or any number of other modifications, will likely add to the expense of a project. This paradigm, "cost-reduction through standardization," dramatically limits the architect's ability to creatively respond to sophisticated sets of forces acting upon a building.

Fortunately, new technologies are challenging the limitations of late twentieth century construction techniques making the aggregation of repeatable variable units achievable at increasingly lower costs through subtractive fabrication technologies (CNC milling, laser cutting, water-jet cutting). Problematically, variation is still more difficult and costly to achieve through casting or forming fabrication technologies (concrete casting, injection molding, vacuum forming). This is because the formwork required for casting or forming a material into its final shape is not adaptable. Value still depends on limiting the number of dissimilar produced. If variation is desired, a new mold must be produced for each unique component. This is typically accomplished at great cost and negatively impacts the aggregate cost of the job. To shift the paradigm, our research explores vacuum forming as a method for producing low-cost, complex architectural surfaces. The research and design work presented in this document aims to develop increasingly sophisticated, minimal, and cost effective molds that allow for endless variation in a fabrication process where variation is typically impractical.

Current Architectural Projects

These images represent two projects designed for Xcel Energy and currently under construction: Hiawatha and Midtown. Both are located along the Greenway bike trail in Minneapolis. Though they differ in design, both walls are comprised of a lower security wall and an upper screen, partially concealing substation equipment beyond. Both walls will be lit at night with color-changeable LEDs.

At Hiawatha, the lower wall is black gabion. The upper wall is a folded, gold-anodized expanded aluminum mesh. At Midtown, the lower wall is comprised of progressively rotated cedar pickets. The upper wall is a folded, 3-tone silver-anodized expanded aluminum mesh. Both projects were designed to fit a slim budget and be constructible by low-tech fabricators and installers.

Preservation by Adaptation: Is it Sustainable?

The historic preservation field is aggressively promoting itself as ''green.'' Adaptive reuse of historic buildings is now widely considered a sustainable development practice. As with architecture in general, however, sustainability in preservation is too often narrowly framed around environmental issues such as the conservation of materials, energy, and water. Commonly accepted definitions of sustainability recognize two other components: economics and culture. Rarely does the preservation field consider sustainability as an entire system of interrelated environmental, economic, and social relationships, as envisioned by the Brundtland Report of 1987. This article offers several reasons for the preservation field to engage in the full spectrum of sustainability concerns, including economic and social issues.

A Better Path to Licensure through Research Practices

Last June, the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) released data on a wide variety of topics across several decades related to internship, examination and licensure for architects. "NCARB By the Numbers" revealed that the mean time from graduation to completion of the Intern Development Program (IDP) is 6.4 years with an additional two years to complete the exam and achieve licensure. In real numbers that means the total amount of time from high school to licensure for architects in America is 14.5 years.

The knowledge loop between the architectural profession and academia has the potential to be a rich and interactive exchange leading to meaningful advancement of the discipline. One can imagine priorities developed by professionals would ensure the value of their expertise to clients on a day-to-day basis. While complementary research priorities collectively developed with academic researchers would address broad societal needs, advance building technology and reduce waste at many scales in the building industry. In the midst of this dynamic mix of professional experts and academic researchers, students could thrive, guided by both mentors and professors in individual research projects that connect to multi-year research goals. And if the students' role in these research efforts could be counted in their IDP, meaningful work would systematically lead to licensure, potentially upon graduation of an advanced post-professional degree.

The first steps towards this ideal world begins at the University of Minnesota with our first cohort of Masters of Science in Architecture, Research Practices concentration. Pending finalization of the MS and the Consortium, we expect our first cohort to enter in Fall 2013.

Does Food Systems Planning Have a History?

Greg Donofrio's 2007 article "Feeding the City" was republished in the "Best of Gastronomica," Spring 2013. Original abstract from 2007: The food system has, until recently, been conspicuously absent from city and regional planning practice, education, and research. Earlier in the twentieth century, food issues were a central concern of the nascent planning profession.

