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A year ago, if you had asked students in the School of Architecture where they would be in the spring of 2006, the answers would have varied, but it’s unlikely that any of them would have said Gautier—a wind-battered, washed-out town off the coast of Mississippi. They probably wouldn’t have seen themselves standing in a deserted and sweltering neighborhood, surrounded by a strange array of construction parts. They might not have guessed that they held an ambitious design for how to put it all together.
But in the weeks following graduation, Gautier, Miss., is where 14 of these students headed. The design they created was for preHAB, a prefabricated and environmentally responsive house to be built in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity in an area ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. "This design is, in a way, a constructive critique of the Habitat for Humanity house," says architecture professor John Quale. "We wanted to demonstrate that there are other ways of thinking about houses in particular when dealing with environmental issues."
The preHAB house is the latest experiment by U.Va. students and faculty involved in the ecoMOD program, a multiyear interdisciplinary project within the Architecture School that aims to create a series of affordable housing prototypes that are also ecological and modular. This particular house, for instance, uses panels of Thermasteel, an energy-efficient material that resists the growth of mold and mildew—an important quality in the Gulf Coast region. It has a solar panel system on the roof and employs a cross-ventilation system involving four exterior porches. To make the house easy to replicate, students kept Habitat’s building techniques and square-footage requirements in mind when creating the design.
The preHAB house takes shape in southern Mississippi |
The housing parts were built in Charlottesville, then shipped down to Gautier. But when the time came to assemble everything, there were delays. They had problems getting the permit. The concrete slab hadn’t been poured yet. The placement of the plumbing was slightly off. In addition, Habitat for Humanity was "pretty overwhelmed," Quale says, gearing up to build about 200 houses of its own.
Soon, however, the process was underway and despite the humidity and scorching heat, the students began to see their design take shape. "It was an extension of their education," says Quale. "They were literally putting things together."
The problems were relatively minor, according to Amy Lewandowski (Arch ’03, ’06) one of the project managers in Gautier. "Something would be off by a couple inches," she says, "but you accommodate for that."
Having constructed the parts in the old airplane hangar at Milton Field, the students had to adjust to the environment of Gautier. "It really helped my understanding of how things fit together," says Tommy Solomon (Arch ’08). "When we were working in Charlottesville it was a very controlled environment. It was a different ballgame when we went down to Mississippi."
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Students spending the past year designing an ecologically minded modular home fro a family displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
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The preHAB house has a modern design and will fit into a subdivision of 1960s ranch houses. A family is expected to be able to move in by the end of the summer. "We got beyond the drafting boards and computer screens," says Lewandowski. "We learned how to work as a team while keeping the goal in mind."
Another kind of housing problem was tackled by U.Va. students in an international design competition called "Higher Density, Higher Ground," which was sponsored by Architectural Record magazine and Tulane University. Participants were asked to design a high-density area that would include 140 housing units, a community center, a retail component and the attendant number of parking spaces—all on a site of roughly an acre and a half. Working in pairs, five teams from U.Va competed. From 275 entries, the judges chose two winners and singled out three more for commendation—one of which was a project submitted by Justin Laskin (Arch ’00, ’08) and Kathleen Mark (Arch ’08).
"The honor is truly theirs," says architecture professor Maurice Cox. "They were competing against architects already out there in the world of work."
There are many other factors at play when designing for a high density area as opposed to a single house, says Mark. "We had to respond to a larger context, how it would all fit together," she says. "We had to concentrate on everything as a whole."
Their design is distinguished by its use of four residential towers, each of which is composed of three smaller towers. This allows for light and air to circulate through the units. Although it was intermittently challenging to work in a pair, Laskin and Mark were able to come together on what both of them wanted for the design.
An important piece of the puzzle for the students was taking a trip down to the site, on the banks of the Mississippi River, to get a sense of the area. "We wanted to understand the nature of the place we were hoping to add to," says Mark. "It definitely made it more personal."
—Emma Rathbone
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