We begin our journey as a single cohort of eight new 5th-year students—Caitlin, Emma, Julia, Kati, Lawson, Mac, McAllister, and Tanner—and will later be divided into two teams, each working on its own project: a new home for a local family and a visitors’ center for a church. We dusted off the summer cobwebs and initiated our research on insulating a home’s walls from the exterior by examining past Rural Studio wall details. With these references, we explored the concept of having continuous insulation on the exterior of the wall in both a slab and pier iteration. 

Next, we had the pleasure of having Peter Zacharia, from Atelier Ten, lead our very first workshop, sharing environmental insights. With his guidance and thoughts on our design process, we explored how the projects could be oriented within two different site conditions. Peter emphasized the importance of using passive systems, which led us to focus our research on sun paths and wind conditions for our sites’ orientation diagrams. 

Then structural engineering consultants Joe Burns and Anderson Inge enlightened us on the fascinating and crucial world of structure. They had groups of four 5th-years to iteratively design scaled models with potential structural systems for the mock-up pods because our plan is to test our insulation strategy by building a new pod (a small, freestanding dorm room). We stress-tested each pod model in turn, using a contraption that would gradually apply weight onto the model’s structure until failure. 

Iterative design requires analysis along the way, so our groups discussed the successful and unsuccessful structural decisions then altered the models accordingly. Amongst all the chaos and model destruction, Kiel Moe presented a series of lectures on material ecology and building layers, which helped inform how we refined our wall details.  Finally, we participated in a community event at the Newbern Library and had the privilege of meeting the Board! We can’t wait to keep you posted on what’s up next!