Keywords:urban planning, regional planning, city planning, food system planning, food distribution, history, Clarence Stein, Charles Mulford Robinson, George Ford, Lewis Mumford, public market, municipal market, terminal market, supermarket, food, agriculture, New York City, New York State, Greenmarket, farmers market, Regional Planning Association of American (RPAA), City Beautiful movement

Constructing the Significance of the Plymouth Buildling

Using primary and secondary research, Greg Donofrio and his colleagues Meghan Elliott and Ryan Salmon of Preservation Design Works, LLC argue that the Plymouth Building embodies advancements in several aspects of concrete engineering knowledge and building practice, including the concrete skeleton frame, use of deformed reinforcing steel, an integrated contractor-engineering delivery, and cold weather concreting. Use of a true reinforced concrete skeleton frame structural system made it possible to dramatically alter the façade as building owners sought to adapt to changing architectural styles. Or, as a Minneapolis Tribune article published in 1910 put it: "The outside...can be redressed time and again; just husked like corn every century or two, and a new exterior added." The Plymouth Building represents an important step in the development of modern reinforced concrete engineering and design eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. The Minnesota State Historic Preservation Office and the National Park Service agreed.

Architecture of Thought, University of Minnesota Press, 2011

"Architecture of Thought traces conflicting religious, political, and symbolic complexities in architecture that have been overlooked. Against the rational systems of Western thinking, with their emphasis on language, human intentionality, and forces of power, Andrzej Piotrowski probes places, buildings, and spatial practices that have eluded architectural history." (from a review by Bronwen Wilson)
"Architecture of Thought is written with passion as well as learning. Andrzej Piotrowski draws material from amazingly diverse sources, in a refreshing approach to familiar and unfamiliar architecture alike." (from a review by Charles Burroughs)

Visioning Rail Transit in Northwest Arkansas: Lifestyles and Ecologies

Visioning Rail Transit in Northwest Arkansas: Lifestyles and Ecologies was a multi-phase research project that explored opportunities for sustainable neighborhood development along an existing 32-mile rail line in Northwest Arkansas. Sponsored by the University of Arkansas School of Architecture and its Community Design Center (UACDC), the project was organized and directed by UACDC Director, Stephen Luoni. In 2006, William F. Conway, FAIA was retained as a Visiting Professor by the University of Arkansas School of Architecture. Conway led one of four design studios charged with making development proposals along the rail line and collaborated on remaining phases of the project.

2010 American Architecture Award The Chicago Athenaeum

2010 Great Places Planning Award Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA), Places journal, and Metropolis magazine

2010 Citation Arkansas Chapter American Institute of Architects (AIA)

2009 Unique Contribution to Planning Award Arkansas Chapter of the American Planning Association

2008 Institute Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design American Institute of Architects (AIA)

2008 NCARB Prize
2007 AIA Education Honor Award

The research initiative began with a year-level design studio initiative in which students in three design studios from the University of Arkansas School of Architecture identified forces that could facilitate and/or inhibit the transformation of communities along the proposed rail line. This work was followed by an analysis of the physical sites affected by the proposed rail line and the description of metrics for neighborhood sustainable design as well as studies of the culture, socio-economic conditions and habitation patterns established by the resident population. At this stage in the project, teams employed Scenario Planning methods as a tool to identify core issues that would have to be addressed as teams designed proposals, not just for the present, but the future. Finally, interdisciplinary teams made proposals for development and occupation of selected sites along the rail line.

The work of studio students was the basis for the second phase of the project-the preparation of a 200-page, full-color book sponsored by the UACDC and funded by the National Endowment for the Art's (NEA) Access to Artistic Excellence Program. The NEA $25,000 publication grant provided 2,500 copies of the publication to be distributed to residents, corporate stakeholders and public officials that would be affected by development of the rail project. The book, with contributions by faculty, students and UACDC staff, is a first-of-it's-kind publication featuring graphic diagrams, plans, maps and designs that constitute a "how to" book for communities considering rail transit development.

In addition to William F. Conway FAIA, the project was led by Stephen D. Luoni, Director of the University of Arkansas Community Design Center. The project team included Eric Kahn, Visiting Professor; Central Office of Architecture; University of Arkansas professors Tehar Massadi, Gregory Herman, and Aaron Gabriel; and Washington University at St. Louis.

