Spring in Carbondale!

Spring is beginning to arrive in Carbondale! This image of daffodils in full bloom is from the front yard of Associate Professor John K. Dobbins. There are 65 blossoms in this group of daffodils.

Construction Tour: The View Baptist Church

A regular feature of Building Technology courses at SIUC is a site visit. This spring, ARC 342: Building Technology III (Steel), visited the construction site of The View Baptist Church in Carbondale, Illinois.

The church was designed by Architect Thad Heckman of DesignWorks in Carbondale. Mr. Heckman teaches one of the three lab sections of ARC 342 this spring. The 18,000 sf church building replaces the original First Baptist Church in downtown Carbondale. Those familiar with the building know it as the large stone Romanesque Revival building with the rose windows. As you can see in the image above, Mr. Heckman paid homage to the original church design in the forms used for the new church.

The spire on the northwest corner of the building points toward the original location of First Baptist in downtown Carbondale. The new church building is located on South Giant City Road. The original stained glass windows of the church have been transplanted and used in the new building, as shown in the image below.

The sanctuary of the new church is tuned to the acoustics of the human voice. The SIUC School of Music will present a choir performance in June in the sanctuary.

Thanks to Thad Heckman for arranging and guiding ARC 342 students through the church!

ArchitectTV

Architect Magazine posts videos of items related to the profession of architecture. Currently, they are featuring thisyear's P/A Award winning projects. This year's winning projects are quite varied, ranging from a Drive-in and Park by Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith to the 90-story Al Sharq tower by SOM in Saudi Arabia. Check out all the projects and the web site!

Time to Test the Structures!

An annual highlight of Architecture 362: Structures II is the testing of the wood structures designed and built by students. Working in teams of two, students must construct a support that spans a 4'-0" circle and that carries 150# of bricks. Doesn't sound so hard, does it? Well, the challenge is that only one 2x4 may be used to design the structure. In the image above, Adam Burant and Brandon Garnett have loaded their structure with a point load. Below, they are weighing their structure. Bonus points were available for the team with the lightest structure that survived the loading.

In addition to surviving the bricks placed as a point load, the structure was also loaded with the same weight as a uniform load. Several students' structures survived both loads, and in some cases, also survived having the students themselves stand on their structure!

Architecture 362 is taught by Associate Professor Bob Swenson, who took the images used here.

The Town Square: Highland, Illinois

This image shows the thesis project of Matt Highlander, a graduate student in the Master of Architecture program at SIUC. This image is a poster session image created to describe the project. Thesis projects are completed in the summer semester. Click the image to enlarge it for better viewing. In his words:

"My architectural thesis revolves around the Town Square. In today's society, one of the many problems that urban planners have is urban sprawl. Many towns no longer have a center where people can meet and city functions can be held in an outdoor space. Instead, new buildings pop up on the outskirts of town annd draw away from what was once the city square.
My project site is in Highland, Illinois. Highland has an excellent town square but it is lacking something that can sustain it as a primary destination for the town. It is my belief that a mixed-use residential building would be a great asset to the square and create a landmark for the town. "

In the graduate architecture program at SIUC, students complete a thesis related to the upper Mississippi River delta region. Each thesis project is selected by the student and proposed to the faculty. The graduate student then forms a committee of 3-5 faculty members to serve as critics of the project while the student completes the work.

Adventures in Architecture

If you receive Ovation TV, the channel devoted to the arts, watch for Adventures in Architecture hosted by Dan Cruickshank. The series airs weekdays at 4:00 and 5:00 pm (Central US time). There are few television shows devoted exclusively to the subject of architecture. True, some home improvement shows have segments on architecture from time-to-time, but few series are solely devoted to engaging the audience in the discussion of architecture. Adventures in Architecture is such a series.

Ovation TV runs many shows that feature architecture. Visit their programs page and click the link "architecture" to see a complete listing of what's upcoming on the network. Currently scheduled shows include Daniel Libeskind: The Making of an Architect, Visions of Space: Antoni Gaudi, and Renzo Piano: Piece by Piece, to name a few.

Back to Adventures in Architecture, the show originally aired on BBC2 in spring of 2008. Wikipedia offers a listing of the eight episodes and shows the architecture visited in each show. Dan Cruickshank is an architectural historian with a specialty in Georgian buildings. He has published several books on the subject.

Adventures in Architecture is recommended viewing for all students of architecture, including those who may not be formally seeking an education as an architect!

The Functional Bench

This project was also created by junior studio last fall. The bench is made of cardboard panels and is designed to be functional as a place to sit as well as store items in its many compartments. This project was created in Professor Stewart Wessel's junior studio in Fall 2008.