2018/2019 COTE ACSA/AIA COTE Top Ten for Students

by John J. Clark, AIA, NCARB

A conversation with with awardees Phil Riazzi & Cameron Foster

Phil Riazzi
Riazzi is a registered architect with five years of professional experience finishing his Master of Architecture degree at Clemson University. He is passionate about the adaptability of buildings, the benefits of working with your hands, architecture serving as a catalyst for change, and innovations in construction technology that can be leveraged to tackle social and environmental challenges.

Cameron Foster
Foster is a Master of Architecture student at Clemson University and has one year of professional experience in the field of architecture. Prior to attending Clemson, he served four years in the United States Marine Corps and obtained his Bachelor of Science in Architecture at Portland State University. He is passionate about community-based, sustainable, and innovative design and the influences of academia on architecture.

John Clark (JC): Acclimate was recognized by the AIA and ACSA in the COTE Top Ten for Students program. Describe the environmental and social problems that your project sought to address? 

Phil Riazzi and Cameron Foster (PR and CF): Environmentally, we focused on the power of adaptive reuse as a sustainable design strategy. We believe it is imperative that architects moving forward are equipped to successfully adapt existing buildings and design our future buildings in a way that they can be adapted as well. Given the world’s existing building stock and rapid urbanization of cities all over the world, adaptive reuse as a sustainable strategy is as timely as ever. In our project, the reuse of the concrete alone would save over 1.1 million pounds of CO2. 

Socially, our focus was twofold: creating architecture that allows people to comfortably age in place and exploring the notion that uniqueness and privacy should not be sacrificed in the name of mixed-use development. Our global population is living longer than ever before, so aging in place is an important topic that will only become more critical for architects to understand. As people age, they are often forced out of their communities because they can no longer afford to live there, it’s not physically accessible, or the services they need are not available. This creates a lack of generational diversity in communities and serious concerns for the people that don’t have the resources to pick up and move to a place like Florida. 

We believe that the benefits of a mixed-use and walkable community are great but that people’s desire for a space that is uniquely theirs is not going anywhere. In the extreme reaction to suburban life, we have gone too far and crammed people into identical boxes that lack character. People want to live in dense, walkable communities, but they still want a personal retreat that offers privacy and personality. 

JC: Walk our readers through Acclimate and how the proposed concept responds to these problems? 

PR and CF: Acclimate is a project about the power of taking urban spaces from cars and giving it back to people. Located in downtown Bremerton, Washington, this project is the adaptive reuse of a three-story, 500-spot parking garage. Originally built in the 1960s out of reinforced concrete, the structure’s original purpose was a J.C. Penney department store. In the late 20th century, the structure was converted into a parking garage. With a footprint of 80,000 square feet, the opportunity to positively impact the fabric of downtown is tremendous. 

The project is designed as two distinct phases. The first phase involves creating public programming within the existing 152,000-square-foot building. With a floor, structure, and a roof already in place and an open floor plate, these spaces would be able to be built out with relatively low investment. The second phase involves building four residential towers with a footprint of just 280 square feet each, above the existing structure. Once 48,000 square feet of residential programming is added to the project, the total usable area adds up to roughly 200,000 square feet. 

The primary strategy of Acclimate is the decision to reuse the existing structure, which will save on the production of new resources and the intense amount of energy and resources needed to construct new buildings. 

Fifty residences are elevated in four different towers to provide views of the surrounding context, connecting people to the city of Bremerton. A small footprint cuts down on demolition and provides the unique opportunity for every resident to have an entire floor plate as their residence. The minimal structure of the towers is accomplished through a reinforced concrete core that houses the towers’ elevator, stairs, utility chase, and a bathroom on each floor. LVL beams are fixed to the core and support the five-ply CLT floor slabs. A topping slab is provided to minimize acoustic transmission between units. By leveraging the Pacific Northwest’s supply of wood, the project cuts down on embodied energy and uses a renewable resource native to the area. 

Three different treatments to the towers’ exterior skin are employed to control solar heat gain while creating a dynamic aesthetic. A double-skin facade on the east, south, and west faces controls heat gain in the summer and captures heat in the winter. Operable shades in the cavity of the double-skin facade allow occupants to individually control heat gain and glare. Deep overhangs on the south side of the towers block the summer sun while allowing in the lower winter sun angles. Throughout most of the year, the wind predominantly comes from the south. In the summer, however, the prevailing winds come from the north. To achieve passive cooling in the towers during the summer, low openings on the north facade pull cooler air through the unit and exhaust the warm air at high openings in the south facade. 

