The S24 Design/ Build Project was a continuation of the Peace Garden Project offered by the SoA in the spring 2023 semester. Participants included SoA CivE, AECM faculty/ staff/ students, Campus Design & Facility Development, Facility Management & Campus Services and campus constituents with the goal of improving the student experience and quality of life on campus through design intervention(s).

This semester the work from the spring 23 proposal and installation was reviewed, three “competition” teams were formed, a 2 week design competition was conducted and the project that was built was determined with the filters of aesthetics, budget and workforce determined through a collaborative process. Due to the rigorous time constraints of both designing and building a project in just one semester, the design space that was explored was intentionally limited to a pergola structure(s).

Design Build Team:

B.Arch '24:Qiushi (Cody) Chen, Hannah Haytko-Desalvo & B.A '24: Aditya Shinn, Tianshu Huang

B.Arch '25: Akanksha Tayal, Eesha Nagpal, Jackie Yu, Norman Situ, Violet Chu

B.Arch '27: Christian Duckworth, David Lyu, Esha Shah, Erin Choi, Max Hong

MSAECM '24: Pritesh Anjikar & CivE '24: Ken Huang

Under the Guidance of Professor Steve Lee, Shop Director Jon Holmes & Steve Sontag

Design Entries

Early proposal exploration with over hanging cloth laser cut to form dynamic shading with parametric patterns, which was held back due to Pittsburgh’s rainy weather lasting over half of the year. A rain shed design redirecting water to soil was adopted.

After formalizing the winning proposal into the first studio BIM ArchiCAD Drawings, we conducted the first constructablity review by plotting out all the drawings and making critical 1/2:1 scale mockups on critical foundation-column / column-girder / girder-beam / girder-purlin / roof panel-gutter/ moving screen panels joint junction models for campus construction and maintenance team to review, where we got a lot of helpful advice and pivoted from interlocking double double girder to double girder-double beam for the main structure moving forward.

Assorted collection of construction process photos and final BIM Drawings. Countless shop hours/ drawings/ material unloads/ facilities preparements. We ready to add this structure to our lovely campus!