Collective Comfort
Liz Galvez, Professor
Architecture
Applications for Spring 2025 are closed for this project.
Project Description: Cooling centers typically utilize existing buildings to provide air-conditioned spaces, offering citizens immediate relief from high temperatures. Yet, as an emerging architectural typology, many of these centers lack design direction. They are conceived as emergency buildings often without essential amenities like food, natural daylighting, fresh air, or engaging activities, making it hard for people to imagine spending hours there no matter how dangerously hot it might be outside. Furthermore, this approach overlooks the broader causes of extreme heat, including the widespread use of heat-retaining materials in the urban environment and reliance on fossil fuels for cooling.
This project reframes the architecture of the cooling center from survivability to liveability under the concept of Collective Comfort. This project envisions cooling centers not merely as air-conditioned spaces but as hubs of collective comfort that prioritize resilience through social engagement and the power of architecturally significant spaces to instigate collective joy. Drawing inspiration from ancient desert civilizations, where communal interaction and sensory pleasure were crucial, three material prototypes examine how architecture can foster environments that don’t merely cool but actively bring people together to reframe what comfort can be.
Role: Tasks & Learning Outcomes: The URAP Student will be responsible for working closely with the PI to develop additional cooling principles, produce drawings of existing prototypes, develop an additional model focusing on clay, and potentially in helping the PI to organize the contents into a book proposal. This position requires weekly, in-person meetings. Learning outcomes will emphasize addressing real-world environmental issues through architectural representation, utilizing building processes as a research methodology to rigorously reframe specific aspects of building culture.
Qualifications: Qualifications: Personal Skills: Detail Oriented, Clear communicator, Self-directed Software Skills: Adobe Creative Suite, Rhinoceros, Writing and Editing. Making skills: Detail Oriented, model-making, simple construction and openness to learning experimental methods of making.
Hours: 9-11 hrs
Related website: https://ced.berkeley.edu/people/liz-galvez
Related website: https://immaterialmatters.org/