Projects
Project 01: Urban
Mixed-Use, West Campus Housing Cooperative
AutoCAD Revit utilized to design, collaborate, compose constriction drawings and specifications, and run energy simulations.
Our objective is to integrate organic food production with innovative waste management strategies and community engagement, as aspects of sustainable living. Project revolves around the concept of bio-mimicry to “bring a number of activities together, all within one building, where the waste from one becomes the nutrients of another.” Elements modeled after London’s Mobius Project tentatively include:
- “a restaurant
- that complements a productive greenhouse (i.e. Eastside Café),
- an anaerobic digester to process biodegradable waste collected from the area to generate heat for green house and water heating, also producing electricity into the grid.
- A water treatment system, treating wastewater into freshwater and generating energy from the solids using plants and microorganisms,
- a fish farm, fed from vegetable waste from the kitchen and worms from the compost, to supply fish back into the restaurant.
- A community coffee shop where waste grains could be used as a substrate for growing mushrooms.”
– TED Talk: Michael Pawlyn – Using Natures Genius in Architecture
Knowledgeable residents would maintain and operate systems to ensure that intended design functions efficiently.
Mixed-use development will become essential to achieving maximum sustainability while also minimizing auto dependency and urban sprawl. The University Neighborhood Overlay (UNO), the zoning code created to permit larger buildings and denser development in the West Campus area, will enable us to embark on a very unique project. In 2004, COTERA+REED ARCHITECTS published the West Campus Design Guidelines (pdf) for the UNO as a component of the Central Austin Combined Neighborhood Plan. Design will align to these guidelines in order to opt-in and build synergy through this zoning.