Berk Receives Recognition

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Committee on the Environment (COTE) Ecological Literacy in Architecture Education Report and Proposal gave Special Recognition to
ARC 2713 Passive Building Systems (Ecological Design) at Mississippi State University, College of Architecture; submitted by Michael A. Berk, (p. 2)

Excerpts from the write-up follows. A link to pdf chapters of the book, entitled, "Ecology and Design" can be found here.

Professor Michael A. Berk teaches this required course for all second-year architecture students as an introduction to ecology, sustainability, heat transfer, climate, energy, light, solar orientation, ventilation, vernacular design, ethics, alternative energy, lifecycle analysis, systems theory, site relationships, and acoustics. That is a very big order, and Berk tackles it with what students report to be very effective and well-illustrated lectures, several films, and a solar research construction and report project that is team executed.

The underlying notion Berk tries to communicate is the idea that “human intervention should respectfully work with the grain of their context, specifically the natural world, rather than relying on twentieth-century brute force technology to oppose it.” Berk seeks to disabuse the notion that sustainability is a style or even a philosophy: “It is a fundamental principle of good design,” he says. “Gravity is not a philosophical position… neither should sustainability be.” Berk’s course stresses passive strategies and regenerative solutions as the means to make building physically
and psychologically comfortable.

Students from other disciplines occasionally take the course, which Berk has taught since 1996.

The first third of the course is general enough that it could be a core curriculum course for the university. Two of the three main textbooks are written for a lay audience and most of the films are similarly accessible (such as Koyaanisqatsi). Berk sees his course as an ecological course on politics, economics, and biology and tries to weave in the architecture.

Berk notes that in the subsequent semester, all second-year students enroll in a design studio that emphasizes sustainable principles and the results in the work are mixed. “If they are in my studio, they cannot dance around the issue. Students are largely driven by grades and they know where I’m coming from. I get some excellent results from some people in my studios. If they are in the other studios, they may dance around the issue a bit more.” In the studios that follow the class, the students are introduced to two- and three-dimensional modeling. They use SketchUp to model sun paths. “They see how quickly they can measure and demonstrate and study,” Berk says. “It’s powerful. Ninety percent of the performance will be in the general conceptual moves up front—site planning, orientation, shape issues. If they get close on those things, they will get the performance up there. And it’s not easy. We are hot/humid in summer and temperate in winter.

This is a difficult area to design for passively.” For this course, the students are required to design and build small solar elements. Berk tries to get them to think about every topic they have covered in class and bring them to these small “heaters” that must perform. This project is conducted in teams of students. The collaborative,
hands-on application of the material presented in the earlier part of the course helps bring it to life (and brings the students outside to test their boxes).

Berk is indeed passionate, as so many of the educators who are struggling to bring ecological issues into architecture education are with little encouragement or camaraderie. He is particularly
passionate about the issue of performance. “I want to eliminate the word aesthetics from architectural dialogue,” he says. “I can look at Gehry’s buildings as pieces of sculpture, and then maybe they are beautiful. But as a building, they are ugly if they do not perform well. One of the sad things about architecture in the 20th and 21st centuries is that is has moved away from having to perform.” This is why he is trying to get the students to think more deeply about choosing materials and creating forms, and trying to get them to avoid making choices of “cool” materials or those that can be beautiful.

Student Nick Hester says, “Working as a team was interesting in the sense that different people interpreted the information in different ways. You got to see how other students were learning and applying things.” He found the project was relevant to his studio work. “It was really enlightening to think on that scale and think about what materials are. Understanding what a piece of wood really is and all the energy that is used to make the lumber and transport it.”

Student Ralph Eide found the project “well-suited to teach us some of the principles that were discussed in class. It turned an otherwise traditional lecture-based course into one with similarities to a studio or laboratory experience. We had to carefully consider materials, embodied energy, and life cycles and still produce a solar-heated box in competition with our peers.”

For student Jessica Lovelady, working in groups was a little frustrating but largely positive. “The solar box project gave the class an opportunity to test what we had been learning. We learned about coming together as a group, and how people can look at the same materials and the same problem and develop totally different ideas.” She cites learning about lifecycle analysis as the most transformative aspect of the course. “It makes me feel responsible for what I propose in all of my projects, and as a very young designer it forces me to investigate and really challenges
me.” (p. 70-71)

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