Student Housing

SIU Student Housing
By:Adulsak "Otto" Chanyakorn
        The environmental problem is a pressing issue for contemporary human society. People are trying to disconnect themselves from the ecosystem. If we study traditional human living, people in such cultures respond to nature effectively and traditional houses in different areas around the world display extremely sophisticated climactic adaptation. Primitive builders successfully adjust their buildings to the natural elements such as sun path, wind, local climate, etc. For example, people in tropical climate maximize ventilation through their buildings to increase evaporative cooling. In the desert areas, there is an extreme difference between day and night. Hence, building materials are crucial to absorbing heat in the daytime and slowing radiation in the nighttime. These are a few examples of how primitive builders tried to adapt and respond to climate in their region.
        In contrast, contemporary human society abandons traditional wisdom by consistently trying to control dwelling environments, which leads to an energy consumption problem. Moreover, people seem to lose their consciousness and connection to nature. Architects are a significant group of people who will have an opportunity to aid and help society by contributing their knowledge and design strategies to reconnect human consciousness to nature and also to reduce energy consumption.
       This research focuses on reuniting the human spirit with nature via dwelling architecture and reducing utilization of energy in the architectural field by integrating passive and progressive design manners into design processes. These ideas are demonstrated through a new student housing project for Southern Illinois University. The research first explains the current problem plaguing the existing SIU housing. Then, it investigates recent precedent studies in various regions to compare and contrast how architects in these different regions have adapted passive design methods into their architecture. Finally, the research applies appropriate design strategies from the precedent studies to the creation of this SIU housing project and concludes by revisiting its hypothesis about how architects are able to integrate passive and progressive design manners into their designs to reconnect humans with nature and reduce energy consumption in human dwellings.  
Keywords 
Human consciousness to nature, Nature connection, Nature elements, Alternative design strategies, Passive design, Progressive, Integration, Natural elements, Environmental problem.