project by Alma Davila and Hannah Jane Kim
Spring 2020
Instructors: Mark Donohue and Lisa Findley
This Integrated Studio explores reasons (environmental + contextual + ethical + ideological + historical + pragmatic), strategies (theoretical + spatial + formal + collaborative) and techniques (process + material) for making architecture that is explicitly Local. Like Local Food, Local Architecture is highly specific in response to place and climate, in material, local supply chains, construction craft and technique, and in capacity building and sustainability (environmental, social, economic and cultural).
While the approach of this studio can be applied wherever in the world an architect is working, we will be using the Bay Area (and northern California) as an ideal place to carry out our research. Its location as the western edge of the North American continent and the eastern edge of the Pacific Rim, along with its history of development independent of East Coast influences, has resulted in ongoing specific and robust architectural dialogs and work from several generations of architects. These are unique to this place, its climate, its history and its way of life. However, we are not interested in nostalgia. This studio looks to the future to seek new forms of Northern California architecture that respond to current opportunities and challenges while anticipating the impacts of climate change, shifting demographics and the inevitable “Big One”.
Of specific interest to our studio is the intensive use of a locally available building material that is currently seeing a renewed focus among architects everywhere: Wood. Warm, beautiful, sustainable, adaptable, and a material long sourced and used in Northern California buildings, wood will be the material focus of this studio. We will be looking at numerous new wood manufacturing technologies reflected in a wide range of contemporary buildings, using these as inspiration, touchstones and precedents.
Site
The project is situated on the Scribe Winery, just a few miles east of Sonoma, California. The vineyard slopes up very gradually from south to north for the first ¼ mile, then ends as grassland rises more quickly up to a wooded ridge. Our site is located in the lower portion of this steeper land, where a copse of mature oak trees shade a piece of flatter ground and overlook the vineyards below. This part of the winery land is accessed by a dirt road that is almost entirely hidden from view from the site.
Program
To explore the above issues, the studio will immerse students in a lively combination of research (theory + precedents + technological), making (full-size explorations of wood connections), and innovative applications of wood in the design and development of a medium-sized, carefully crafted wood building for a winery. Located on a rich, highly specific, classically NorCal wildland-urban-interface site, the project is home to a barrel room, a tasting room/kitchen, and lodging for visiting artists.
Local Timber studio, spring 2020: Alma Davila, Craig Dias, Dev Chand, Geetika Rohra, Hannah Jane Kim, Iana Giarca Gimena, Jose Rodriguez Trujillo, Marion Rosas, Mohamed Dirbas, Samuel Kilpatrick, Shih Ting Huang, Taamara Rath, Yihan Wang, Yuze Deng