School of architecture

School Notes: School of Architecture
November/December 2014

First-year building project goes micro

Last spring, the School of Architecture’s Jim Vlock First-Year Building Project took on a new challenge: to design and build a “micro dwelling unit” that could be replicated on the many hard-to-develop sliver lots across New Haven. The result, at 179 Scranton Street in West River, is a house that occupies approximately 800 square feet, divided into two units, one for the homeowner and the other for a tenant. The school partnered with NeighborWorks New Horizons, an affordable housing organization; HTP Ventures LLC, a private equity firm interested in mass-producing small residential units; and the New Haven Livable City Initiative. All 55 first-year graduate students, organized into teams, submitted designs and together constructed the house, under the guidance of project director Adam Hopfner ’99MArch.

The Jim Vlock First-Year Building Project was launched in 1967 to give students real-world experience in design and construction. 

In the gallery

The winter/spring exhibition at the School of Architecture Gallery will examine architecture’s engagement with digital technologies from the 1990s to the early 2000s. Curated by Davenport Visiting Professor Greg Lynn, the exhibit marks the second phase of a research project by the Canadian Centre for Architecture and features work by Asymptote, Karl Chu, Bernard Cache, dECOi Architects, ONL, and NOX. The projects on view range from the design of buildings to the design of interactive media, interactive robotic mechanisms, drafting machines based on the Catastrophe theory, generative algorithms, and the writing of disciplinary and cultural theories. Archeology of the Digital: Media and Machines is on view from December 8 to May 1, 2015.

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