The Lenses of Architectural Thinking
ARC 302
NCSU College of Design
Spring 2018
The work on this page was completed by undergraduate students in their third year of study at the North Carolina State University College of Design.
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This junior spring semester is intended to develop students’ understanding of technical systems of building, including structural strategies, environmental response and control, and enclosure assemblies.
Students began the studio with an in-depth and iterative precedent study; analyzing architecture through five lenses :
1. Program / Parti
2. Orientation
3. Circulation
4. Structure
5. Enclosure.
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Students then used these same lenses to analyze the sites on which they would soon design their final projects. This assignment began with a careful and detailed documentation of the conditions of their selected site through photography, sketching, asset mapping, and GIS. This collected data was then layered with diagrammatic analysis to create drawings that would shape the ways they located and designed their interventions.
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Finally, students began designing their final project - a boutique hotel incorporating an unexpected space that fundamentally challenges and improves the standard hotel program. Each of the three possible sites had a predetermined theme - Art Hotel (located on an urban lot in downtown Raleigh); Research Hotel (located across from NCSU’s D.H. Hill Library); and Nature Hotel (on the edge of Umstead State Park). Students were responsible for developing the specific program of their unexpected spaces based on theme of their selected site.
A selection of student work is featured in the two slideshows below.
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ARC 302 courses provide for a technical studio in the Junior Year of the four-year pre-professional program. It includes an investigation of technical systems of building with emphases on lateral load resisting structural strategies, environmental control/energy, enclosure assembly detail, and their architectural implications.
Projects focus on what we have deemed the “five lenses of architectural thinking” – program, orientation, circulation, structure, and enclosure. Particular emphasis in this course is placed on physical models.
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1 _ Compare and evaluate the technical systems and their expressive role in selected examples of built architecture as precedents.
2 _ Design a structural system with emphasis on the strategies of resisting lateral loads (building on the knowledge of gravity load resisting system covered in ARC301).
3 _ Understand and accommodate spatial requirements for common environmental control systems, including plant, distribution, and control components (building on the knowledge of passive energy systems covered in ARC301).
4 _ Select building materials and design architectural details as an integral part of the design (building on the knowledge of building enclosure and assembly covered in ARC301).
5 _ Apply the concepts of architecture’s means of production. Examples could include expandability, modularity, prefabrication, and repetitiveness for considerations of aesthetics, economy, and ease of construction.
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Students
Jacob Fremdermen
Brooke Grayson
Maryam Karime
Erin Kopf
Caroline Marshall
Jeily Mata
Nix Salcedo Pena
Nate Sepic
Brittany Siegert
Aubrey Sterling
Nailah Watts-Harper
Logan WinsteadProfessors
Jake Heffington
Matt Griffith
Maryam Karime _ Structure _ St. Benedict Chapel by Peter Zumthor
Nix Salcedo-Pena _ Structure _ Tower of Winds by Toyo Ito
Erin Kopf _ Structure _ St. Andrews Beach House by Sean Godsell
Brittany Siegert _ Structure _ Richards Medical Research Lab by Louis Kahn
Nix Salcedo-Pena _ Program _ Rural House by RCR
Aubrey Sterling _ Program _ Asakusa Tourist Center by Kengo Kuma
Aubrey Sterling _ Program _ Centro Botin by Renzo Piano
Logan Winstead _ Program _ Regiocentale Zuid by Wiel Aretz Architects
Caroline Marshall _ Circulation _ Museum of Architecture by Toyo Ito
Erin Kopf _ Circulation _ Tolo House by Alvaro Siza
Aubrey Sterling _ Circulation _ Giant Interactive HQ
Nix Salcedo-Pena _ Circulation _ Building on the Water by Alvaro Siza
Logan Winstead _ Enclosure _ Museum of Modern Literature by David Chipperfield
Brittany Siegert _ Enclosure _ Utrecht Library by Wiel Aretz Architects
Brittany Siegert _ Enclosure _ Langen Foundation by Tadao Ando
Nix Salcedo-Pena _ Orientation _ Church of the Light by Tadao Ando
Aubrey Sterling _ Orientation _ Yatsushiro Museum by Toyo Ito
Brittany Siegert _ Orientation _ Salk Institute by Louis Kahn
