Studio Description

FACT is the award-winning Fabrication And Construction Team in the College of Architecture. Working with Actual Architecture Co., FACT engages creative, non-profit partners in collaborations that span design and construction. FACT is an academic/professional design lab, a “do-tank” in which ideas and new knowledge are developed though action as well as thought. Through FACT, students explore the interplay of traditional construction practices and contemporary digital fabrication techniques, and often team with non-conventional collaborators. Where academic studios focus on ideation, conceptualization and schematic design, FACT students focus on the creative opportunities embedded in the development and realization of projects with a goal to build architecture that enhances culture and community.

Project Description

This project reverses biases towards urban culture as global culture and the rural as a resource primed for extraction proposing instead a new cultural nexus of commoning for the rural.

Between two older wooden exhibition structures and an early metal building we arrange three new metal buildings: a Show Barn and two livestock sheds. The complex is linked by dedicated paths for livestock, participants, and visitors at ground level and a catwalk for viewing above. While the livestock sheds and Show Barn are designed for seasonal uses (and winter community storage winter), the repurposed metal building becomes a year-round Community Center. A solid plinth with tiered seating on contains a kitchen, restrooms, storage, and office with multipurpose space above. Areas are subdivided with movable translucent curtains. The Community Center will host a wide variety of events from lectures, to dinners, weddings, craft sales, and exhibitions. Casual users can exercise in an open gym or play on the ball courts. The surrounding landscape accommodates community gardens, grazing, camping, carnivals, and other large events.

The architecture is understated. The new structures are identical in proportion and material configuration to the old metal building; however, two of the sheds are skewed with unusual parallelogram plans forming dedicated outdoor uses facing different sides of the site. The apparently familiar buildings are derived, literally, from the axonometric projection.

Construction:

Community Center:

• Insulated metal wall & roof panels for existing metal structure

• Insulated aluminum windows and sectional garage doors

• Steel interior framing

• Precast bleacher seating with integral red color

• Red plastic welding curtains on heavy-duty Unistrut track

• Zoned forced air HVAC

• Lightweight elevator

• LED lighting

Show Barn & Livestock Buildings:

• Pre-engineered metal buildings with custom-angled shear brackets to form parallelogram

• Perforated metal cladding for livestock ventilation

• Custom folding shutters

• Concrete footings & grade beams

• Stabilized earth floor

• LED lighting

• Standard corral fencing with custom color

Prefabricated Catwalk:

• Welded steel trusses with steel bar grating, powdercoated

Landscape:

• Native grasses, wildflowers

www.factlab.org                 www.actual.ac