Collective Comfort
Liz Galvez, Professor
Architecture
Applications for Spring 2024 are closed for this project.
American desert cities designed and built at the turn of the century, in collaboration with the advent of air-conditioning technologies, have been able to house millions of Americans by relying primarily on fossil-fuels to supply relief from extreme hot weather. The Phoenix Metro Area, or The Valley of The Sun as it is known to locals, experienced 145 days reaching temperatures over 100˚F in 2020 according to the National Weather Service. In July of 2023, Phoenix set a new record with 31 days straight of over 110-degree heat. The increased probability of a longer-lasting heat-wave, combined with the over-demand of electrical power supply during extreme weather events can be catastrophic, especially to the most vulnerable communities. Today, municipal government, local communities, and grass roots organizations, coupled with environmental researchers in the Phoenix Metro Area have taken note of the risks that heat poses to human livelihoods and are working to develop cooling centers as strategy to deal with heat insecurity.
To address equitable-cooling in relationship with an over-reliance on private mechanical, electrically powered air-conditioning technologies, the Collective Comfort course sequence aims to develop a public program that re-thinks the cooling center as an educational climate resilience hub. During the Fall semester, seminar students have collectively developed design principles and strategies that can inform the cooling center as a heat resilience and climate education hub. This year-long interdisciplinary endeavor proposes a research seminar (Fall 2023) followed by an advanced collaborative architecture studio (Spring 2024). The sequence brings interdisciplinary partners from resiliency planning, engineering, and community stakeholders into collaboration with architecture students. The work from the seminar and studio will be showcased in a forthcoming exhibition and is partially funded by the SOM Foundation’s 2023 Faculty Research Prize.
The resilience hub design guidelines developed in the seminar will support a replicable framework for new construction and adaptive reuse. The framework will address urban site selection in relation to the community needs, basic list of proposed programs and strategies to identify culturally appropriate program needs, design strategies, energy systems, materials and construction methods. These guidelines and framework documents will serve our community partners and stakeholders as they develop the Phoenix Metro area “resilience hub necklace.”
Role: The URAP Student will be responsible for assisting in the creation of design guidelines for the resilience hub, working closely with the faculty mentor. The student's role will be primarily to assist with drawing dimensioned plans, sections and axonometrics that frame forthcoming resilence hub programing in desert cities and beyond. Learning outcomes will focus on engaging real-word environmental issues in relationship to culture and collectivity, through architectural representation that engages building processes (as a research methodology) that offer a rigorous reframing of specific aspects of building culture.
Qualifications: Personal Skills: Detail Oriented, Clear communicator, Self-directed
Software Skills: Adobe Creative Suite, Rhinoceros, Rendering (Varies)
Hours: 6-8 hrs
Related website: https://ced.berkeley.edu/people/liz-galvezhttp://
Related website: https://somfoundation.com/fellow/galvez-munenzon/http://