Our great friend Kiel Moe kicked off this year’s fall workshop series, bringing his expertise to our 5th-year students as they begin to wrestle with the challenges of using mass timber to create a bath house. That’s right: using wood to create a bath house in humid subtropical Hale County, AL, where the summer temperatures soar, and the relative humidity is high year-round!

We are pleased to be able to call him our own now: after collaborating with us from McGill University on our mass timber and thermal mass buoyancy ventilation projects, he has joined Auburn University College of Architecture, Design and Construction (CADC) as a Professor of Practice specializing in Mass Timber. In particular, his workshop addressed how we might reconsider the act and celebration of bathing, and the role of timber in that environment, and understand the transmission of heat in such a building and the long-term care of a building through its detailing. Like other workshops, students divided into charette teams to share the newly acquired knowledge among each other and thereby get to know one another better.

Tom Chung, another celebrated new Auburn CADC Professor of Practice in Mass Timber, contributed to the workshop, along with teaching partner Rural Studio alumnus Will McGarity of Stick Architecture LLC in Birmingham. Students in Tom Chung’s Studio III on Auburn’s main campus (also known as the Mass Timber design studio) presented their timber precedent studies under the shelter of the Great Hall at the Morrisette House.

This workshop was just the beginning for our 5th-year students. This Fall, they will participate in three weeks of workshops led by our consultants with expertise in subjects like landscape, structural engineering, building codes and ordnances, as well as designers, builders and makers. This process is directed toward students gaining familiarity with the year’s projects, with consultants exploring important questions related to their field. The workshop process culminates with students choosing the project and designing the team they will be working both on and with for the rest of their time in the program.

Keep your eyes open for a recap of the upcoming workshop with Emily Knox and David Hill from Auburn’s Landscape Architecture Program.