Environment, Form and Feedback (EFF) is founded on the premise that architecture is a part of a larger planetary ecology. EFF is a core design studio focused on architecture’s response to climate change within urban environments. Considering projections of rising waters, extreme weather events and aging infrastructures, the site of the Six Mile Island in Pittsburgh’s Allegheny River becomes a testing ground for new hybrid infrastructures within a landscape ecology of perpetual flooding. By engaging social and environmental patterns while identifying micro-climatic behaviors students will engage in territories of mapping and environmental simulation as a basis to move towards the design of architectural interventions that translate across scales to give new shape to the contemporary city.

This proposal seeks to address the hybrid system in terms of ecological and experiential performances beteween human and nature at different levels on site to fully engage with the river.

Axo-tripartite diagram of the system: green roof as the park, intralattice structure as the in-between space, and free form tunnel as walkiable experience through multiple spaces.

Ecological Machine, Formal Optimization following human-nature symbiosis

Grasshopper Axolotl Generative Iterations by altering drive curve Inputs for rapid prototyping free-formed architectural shell structure circulation.