The large porches allow people to enjoy the temperate climate of Bremerton while being covered from the rainfall that is prevalent in the area. These large porches also connect residences via stairs to their neighbors who live on the level above and below. By doing this, the project has stacked the traditional neighborhood where front porches are connected via sidewalks. 

The public programming integrates much-needed resources in a key location in the city. The site sees thousands of people move through it each day on their way south to the ferry that connects Bremerton to Seattle. By sloping a portion of the existing floor slab, the main level can meet the sidewalk on Pacific Avenue, the main thoroughfare for these travelers. The market here is a space for food trucks, regular farmers markets, and more. 

A wellness center provides preventative and curative care for the community all in one location. This format acknowledges that all elements of human wellness are connected and brings together the required services for one to stay healthy. The range of services in the wellness center include traditional medical offices, a fitness center, physical therapy, counseling, and psychiatry. A comprehensive wellness center allows residents of the community to comfortably age in place. 

A rooftop utilizing native landscaping and a rainwater collection system help address the sensitive ecological issues inherent to the site. Located adjacent to the Puget Sound makes addressing stormwater runoff specifically very important. For this reason, the rooftop collects rainwater into cisterns located on the lower level that pumps the water into the core of the towers. Excess water is slowly released into the neighboring green space across Washington Avenue to the east. This rooftop will also help insulate the immense area of programming below, reducing energy consumption and costs. Concrete that was demolished is crushed, tumbled, and reused as a walking surface on the rooftop. 

Acclimate aims to be a model for maximum gains with minimal intervention. Unfortunately, many architectural projects fail due to their heavy-handedness or overambitious scope. Acclimate is an example of a small intervention that would yield incredible results for the city of Bremerton. At such an important location in Bremerton and with the rise in alternative forms of transportation, it’s critical that this building be given back to the community. 

JC: What takeaways and concepts can be applied to current architectural practice and real estate development? 

PR and CF: The idea of manipulating the typical row housing we see in suburbia into a vertical sequence of units for people to inhabit is no new concept in architectural practice. However, with the typically sought-after “American Dream” lifestyle of suburbia becoming increasingly difficult to sustain, building vertically needs more attention. This project looks to commune residents with respect to the individualism a house with a yard can provide by allowing an entire floorplate to be occupied by a single resident while still maintaining the connection to a neighbor’s front porch. A project like Acclimate manageably compacts the necessities of a home into a single floor and allows for an elegant, modest, slender series of towers to extrude themselves through an existing structure at four circumscribed points. This concept can serve as a precedent for sensible urban housing. 

JC: As students, what are your thoughts on climate action and sustainability? How are architecture students addressing, or preparing to address, the environmental challenges in our built environment? 

PR and CF: Our thoughts are simple on this. Architects have an incredible responsibility to address the issues of climate change and smart resource management. It needs to get to the point where “sustainable architecture” is no longer a phrase. Architecture should inherently include the principles of sustainability. Architecture firm websites will eventually no longer need to include a project tab for “sustainability” on par with saying “residential” or “civic.” All architecture should be sustainable architecture. 

We think schools across the country, especially Clemson, do a great job of mixing the principles of sustainable design into everything students do. The topic is not meant to be taught in a single three-hour class once per week. It’s a topic that has social, economic, aesthetic, and political implications across the whole field of architecture. 

JC: How do you hope to impact the profession after graduation? 

PR: I hope to impact the profession by using all of my previous experiences to constantly shape how I practice. Architecture is such a broad field, which is one of the reasons I originally became interested in it. I plan to take my individual interests with me and find ways to push these ideas in the professional world. 

I also believe strongly in the tie between architectural education and the profession. I hope to keep a consistent connection to academia while I work. It’s incredibly freeing to periodically remove the constraints of the field to look at topics in a more pure, academic setting. It’s an excellent arena for challenging the status quo. The more that ideas and experiments from the academic world can percolate into the professional world, the better. 
CF: I aspire to impact the profession by remaining explorative, creative, and innovative in design solutions that I have been able to freely practice in academia. I consider myself to have been a practical designer while in school and because of that have been able to retain practicality with creativity and exploration in design. I hope to remain involved with the education of architecture while continuing to progress my professional career when I do become a licensed architect. I have had the opportunity to assist in teaching different classes while being a student, and after doing so, I understand the importance of passing along knowledge and techniques to younger aspiring architects in order to improve the way that we design in the future. 

 

Author Bio:

John J. Clark, AIA, NCARB
Clark is an architect with RMKM Architecture in Albuquerque, N.Mex. Clark is a graduate of the University of New Mexico and is the 2019-20
Communications Director for the AIA National’s Young Architects Forum.