Pedagogies of building systems in architectural education are traditionally framed as the technical knowledge guiding construction, material applications, structures, and mechanical building services. This paper provides a framework and a case study for centering inclusive and universal design principles in the teaching of building systems with a focus on designing public spaces for rural and aging populations. It proposes methods for integrating design accountability, sustainable environmental practices, and cultural contexts into architectural design and education.Public spaces, services, and resources are spread thinly outside of cities and denser communities, creating barriers to access for aging populations among others. This pedagogical framework for inclusive rural architecture focuses on post offices as one of the few public institutions in rural communities and a vital conduit to essential services (particularly during health crises). In the speculative space of architecture curriculum, students conceived of additional services and programs to rethink the role of post offices in communities. These programs targeted accessibility barriers by providing digital resource centers, transportation hubs, and community gathering spaces.The flexibility, adaptability, and comfort at the core of universal design principles provide a lens for understanding sustainable environmental techniques. Adaptable buildings constructed with replaceable and reusable parts allow for repair and resiliency over time. Material and structural systems designed for intuitive use and presentation of information promote accessible communication. Passive systems design enables comfort in dialog with the environment and a reduction in required energy. However as passive systems often require building operability, inclusive design principles call for building systems to be operable by diverse users. Post office projects in this case study integrated universal design principles to achieve energy efficient buildings that respond to changing climates and rural cultural contexts.Replacing minimum standards for accessibility within curricula with inclusive design criteria is also enacted through methodologies. While educational institutions are clustered in urban areas, many students come from or have ties to rural communities. The focus on rural public spaces and aging populations is a means for students to bring their own diverse backgrounds, places of origin, and histories into their academic studies. In combining methods of engaged research with a universal design-focused pedagogy for building systems, students expand technical knowledge of architectural design with the objective of creating equitable and inclusive public spaces. Read the full article in accessible html-format here.
This paper traces a lineage of device-as-architecture through the mediatization of Julia Child’s kitchens. A historical survey of the changes to her kitchen and its relationship to interior design during the latter half of the 20th century suggest a reading of interior architecture not as a means to house new technology but rather as composed by technology and devices. Counter to Ryener Banham’s projection of a future where interior technologies give shape to an architectural exterior, Child’s kitchen reflects a growing trend in the second half of the 20th century in which tool-based clutter and the interior’s autonomy from the exterior, best characterized by the storage-accumulation aesthetics of lofts and garages, dominated. Rather than necessarily limiting the role of the architect to exterior form, the elevation of gadgets, gizmos, and devices to the status of architecture opened up the possibility for a functional user-driven design agency. Analysis of the kitchen backdrops that served as sets for her various cooking shows as well as the cataloging and installation of her kitchen in the Smithsonian Museum of American History reveal an evolution of architectural interiors that shifted with her own identity and paralleled shifting domestic aesthetics away from minimalism, modernism, and post-World War II home automation. This examination of Julia Child’s kitchens frame a narrative of domestic design beginning in the 1960s when tools and technology were increasingly seen as the backbone of a new ecological or environmental society. Julia Child’s display of functional clutter took part in popularizing a new craft aesthetic where tools were prominently displayed and often collectively used. The images of her kitchen, spanning four decades, provide a context for changing cultural and architectural discourse in relation to the aesthetics of function, devices, media, and attitudes toward preservation.
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