The winning team of the BEB Gallery Wintersession series 2012: SYMBIOSIS proposed an adobe block structure called the Earth Hut. The team members for this year’s project are Cynthia Chen Sculpture, Makoto Eyre Architecture and Ariana Heinzman Ceramics.
The Earth Hut is on view in the BEB Gallery until Friday, March 2.
Dissolving Towers 
Aedas, recently won the Block E-15 Twin Tower Competition for its entry Dissolving Towers which I worked on this past summer. The tower dissolves as it meets the street, creating a quiet urbanity. Dissolving towers creats a paradigm shift in mixed use development through a tower/podium hybrid. The podium, echoing the chaotic vernacular housing of Chongqing, responds to mixed use program, city street and pedestrians by establishing a true sense of micro urbanism. The towers, rising from the podium, will house offices and have the potential to provide a full service hotel. My time at Aedas spanned the entirety of the competition which allowed me to work on premilimary design, schematic design, modeling, diagrams and final presentation boards. My internship at Aedas proved to be an unparalleled learning experience. I encourage students whom are interested in working in the a rapidly growing Asian office/market to apply!
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The Illustration Studies Building (ISB) Design Charette took place this past Saturday, October 29. Above are pictures taken during the event.
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I spent the summer up in the Black Range Mountains, surrounded by the Gila National Forest in southwestern New Mexico. I lived in the town of Kingston, an old silver mining town/nearly-ghost-town, as their temporary number 25 in a population of 24. I was staying and working at the Black Range Lodge, a building that has gone through various changes in size and function since the 1880’s and is now a bed and breakfast run by Catherine Wanek. Among many other things, Catherine is a firm supporter of natural building and living. She has written a few books, co-directs Builders without Borders (http://builderswithoutborders.org/: Builders Without Borders is a not-for-profit that creates disaster relief housing and similar structures using natural and local materials), held many colloquiums and workshops on the subject, and is constantly experimenting with new techniques on her property. With the help of friends, interns, and volunteers, she designs and builds a wide range of structures, including the following: a strawbale home, workshop, greenhouse, and classroom, a cob hut, a sand-bag root cellar and various retaining walls, and many more. Catherine also employs more conventional building techniques and materials in conjunction with the natural to make use of whatever is available to her and thus create the least waste.
Being there, I was able to experience the rich Native American and silver mining history, the glorious freedom of living out of the way of civilization in a beautiful mountain range, and an inspiring atmosphere of hilarious, fun, open-minded people. I worked outside and with my hands every day. Our natural building work included an earthen floor mix and application, an outdoor solar shower bamboo wall, cob walls, a strawbale wall with plaster layers, an aliz wall paint job, a recycled container rainwater drainage system, etc. In between natural building projects, there were also some side projects, including landscaping, clearing off of the property, building gates in a full process from cutting the raw logs to painting the finished product, graphic design poster work, remodeling a chicken coop area, digging out, reinforcing, and pouring concrete beams for landscaping stone walls, painting welcome signs for both the town and the lodge itself, and even planting & harvesting a garden, taking care of chickens, and composting. While many of these projects seemed to be somewhat separate from the designing and building work I had come to do, I realized that I was participating in the full cycle of a building process, from the very first steps of clearing space to make a new interior space. I was also being exposed to the art of permaculture, which to me is just as much a part of architecture as living in a built space is, since it is all about solving a problem by making it into a solution – just as great architecture solves the problem of function by allowing it to influence the form. Permaculture allows you to live in an efficient, self-sustaining way, so coming up with creative permacultural solutions requires many of the skills also necessary for good architectural design.
This internship has given me a new way to look towards my future but has also given me a chance to utilize the skills developed in school in a real-world situation. In addition to my outdoor work, I was assigned to complete drawings and digital 3d models for the projects we completed throughout the summer, particularly a stick-frame/strawbale hybrid shed. It was refreshing to be explain my drawings to people without an architectural background, and to design with them as a team, each providing our different expertise (architectural school, hands-on building and contracting, and knowledge of natural methods) to come up with a synergetic whole. I was also put in a leadership position at times, being in charge of deciding the exact ratio for an earthen floor mix through testing and then leading a small crew to mix and apply it. Beyond that, for several weeks I was able to interact with, learn from, and network with a group of professional natural builders from Texas, who were living proof that it is a feasible and rewarding career path to choose.
Overall, I think this internship both affirmed my prior thoughts and plans, and opened my eyes to opportunities and ways of thinking I hadn’t yet envisioned. In addition, it has taught me practical abilities and work processes, to make for a well-rounded, real-life smorgasbord of learning, creating, and working with inspiring people, one I would recommend highly!
Megan Farris, B.Arch 2012
Megan Farris is currently in Pragues for a Semester Study Abroad program.
The Degree Project Board presentations for the 2012 B.Arch and M.Arch students took place on Tuesday and Thursday Oct 25 & 27 in the BEB Gallery.
Hello all,
After an exchange semester at RISD, I got an internship at UBERBAU/architecture&urbanism, a young firm based in Berlin.
I decided to move to Berlin after the workshop with J.Knowles, that took place around Germany during the past spring break. Berlin, meant to be the new New York, is becoming day by day one of the biggest community of designers of the continent, because of many factors as the recession in Europe,the economical growth of Germany, the quality of life…
It still having the charm of a destroyed city, with many abandoned buildings and community areas where you can still sneak in, as theme parks, military bases, factories,etc.. this fact brings the opportunity to redesign the city.
The company that I worked for was a medium size firm that collaborates with other firms.
As soon as I arrived I became the person in charge of a 5000€ model for an urban-project of a neighbourhood in Baghdad, for which I worked over 10 hours per day including weekends during 2 weeks, exhausting… But after that things calmed down and I never worked extra hours again. We worked on different projects such as: a single house in Lebanon, the Austrian stand for the International tourism fair in Berlin and many other small projects.
The salary as an intern was 500€ per month but as a EU citizen the European government was paying me 500€ extra per month, with that salary you can have a super high quality of life in Berlin. My 30square meter room by the East Side Gallery was only 300€ !!
It has been a great experience and I encourage everybody to try Berlin at least once in life!
Best.
Alvaro Gomez-Selles / RISD Exchange Program, Spring 2011
