Construction Engineering Commons^™

Umass Dartmouth Science And Engineering (Seng) Building Systems Upgrades Project, Jillian Cornelius

UMassBRUT Community

Although UMass Dartmouth's Science and Engineering Building has long been viewed as an architectural treasure, its aging interior and structure have presented some challenges to users nearly 50 years after it opened. This talk examines Ellenzweig's extensive retrofitting of the UMass Dartmouth SENG building for accessibility, a new envelope, updated MEP, and fire-safety measures. After looking at the design phase and interactions with the Mass Historic Commission, the talk ends with an examination of the replacement of windows in the building.

Brutalist Structures – Polychlorinated Biphenyls, Theresa Wolejko

UMassBRUT Community

Until they were banned by the Federal Government in 1978, Polychlorinated Biphenyls or PCBs, were used extensively as sealants in Brutalist structures across the United States. As a result, these hazardous chemical compounds still reside in concrete buildings and present a danger to those looking to clean or renovate Brutalist structures. This talk explains the problems the University of Massachusetts Amherst has faced in dealing with PCBs over the last couple of decades and recommends some best practices for owners, designers, builders working on midcentury buildings which are suspected to contain these dangerous chemicals.

Concrete Deterioration And Diagnosis, Matthew B. Bronski

UMassBRUT Community

Built primarily in the 1960’s, mid-century modernist concrete buildings are now at the age when we regard many as historic or architecturally significant (and thus as deserving of careful restoration and stewardship), but also at an age where many now exhibit significant deterioration. In this presentation, Matthew Bronski describes the most common maladies and deterioration mechanisms that can befall exposed concrete facades, outlines investigative and diagnostic approaches, and discuss the pros and cons of different rehabilitation treatment options, and the importance of tailoring the treatment to the malady.

Concrete Diagnostics & Assessment, Michael Schuller

UMassBRUT Community

The process of repairing Brutalist architecture begins with diagnosis and assessment of the material conditions of these buildings. This talk focuses on the processes that engineers undertake in order to document and access historic concrete before conservators and designers can form a plan to save such buildings. The speaker gives insight into the diagnostic techniques, such a visual assessment, nondestructive evaluation, sounding, moisture and metal detection, and chemical analysis.

Concrete Conservation Strategies And Repair, Paul Gaudette

UMassBRUT Community

Drawing on the speaker's many years in the field, this talk gives a comprehensive overview of concrete conservation. Beginning with the goals and approaches to conserving concrete, the talk then covers common protection systems, petrographic and chemical studies, and the design of mixes used in repairs. In order to demonstrate these techniques, two case studies are examined, including a Brutalist building and building with architectural precast. The talk ends with some recommendations on how to best approach cleaning and conservation of historic concrete buildings.

Lessons Learned From Personal Experience In Adaptive Reuse, Blake Jackson

UMassBRUT Community

This presentation details themes, regarding sustainability, from three adaptive reuse projects of Brutalist and post-war Modernist structures, accentuating overlaps with sustainability, embodied carbon, preservation, densification, and urbanization – all hallmarks regarding the adaptive reuse of these buildings. The first project illustrates opportunities created by up-branding a 1970’s era Sheraton into a “new” W Hotel (Midtown, Atlanta), whereby the preservation of the concrete playfully juxtaposed new interior/exterior design elements. The second project looks at the transformation of a purpose-built newspaper headquarters into a “new” LEED/Fitwel certified commercial facility, which reknit previously separated neighborhoods into a pedestrian/transit-oriented destination, serving as a catalyst …

Approaches To Renewing Brutalist-Era Lab Buildings, Jean Caroon

UMassBRUT Community

Given the immense amount of embodied carbon that mid-century Brutalist structures represent, we must redirect our focus from demolishing these concrete structures to renovating them to fit our needs in the 21st century. Higher education laboratory buildings from the 1960s and 1970s are a particularly challenging type of facility. This talk describes the work that Boston architecture firm Goody Clancy has recently undertaken in renovating over 1 million square feet of lab building space. The talk not only covers specific retrofits and envelope improvements to science buildings, such as the Gant Science Complex at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, …

Modern Heritage: Why It Matters, And What Gci Is Doing To Help Conserve It, Chandler Mccoy

UMassBRUT Community

The Getty Conservation Institute entered the field of conserving modern heritage in 2013, with the establishment of its Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative (CMAI). The CMAI aims to advance the practice of conserving modern heritage and feels that the best way to retain and reuse modern buildings is by knowing how to maintain, repair and upgrade them, and does this by providing useful tools, case studies, and training to help promote this effort. There has recently been a wave of notable demolition cases which raises the question about the environmental impact of replacing existing buildings with new ones, with many concerned …

Multimodal Transit And A New Civic Architecture, Samuel Bruce Hill

Masters Theses

We live in an age defined by the automobile and its infrastructure. This paradigm of movement has shaped how we live our lives, and the urban frameworks we inhabit. Cars as a form of transportation damage the environment and engender unsustainable lifestyles. They also create anti-social spaces with the infrastructure they require, and therefore their success is inverse to that of the pedestrian experience.

