Sustainable Systems Stefan M Fall 19

1) The industry is moving from "cherry picking style labeling" to material ingredient disclosure in order to standardize how material ingredients are presented. Often times, through cherry picking ingredients, manufacturers are able to disclose the information that they want the public to see while hiding other aspects, such as harmful chemicals that may be part of their product. Through creating this standard list, the Health Product Declaration will more transparently show what is going in to each and every product and it will create a means to more clearly compare products (apples to apples). 2) Embodied energy is a part of everything we use in our day-to-day lives and in the United States, 6% of all energy consumed is used to manufacture and transport building materials. As architects and engineers continue to find and explore new materials that drive down the total energy used in buildings (building operations), embodied energy from the construction stage will become a...

For my case study 1, I explored the city of St. Louis, a place I have had the chance to visit on various occasions and in my mind a very unique place. The city has a lot of pride and a strong culturally identity, however over the past 50 years it has fallen on economic hard times and has experienced a sharp population decline that is now just starting to rebuild. Gingerbread houses - a classic style in St. Louis  The infamous Pruitt-Igoe housing complex built in the 1950's according to Modernist principles and was demolished less than 20 years When looking for examples of sustainable building occurring in St. Louis, two principle examples stood out from the rest: Gateway Arch Visitor Center and Museum Completed in 2018, the Gateway Arch Visitor Center & Museum is a 150,000 square foot building that is almost entirely underground and is topped by a 3.1 acre green roof. Through placing the museum underground, the architect preserved unobstru...

For this project I was assigned zone Cfa and I was drawn to investigate the city of St. Louis as I think it has a very unique architectural history and is often overlooked. The city began as an important node linking the Western United States to the Eastern United States and experienced economic prosperity in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Most of the vernacular architecture dates back to the beginning of the 20th century and it is common to find wood framed homes clad in a brick veneer. In addition to this vernacular architecture, the city is most known for the Gateway Arch, designed by Eero Saarinen and completed in 1963, symbolically linking the east and the west, which is separated by the Mississippi River. St. Louis experiences hot and humid summers while in the winter the temperature does dip below freezing. It is fortunate to not experience many natural disasters, apart from in 1993 when the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers rose up due to a prolonged...

1) According to Paula Kehoe and Sarah Rhodes, in their article "Water Efficiency: Innovations for water in urban areas require rethinking and reuse," water consumption has tripled over the last 50 years and by 2050 the world's population will be more than 9 billion people. With that being the case, fresh water will become an increasingly scarce resource and in order to ensure all people have access to it, we need to rethink our consumption and overall use of water. With that being the case, we can use the built environment to capture, monitor and reuse water that would otherwise be wasted. For example non-potable water can be used for applications that include irrigation, cooling, heating, and uses in fixtures such as toilets. 2) I would agree that energy is a design problem. As we increasingly look to the future of our world and the environment, it is clear that if we continue to build in a manner that depletes natural resources and harms the environment, we will do...

Hello, my name is Stefan. I am in my second year of the M. Arch program at the BAC. My undergraduate studies were in Political Science and Spanish and currently I work as a site supervisor for a small construction company based in Boston, MA. My most recent project was a new 7,000 SF retail building in Belmont, MA pictured below. We are in the process of getting final sign offs now. I also spend time on an ongoing contemporary house project in Wellesley, MA. I look forward to the content for this course, I think sustainability in architecture is an immense challenge. Never before have architects had to so closely focus on ecological concerns in design. I think it will be the single largest factor dictating the direction of the field for our generation and future generations to come.