Other Architecture Commons^™

Dcamm And Capital Stewardship, Sarah Felton

UMassBRUT Community

Created in 1980, the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM) manages some 68 million square feet of building space for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This talk focuses on some of the challenges DCAMM faces in managing these facilities at the state's higher education institutions where 74% of the building portfolio were built prior to 1981. After discussing the Commonwealth's priorities in Capital Investment, the talk concludes with a look at DCAMM-funded renovations to the Claire T. Carney Library and Science and Engineering Building at UMass Dartmouth.

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.

Humanizing Brutalism: Graphics To Identify, Inform, Orient, Interpret And Inspire, Whitney Perkins

UMassBRUT Community

Despite the reputation of Brutalist architecture being somewhat cold and imposing, the original interiors of these buildings were often covered in brightly-colored signage. In the process of renovating Paul Rudolph's Claire T. Carney Library at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, designer Whitney Perkins drew upon the colors and graphics of the 1960s and 70s in order to construct a bold program of wayfinding, signage and tapestries for the building. This talk looks at some of the influences and processes involved in designing and fabricating this signage.

Humanizing The Brutalist Interior: The Renovation Of Paul Rudolph's Claire T. Carney Library At Umass Dartmouth, Kelly Haigh, Ben Youtz

UMassBRUT Community

Members of the team that worked on the renovation of the Claire T. Carney Library, designed by Paul Rudolph and completed in 1972, share their design solutions for maintaining the integrity of the architecture and fostering an interior that is welcoming of its occupants. Discussions focus on interior attributes, human occupants, color, light and texture as approaches to humanize the massive concrete attributes that are notorious of Brutalist structures.

Umass Brut: Re-Imagining The Plinth, John Amodeo

UMassBRUT Community

Modeled on UVA’s Lawn, Paul Rudolph’s mid-century Brutalist UMass Dartmouth buildings march down both sides of a gently sloped great lawn following the grade with one exception, the Auditorium, which is raised above the quad’s lawn on a 6’ high plinth, accessed by monumental stairs underscoring the entire building. With its entries elusively tucked into the ends of the building, the Auditorium steps were ceremonial at best and vacant, functionless and windswept at worst.

Evolving tastes, priorities and social behavior over subsequent decades, and even more recently, the pandemic, have made indoor/outdoor relationships, outdoor space, and universal access a top …

An Architecture Of A New Story, Nathan Y. Lumen

Masters Theses

As the world reckons with an uncertain future at the hands of global climate change and biodiversity loss, the question of how to proceed seems ever more urgent. Approaches to sustainability in design tend to focus on technological solutions to what is often presented as a technical problem. This approach overlooks the ways in which the forces that have led us to this point are born out of our cultural story of what it means to be human, what the natural world is, and what our relationship is to it. This is the story that has permitted if not encouraged …

Firesafe: Designing For Fire-Resilient Communities In The American West, Brenden Baitch

Masters Theses

The perception that wildfires are completely preventable has caused many structures and communities to be built in locations that will inevitably experience an uncontrollable fire event, risking human lives and infrastructure. Modification of built environments into fire-adapted communities has been explored in this thesis, through multiple strategies. Central to this analysis is the idea that sustainable human developments could adopt a form of biomimicry and indigenous design informed by the adaptions of plants, animals, and native groups that endure and even thrive with regular cycles of fire. This possibility has been assessed through the scope of fire adaptation strategies available …