I seek to adapt this transit paradigm with a more flexible and resilient multimodal system. My work focuses on reinvigorating a rail line in central Massachusetts and designing a modular station system that can serve as …

Panel 1 Paper 1.2: Environnement Du Patrimoine Rural, Claire Cornu

ISCCL Scientific Symposia and Annual General Meetings // Symposiums scientifiques et assemblées générales annuelles de l'ISCCL // Simposios científicos yy las Asambleas Generales Anuales

En fournissant la chimie à l’agriculture, les matériaux pour la construction, et en produisant la mécanisation des cultures comme celles des terrassements, l’industrie des « trente glorieuses » en France effaçait des siècles de pratiques et d’organisation des espaces de vie et de travail, qui optimisaient les ressources naturelles locales et humaines. La maçonnerie en pierre sèche, son agriculture en terrasse, son élevage en enclos, ses cabanes des champs, ses espaces d’accompagnement des jardins, des maisons, des villages, des rivières, des chemins, des routes, sombraient dès lors dans la désuétude. Lorsqu’en 1999 nous avons démarré cette démarche de renaissance d’une …

Intermodal Transit Terminal: Integrating The Future Of Transit Into The Urban Fabric, Guy Vigneau

Masters Theses

The very foundation of transportation relies on its ability to efficiently move people and goods through a transitional space. Transportation hubs are key to achieving this goal. However, many transit terminals are outdated or poorly designed to fit the needs of the modern world. At the core of this thesis are two overarching questions. First, how do we design intermodal transit terminals so that they successfully integrate into an existing urban fabric? Second, how do we design for innovative modes of transportation, such as hyperloop technology? This thesis explores how architectural design can recover existing transit connections within an urban …

Building Hope: A Community + Water Initiative, La Villa De San Francisco, Honduras, Christopher D. Mansfield

Masters Theses

It is my contention that through activating participatory design and community engagement strategies, in conjunction with innovative construction methods that address issues of resource scarcity, the standard of living and level of accessibility to critical resources in impoverished portions of Honduras can be drastically improved. The newly provided model of construction can be done it such a way that it is cost effective in its building method, and provides highly sought after scarce critical resources. This allows participants to allocate more of their finances towards other necessary resources they normally would not be able to acquire.

A new community center …

Umass Amherst Green Building Guidelines V.2 And Leedv4, Kylie A. Landrey, Ted Mendoza, Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham, Mohamad Farzinmoghadam, Somayeh Tabatabaee, Nariman Mostafavi, Ray Kinoshita Mann, Jeffrey Dalzell, Ajla Aksamija

Campus Planning Reports and Plans

Facilities & Campus Services supports sustainability and energy conservation initiatives by providing in-house resources to campus staff as well as designers, contractors and other consultants working with the University. The UMass Amherst Green Building Guidelines v2 and LEED v4 provide a framework for approaching new construction and major renovation projects at UMass Amherst that are undergoing LEED v4 certification by focusing the conversation on those green building aspects that are most important to the campus. They are intended to be the beginning of a dynamic conversation between designers, environmental consultants and constructors, university stakeholders, and users of new high performance …

Umass Amherst Campus Master Plan Sustainability Chapter, Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham, Nariman Mostafavi, Mohamad Farzinmoghadam, Kylie A. Landrey, Somayeh Tabatabaee Pozveh, Ezra Small, Ted Mendoza, Jason J. Burbank, Robert Ryan, Dennis Swinford, Niels La Cour, Alexander Stepanov

Campus Planning Master Plans

The UMass Amherst Campus Master Plan Sustainability Chapter articulates the manner in which the Campus Master Plan 2012 principles translate into specific recommendations for campus systems development in support of future smart growth. It summarizes the current physical campus-scale planning projects that Facilities & Campus Services have completed during and after the Master Plan process, and incorporates other operational and educational initiatives that have engaged our campus community as we plan for sustainability.

