Green Street

3/17/15

                This week, our outing was slightly closer to home. We ventured down to campus town and walked down Green Street, as we discussed the many changed that have occurred on one of the most popular spots on campus. Filled with bars, food, and shopping, Green Street seems almost essential to student survival, so it’s weird to think that it hasn’t always been the student friendly place it is today.

                What started off Green Street’s transformation was the flooding issue that the area had. The Boneyard creek had the nasty habit of overflowing and flooding the surrounding neighborhood. This started the interest in the area.

                A group of students and a faculty member began to take notice of the Green street area and began coming up with ways to improve it. They realized that this space had much more potential that could be used to improve students’ lives on campus. So they began to lobby for making Green Street a place for students; less of a transitional place and more of a place to exist.

                Slowly, Green St became a place people were actually willing to go. The awnings got smaller, the streets narrower, and the sidewalks wider. Soon, people began erecting apartments to house students, as they realized that they could charge much more in rent for a lot less.

                This is the perfect example of a space changing to suit its environment. Green Street could have become a place intended for vehicular travel, but it was instead taken in the opposite direction, and transformed into a place for pedestrian student life. Green Street became the place we know today: a place to eat, drink, and have a good time. 

Downtown Champaign

3/10/15

                This past Tuesday, we went to downtown Champaign. Much of downtown Champaign focuses on its difference from Campus town. Here, people who wish to get away from the college partying can relax, shop, eat, and drink at their leisure. Non-college bars and pubs are what helped the downtown area flourish in the first place.

                The whole downtown area was built upwind from the railroad. This was done so the town could live without having to endure the odor and pollutants of industry. These smells would, intend, be sent downwind, towards Urbana.

                One of the buildings we passed on our walk was the former post office. This building was an impressive, strong looking building. It was wide and relatively short, making it seem very robust. This building was meant to symbol the federal presence in the town. It showed a stronghold of the government, while being a very central, public place. It has a set of large, steep steps to the door, where once, people could congregate.

                We eventually wandered to West Side Park, a large park in the center of downtown Champaign. Surrounding this park are many churches, the library, and a school. Here, the very rural concept of having many aspects of life intertwining come into play. The churches, many of which lie on Church Street, signify a healthy spirit. The park signifies a healthy body. And the library and school signify a healthy mind. All of them can be found together because, to many people, they all are parts of everyday life. 

Architecture XPO

3/5/15

                This Thursday’s trip was to the Architecture Job Expo. Here, more than 30 firms spoke with architecture students about possible recruitment. My mission: to find and interview one of these firms.

                The firm I ended up talking to was Humphreys and Partners. They are a residential firm, designing mostly apartment complexes all over the country. When asked what they were looking for in potential applicants, they said they wanted a strong portfolio and good communication skills. GPA was also important, although it did take a backseat place to the other things. Interns would start their careers there by working on existing projects with higher level employees.

                One of the recruiters was an alumnus of U of I and spoke of how historic and technical the architecture program is here. 

BIF and LEED

3/3/15

                Tuesday’s tour was around BIF, which stands for Business Institutional Facility. When you first enter the building, you walk into a huge, open space. On one side, there is a wall of glass, with a large, curved overhang from the roof. The space is large and impressive, serving as the central hub of the building. Also on the first floor, is a plaque, telling all those who enter that BIF was, in 2009, LEED Platinum certified. It was on this topic of “green architecture” and sustainability that our tour was focused around.

                There were three kinds of sustainability that we discussed: material, water, and energy. When picking materials to make a building, one must consider the embodied energy of certain materials. Embodied energy is the sum of all the energy needed to produce and move a certain material. Therefore, you want to look for a material that is locally sourced and cheap to manufacture. Water sustainability is a very important topic, especially with today’s high demand for fresh water. When a building is erected, water doesn’t absorb into the ground, it runs to rivers, where it leaves the system, as it gets flushed out to the ocean. In order to combat the leaving water, a building must try to slow the water. Energy sustainability is the most heard of kind, as it is well publicized due to its connection with global warming, etc. A building should try to use the lowest amount of energy as possible, as it is more cost efficient. It could also try to produce energy, using solar panels or wind turbines, to have a net energy of zero.

                To maximize the sustainability of a building is to make it a very “green” building, or a building that harms the environment the least. A way to get this certified is to go through LEED, Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, which makes sure you building is environmentally friendly. BIF had a high enough number of points to qualify for platinum certification.

                There are flaws with the LEED program. While it does encourage greener buildings, it also encourages certain things that could be harmful to a building, if executed improperly. For example, BIF has solar panels above the auditorium, which gets it points in the LEED program. However, they are anchored through a water-tight membrane below the exterior room, making them not entirely water-tight. This leaves the roof open to water damage in the future and possibly costing much more than the energy saved due to the panels. There are also bike change rooms, to get the LEED points for the bike racks that are locked to most people. These rooms take up space and cost a fair amount to build and, yet, they are not needed. This means that there was a large waste of resources to build these unused rooms, for the LEED points.

                While the LEED initiative is a very positive one that encourages good habits in designing buildings, it could be argued that there could be a more way efficient way to become certified as a green building, without certain frivolities that are detrimental to a building. Overall, though, BIF was a very impressive building and a huge step in the right direction when it comes to green architecture. 