MacArthur Park Master Plan

In 2007 C+SA was awarded a contract by the City of Little Rock to provide a master plan for the historic 33 acre MacArthur Park. A former confederate encampment and home to two regional museums, the park had gradually lost both its user base and surrounding resident population due to the severing effects of freeway construction and population out-migration.

A new model for park master plans, C+SA's approach leverages the economic, environmental, and social value of a renovated park as a catalyst for the development of immediate neighborhoods and surrounding districts. Identifying: 1) components within the park, 2) components along the park, and 3) components that extend the park, the plan knits together park renovation, neighborhood development and multi-modal transit patterns. The resulting urban network links the park to Little Rock's riverfront development, community nodes, active recreation facilities, schools, wildlife areas and other pedestrian amenities.

C+SA's Master Plan was completed in 2009. Construction on park renovations began in 2010.

2010 Institute Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design American Institute of Architects (AIA)

2009 Design Award Society of American Registered Architects (SARA)

2009 Gold Award Association of Licensed Architects (ALA)

2009 Urban Design Award Citation for Open Space, Boston Society of Architects (BSA/AIA), New York AIA

2009 Citation Arkansas Chapter American Institute of Architects (AIA)

2009 Achievement in Urban Design Award Arkansas Chapter of the American Planning Association

2009 Merit Award Minnesota American Society of Landscape Architects (MASLA)

Like waterfronts and transit stops, parks leverage value in urban areas. While much recent attention has been given to the signature mega-park, the value of the small-scale neighborhood park in reinventing the city has been overlooked. Once connecting neighborhoods of differing character, and sponsoring more than 75 residential structures along its edges, the historic MacArthur Park at the edge of downtown Little Rock is radically underutilized as an urban neighborhood asset. Severed from its neighborhoods along two edges by interstate construction in the 1960s, this moribund 40-acre municipal park is left with only 16 residential structures along its frontage. The planning concept optimizes the park's latent economic, environmental, and social potential through improvements to the district's neighborhood infrastructure, enhancing the delivery of ecological and urban services. This counters the greatest ongoing threat to MacArthur Park District's irreplaceable legacy-incompatible low-density, suburban-type development that fails to define street edges, and is inherently cynical of the city. The planning goal is to align the park's capacity to sponsor denser and higher quality mixed-use housing fabric throughout the district with improvements to the park grounds.

Led by William Conway FAIA, principal in Minneapolis based Conway+Schulte Architects and UMN School of Architecture Professor, the project team included: Stephen D. Luoni, University of Arkansas Community Design Center, George Wittenberg, University of Arkansas Little Rock Urban Studies Program, Tom Oslund, oslund.and.assoc., Chris Suneson, McClelland Consulting Engineers, and Jon Commers, Donjek.

podcast interview on future of education

there is a nice write up and link on a podcast interview I did with Markku Allison from AIA. Markku and I have worked on a number of projects, including the follow up on the Integrated Practice Report originally published in 2006. In that report, I wrote on how education might change relative to BIM and Integrated Practice. In 2010 Markku did a series of interviews to check in with the authors to see what had changed and what their new ideas were for "what's next". The link to the whole interview is in this blog, but the write up catches most of the highlights of the "what's next" for architectural education as i see it.

http://architects2zebras.com/2010/05/21/the-last-architect/

Boomerang House

After living in their home for nearly 30 years, this empty-nester couple was ready for a change. Their developer-built home offered few unobstructed views of the lake, was poorly insulated with fenestration and mechanical systems operating well beyond efficient life spans. Yet their location-a suburban lakeside lot-offered much valued serenity and the luxury of a short commute. Introduced to this sloping lakeside site, and sweeping lakeside view, the architects responded with a singular gesture-a 100' x 18' x10' segmented bar carved into the profile of the hill.

The new home's unique "boomerang" shape comes from the intersection of an economical and energy efficient rectangular volume and required 75' lakeshore setback requirement. This site strategy allows the home's garden level guest bedrooms to benefit from the earth's insulating qualities while maximizing passive solar gain and natural daylight from the west-facing orientation. The interior of the stucco- clad home is defined by two parallel concave walls: a diaphanous west elevation that both responds to and overlooks the lake and a thickened east wall that gathers servant spaces to create a narrow passage at the main entrance.

