Design a visitor’s center attuned to its natural habitat and historical context. Physical site environments provide opportunities for design synthesis and responsible energy use. You will incorporate passive design principles in response to climate, orientation, topography, vegetation, views, building materiality, and constructability.

Prerequisites: ARH 240, ARH 315, ARH 320 or ARH 330, ARH 390

Course Learning Outcomes

• Create a site-specific design proposal using an iterative process to respond to Technical Advisor feedback on climate and sustainability.
• Correlate site climate data with passive heating and cooling strategies such as daylighting, natural ventilation, use of thermal mass.
• Visually document the process of optimizing building orientation and massing using simulation tools for solar analysis.
• Accurately document proposed change to topography that avoids excessive cut-and-fill, minimizes disruptions to the ecology, and protects the watershed.
• Compare per-unit embodied carbon of building materials and develop selection criteria for performance and design goals.
• Create wall section detail and model of a building envelope system synthesizing performance and design goals.
• Coordinate architectural floor plans with a structural grid to achieve a logical building organization.
• Organize efficient floor plans to meet program requirements such as square footage, adjacencies, circulation, public/private space separation.
• Provide accessible circulation in interior and exterior spaces.
• Provide two means of egress in all occupied spaces.

NAAB Criteria

• PC 2 Design How the program instills in students the role of the design process in shaping the built environment and conveys the methods by which design processes integrate multiple factors, in different settings and scales of development, from buildings to cities.
• SC 4 Technical Knowledge (understanding) How the program ensures that students understand the established and emerging systems, technologies, and assemblies of building construction, and the methods and criteria architects use to assess those technologies against the design, economics, and performance objectives of projects.
• SC 5 Design Synthesis (Ability) How the program ensures that students develop the ability to make design decisions within architectural projects while demonstrating synthesis of user requirements, regulatory requirements, site conditions, and accessible design, and consideration of the measurable environmental impacts of their design decisions.

Student Project by: Huilan Hu