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Student: Diego Courtney
Advisor: Scott Shall
Content Experts: Anirban Adhya, Eric Ward
Following World War II, a mass exodus from cities to suburbs necessitated new building patterns that prioritized economics and speed over environmental considerations, changing landscapes and having a negative influence on ecosystems. This growth, we now know as sprawl, combined with profit-driven motives have led to an emphasis on quick, low-cost construction methods like stick framing, which frequently ignore the impact on the local environment and result in significant waste. In the profit-driven model, the residential development process begins with street layout, then lot/parcel maximization, with ecological and landscaping considerations as afterthoughts. This foregrounds the concerns of the car over the environment, prompting developers to sterilize the environment, resulting in fragmented habitats and homogeneous ecosystems that are detrimental to regional biodiversity. The consequences of this uncontained sprawl, which are already significant, will be exposed by the inevitable natural disasters, which are anticipated to become more frequent as a result of climate change. The current suburban development pattern is flawed and outdated, and unprepared for these environmental changes which we must contend with as architects.
To investigate this concern, this thesis will investigate an alternative development pattern, tested within the parameters of a neighborhood located within the rapidly sprawling city of Austin, Texas. This development strategy is intended to balance economic needs with environmental sustainability, with the goal of establishing a widely adopted, US-based model that corresponds with current economic proformas while regenerating and preserving the surrounding ecology. This thesis aims to address the concerns of both profit and environment by attempting to achieve symbiosis with the environment at the suburban scale using the Living Building Challenge.
Use Your Cell Phone as a Document Camera in Zoom
From Computer
Log in and start your Zoom session with participants
From Phone
To use your cell phone as a makeshift document camera
