Advanced Option Studio (AOS): Silva Systems — Innovations in Pennsylvania Hardwood Mass Timber
Students in this course design an adaptable urban housing system using Pennsylvania hardwood mass timber, and test the system across five Harrisburg properties associated with the Pennsylvania Social Equity Land Trust and Pennsylvania Social Equity Improvement Fund.
Waechter Architecture Mississippi Workshop. Credit: https://waechterarchitecture.com/Mississippi-Workshop
Students in this course design an adaptable urban housing system using Pennsylvania hardwood mass timber. They test the system across five Harrisburg properties associated with the Pennsylvania Social Equity Land Trust and Pennsylvania Social Equity Improvement Fund. Each student develops a primary building proposal on one site and demonstrates how its structural bay, panel logic, core, circulation, envelope, unit types, ground interface, landscape, and construction sequence can transform across the full family of sites — from three-story walk-up housing to a twelve-story elevator building.
All students and faculty travel to Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, to visit the Tall Timber Institute, leading architecture offices and several forests, mills, and mass timber projects from small scale infill to towers.