The CMP Chapter is organized in three major sections: i) sustainability overview; ii) campus master plan systems; iii) current initiatives; and iv) next steps. The first section …

Syllabus: Solar Energy Systems And Building Design, Ho-Sung Kim

Sustainability Education Resources

This course introduces the fundamental concepts of solar building design and energy systems. Through project based study and possible field visits, students will explore the theory, technologies, applications, and benefits of solar design of buildings and discover how to utilize solar energy systems for residential and commercial buildings. Students will be required to research and document technology and complete a semester case study project in which they will examine various energy conservation aspects and economics underlying solar energy systems.

Quantifying The Effect Of Passive Solar Design In Traditional New England Architecture, Peter Levy

Masters Theses

Passive solar design can be an effective means of reducing conditioning loads in residential buildings by utilizing free solar heat during the heating season, and blocking unwanted solar heat during the cooling season. The objective of this thesis was to use energy modeling software to simulate the effect that incorporating passive solar design strategies into typical New England style houses would have on their energy usage for heating and cooling. The designs that were studied were Capes, Colonials, and Saltboxes. Four versions of increasing energy efficiency were studied for each style. After measuring baseline energy usage for each model, four …

Umass Amherst Green Building Guidelines 2013, Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham, Ted Mendoza, Ezra Small, Patricia O'Flaherty, Nariman Mostafavi, Mohamed Farzinmoghadam, Somayeh Tabatabaee Pozveh

Campus Planning Reports and Plans

Facilities & Campus Services, Sustainable UMass and Campus Planning support sustainability and energy conservation initiatives by providing in-house resources to campus staff as well as designers and contractors working with the University. The UMass Amherst Green Building Guidelines provide a framework for approaching new construction and major renovation projects at UMass Amherst that are undergoing LEED certification by focusing the conversation on green building aspects that are most important to the campus. They are intended to be the beginning of a dynamic conversation between designers, environmental consultants and constructors, university stakeholders, and users of new high performance buildings.

Future Of The Library? Turning Conflicting Pressures Into Compelling Opportunities, Gerald Jay Schafer, Dugdale Strategy Llc, Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham

Campus Planning Community and Conference Presentations

Many institutions are scrutinizing library space as a potential space bank in times of tight capital resources, while librarians are seeking ways to shift lesser-used collections into storage, create more user space, and improve services. Accomplishing these tasks at University of Massachusetts Amherst's Du Bois Library, a 26-story tower, posed a particular challenge. The library's master plan needed to explore compatible uses, partners for integrated services, and identify opportunities to repurpose space for university needs as well as the library's future vision.

Situated Architecture In The Digital Age: Adaptation Of A Textile Mill In Holyoke, Massachusetts, Dorcas A. Brooks

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The City of Holyoke, Massachusetts is one of many aging, industrial cities striving to revitalize its economy based on the promise of increased digital connectivity and clean energy resources. But how do you renovate 19th century mills to meet the demands of the information age? This architectural study explores the potential impact of sensing technologies and information networks on the definition and function of buildings in the 21st century. It explores the changes that have taken place in industrial architecture since 1850 and argues for an architecture that supports local relationships and environmental awareness. The author explores the industrial history …

University Of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries Master Plan, Shirley Dugdale, Gerald Jay Schafer, Bryan Harvey, James Cahill, Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham, Leslie Horner Button, Theresa Warner, Pam Rooney, John Cunningham

Campus Planning Reports and Plans

Amherst Libraries, which is on the edge of significant change moving into a new era serving scholars, researchers and learners in the 21st Century. Over the last decade the Library has been a leader in many initiatives: increasing development of digital resources; collaborating with the Five Colleges Consortium, which was one of the first in the country to develop a shared book depository; developing a highly successful Learning Commons that engages partners in providing a broad range, of services and settings for learners; providing services through partners welcomed into library facilities, such the peer learning activities of the Learning Resources …

Comprehensive Academic And Classroom Facilities Plan, Joel Nordberg, Alex Wing, Jeff Funovits, Emily Blaze, Jenna Beltram, Ann Storer, Bryan Harvey, Ludmilla D. Pavlova-Gillham

Campus Planning Books

In 2009 UMass Amherst, under the direction of Chancellor Robert Holub, engaged in a Framework for Excellence initiative and a commitment to elevate the national profile of the institution. The Framework for Excellence called for the recruitment of 250 additional faculty and an increase of 2,500 undergraduate students over the next 10 years. More space and improved, state-of-the-arts facilities was recognized as key in attracting and retaining the highest caliber faculty and students.

The Comprehensive Academic and Classroom Facilities Plan was funded by the MA Division of Capital Asset Management & Maintenance (DCAMM), which hired Burt Hill to initiate an …