Erlanger House

2/24/15

                On this walking tour, we went to the Erlanger House. This has been my favorite tour so far. It exposed us to something completely different than what we normally experience. It also tied in nicely with the models we are doing for the next class.

                Walking up to the house was the first of many surprises to come in the tour. It stands out from all of the other houses on the street around it. It is set back from the sidewalk farther than the rest of the houses and, while all of the other residences have large window and doors at the center of the house, the Erlanger house has none of these. Instead, all that is visible to passersby is a blank brick wall, and, if one looks closely, a small glass door, set on the edge of the front of the house. This gives the whole building the sense of privacy.

                The first floor of the building shows off the minimalism put into the building. The whole thing is very open, with two full walls of windows, letting in a lot of natural light. The sitting area contains a sunken space with couches built into the sunken space. This faces out to the “front yard”, which is a space outside, in between the wall of brick visible from the sidewalk and the glass wall of the house. On the other side of the sitting area is a very open space that rises the height of the building. This is also against a glass wall that faces the backyard. Here, there floor is completely open and hard wood, as opposed to the rest of the floor, which is cement and stone. This space was intended for dance classes that Margaret Erlanger would have at her house. There is also a small kitchen and bathroom on the first floor. The whole house is centered around a chimney that rises straight through the middle.

                The second floor is only half of the length of the house, as the dance space is double height. This space is dedicated almost entirely to the bedroom. This space is, again, very open. The second floor acts as a balcony to view the dance space on the floor below. The whole thing is carpeted in white, including the bathroom, which is a little odd. The toilet and shower are on opposite ends of the bathroom and both have a square skylight above them. Even in the place where one is supposed to have the most privacy, one can feel the sense of openness.

                This house was huge important to make connections to, in regards to our model project. The space had a mezzanine level, a double height space, stairs, and a chimney. Indeed, as I moved through the house, I was able to think about all of the elements it incorporated and apply them to the rules we had been assigned.

                This house was just so different from anything I had experienced before. It so simple and had such a beautiful aesthetic. It fit the original owner so perfectly in both function and very representation of who she was as a person. If this has convinced me of anything, it is to hire an architect to design my own future house.

The Armory, Huff Hall, and Irwin Indoor Sports Facility

2/17/15

                This past Tuesday, we visited three of the buildings on campus that are affiliated with athletics: Huff Hall, the Armory, and Irwin Indoor Sporting Facility. All three of these buildings were meant to be very open and spacious, perfect for sporting events or practices. These spaces all had huge volumes, uninhibited by columns or support in the main space. From the floor of the buildings, it seems impossible for the high ceilings the stay suspended in the heavens without any main columns holding up the center. However, when you exam the ceilings, you see the intricate network of support that redistributes weight to the edges of the building. It is through these that the building is able to hold up the massive ceilings without central columns.

                The function of buildings like Huff, the Armory, or Irwin is to create large spaces where students and athletes have room to engage in sporting activities. This involves such activities as running, jumping, and even throwing things. This means that there needs to be adequate space in the building for such activities to be done without being impeded by columns. Large networks of trusses are used to redistribute the force of the ceiling. These networks take the vertical force that gravity puts on the ceiling and, through a system of interconnected beams, turns the force into a horizontal one. These horizontal forces are then sent outwards, to the edges of the building. There, vertical columns transfer the weight of the ceiling to the ground.

                A truss generally consists of two beam, a top chord and a bottom chord. They utilize tensile and compressive forces to act as braces. The top chord is generally in compression, which means there is an inward, pushing force on the beam. The bottom chord is in tension, which means there is an outward, pulling force on the beam. They are designed to transfer force and to stabilize each other. This allows them to hold up huge ceilings.

                The ability to redistribute force is very important in the modern structure. As buildings get bigger, the necessity for more complex infrastructures arise, and trusses and other such elements become all important. It combines the increased functionality of large spaces with impressive design of complex trusses 

THB Infrastructure

2/10/15

                Today, we stayed a little closer to home than usual. We toured Temple Hoyne Buell itself and examined the stuff that keeps such a huge building going. This tour was related to our visit to the Abbott Power Plant over a week ago because today we specifically focused on the heat and cooling of the building. Abbott supplies much of the energy that heats and cools the campus and THB is included in this. Behind every great building is the infrastructure that keeps it functioning as it should.

                While we couldn’t access the maintenance room to see where much of the inside workings of the extensive air system, a unique feature of THB is that so much else of the pipes and power lines are not only visible, but incorporated into the architecture of the building itself, forming a unique aesthetic that combines both form and function. Starting at lowest level of THB, huge pipes are visible running vertically up to the ceiling. These carry air to and from all of the rooms of THB.

                Following these pipes up to the third floor, we can see the pipes start to run horizontal through the various offices and studio spaces. Starting on one side of the building, the delivery pipe has a huge diameter. As the pipe travels along the building, however, it decreases in diameter because the amount of air it holds decreases with each room it passes. The return pipes remain the same size throughout the building.

                This tour showed the importance of functionality in architecture. A building can’t just look nice, it has to also be able to serve the people it houses. Equipping a building with all of the parts it needs to be able to function properly is a main part of the project, so it is necessary to consider this aspect of design very carefully.