Dayton Hudson Faculty Fellows: Marc Swackhamer

Marc Swackhamer, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture
Dayton Hudson Faculty Fellow, 2005-2006

Draft House

In conjunction with the 2006 HOME House Project exhibition at the University's Weisman Art Museum, that draws from entries to an international design competition sponsored by Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Marc Swackhamer will produce a full-scale wall prototype of his exhibition entry, Draft House. The project is a collaboration his partner in SLV Design, Blair Satterfield

Draft House was SLV's proposal for a low-income, sustainable house that originated from a conventional Habitat for Humanity floor plan but through reconsideration of fabrication techniques and efforts to render it more sustainable, evolved into a competition finalist. While the project was not a competition winner, it was chosen for inclusion in a nation-wide traveling exhibition. The Weisman is providing four local architects in the exhibition with extra gallery space for presentation of further developments of their projects.

Professor Swackhamer proposes to use this opportunity to not only develop Draft House further, but also to pursue ongoing research into digital fabrication techniques and the relationship between architectural surface patterning and performance.

Draft House, and the work that will emerge from its development, are relevant to architecture and urban design on two distinct fronts. First, sustainability is a rapidly developing sub-field in virtually every design discipline, including architecture and urban design. Since Draft House developed from a competition in which major requirements of the brief included the use of recycled materials and the development of both passive and active energy conservation techniques, its further development, at the detailed level of a wall section, will push innovation even further with respect to sustainability.

Second, this work investigates how techniques of digital fabrication can not only address sustainability, but also speed of assembly, pre-fabrication, and affordability. Since this house was designed to be not only sustainable, but also affordable for a low-income constituency, we plan to investigate how inexpensive, even common materials can be treated in new, innovative ways to perform at heightened levels. In the case of Draft House this will specifically involve studying how exterior skin, structure, insulation, glazing, and interior skin can be combined in seamless ways, offsite, to speed up the erection process and improve construction quality.

The work that emerges from the Weisman HOME House Project exhibition will be documented and presented to several peer-reviewed journals and conferences.

Download: See Design Brief 15 drapeWALL + drapeHOUSE: phase III - modular perfomative wall system (2.35 MB)

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