2010 Design Award Society of American Registered Architects (SARA)

2010 Silver Award Association of Licensed Architects (ALA)

2010 RAVE Residential Architects Vision and Excellence Award Minnesota Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and Mpls | St. Paul Magazine

The faceted plan focuses activities at the center of the home bringing together living, entry, kitchen, deck, and patio spaces. While its genesis is formal, this is a social action concentrating attention on the public spaces, their connections and constituent activities. The gesture also separates, creating necessary distance for more private actions at the end of the volume including dining room and master bedroom suite. With views once limited in their previous home, the new home offers lake views from all main living areas through 10' tall sliding
glass panels that gather light while recessed automatic shades and existing oak trees control late afternoon sun.

Phase 1 of IPD case studies now published online

The first phase of the IPD cases is now posted on the AIA website, most easily reached through the Center for Integrated Practice home page. http://network.aia.org/AIA/CenterforIntegratedPractice/Home/Default.aspx

There are two versions, an interactive pdf and a printable version. Many thanks go to the core team of Katy Dale and Kai Samela and the invaluable help of so many others.

We are looking forward to starting phase 2!

IPD case studies continued

AIA national has renewed and expanded the IPD case studies documented by AIA-MN and UMN. The research team, led by Renee Cheng and coordinated by recent graduate Katy Dale includes several recent grads and current students. The advisory board for the project includes leading professionals in architecture, law, engineering, BIM management and Facilities management.

Work is currently at the stage of comment and feedback by study participants and advisory board members but will be released by AIA in early February.

Stereotomic Transmission: Stonecutting Studies of Three 16th Century Mexican Rib Vaults

Stereotomy, the science of cut solids, is a field of study that connects building technology to the history of Architecture. Deviating from past studies that focused on the art historical implications of stereotomy, the focus of this research is to better understand the true origin of the discipline of stereotomy and the means of its transmission from Europe to America through the lens of Architecture. Three 'late-gothic' masonry vaulting systems in Oaxaca, Mexico have been chosen as the focus for this research. The rib vaults will be documented in both analog and digital format and then studied using three-dimensional modeling.





Update 8 May 2013: YouTube Video of 3D model creation.

IPD Case studies

My most recent grant is funded by AIA national to study Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) Case studies. The work is being done in collaboration with AIA Minnesota with an interdisciplinary advisory group that will give periodic feedback. Unusual for this particular group of case studies is that all the projects will use multi-party agreements, contracts that typically bind the owner, architect and contractor to a single contract.

The duration of this grant is short, wrapping up in December, but we hope that there will be additional phases over the next year or so. The work builds on previous case studies that I have done over many years, most recently focused on projects that use BIM and implement IPD principles.

AIA is most interested in understanding the collaboration needed in IPD and better defining the skills an architect needs to set up, lead and/or participate in these endeavors. This fits well with my own agenda to explore the value of an architect in this new type of contractual arrangement. I expect that there will be some core skills unchanged from the traditional expertise of an architect, and some new or hybrid skills required. Eventually, this feeds into my interested in pedagogy, how should education change to support both the old and new ways of thinking.

Ethics for Architects

My next book, Ethics for Architects, will be published by the Princeton Architectural Press and available by the end of 2010. In it, I apply the theory developed in my last book, Architectural Design and Ethics, Tools for Survival (The Architectural Press, 2008) to 50 case studies of ethical dilemmas that architects have encountered in the course of practice and that they have described to me. I show in the book how a "holonistic" view of ethics can help us see that our best interest always lies in working toward the best interest of the whole.

OSWall (Open Source Wall)

Oswall (Open Source Wall) is an experimental wall prototype that challenges conventional residential wall construction through an open, collaborative approach to material, fabrication, and installation methods. It proposes an "open source" construction platform in which third-party designers, engineers, scientists, or "do-it-yourselfers" can create, produce, market, and sell "applications" that are plugged into the wall.