Two University of Maryland architecture graduate students have placed in the 2016 American Institute of Architects COTE Top Ten for Students Design Competition for their sustainable architecture design.
Erin Barkman and Emily Latham created a design for the headquarters of a new media company, Pigmental Animation Studio, which would theoretically be located on the Georgetown waterfront. The competition had about 400 entries, and each submission was judged in 10 categories, including regional/community design, integration with the site and water cycle.
Their placement in the competition was announced April 22 on UMD Right Now.
This project was part of ARCH600: Comprehensive Design Studio V, taught by architect Peter Noonan, and is a required course for all architecture graduate students that emphasizes creative work and research, Noonan said. He invites experts from other areas, such as civil and mechanical engineers and landscape architects, to visit his class about once a month.
“We chose that site because it was so challenging,” Barkman said. “There’s an acoustical challenge [as well].”
The company would fit between the Key Bridge and the Whitehurst Freeway, Barkman said, and the 23-foot difference in altitude between them allowed the students to include a dual-entry sequence, which means the building would allow an entry by the canal level as well as on the lower level.
“To the south, we had this more rigid geometry from the Whitehurst Freeway, and to the north, it was this very natural and flowing geometry of the river, so we tried to mimic those in the elevations of our design,” Latham said.
Barkman and Latham included an indoor connection for the topographic change with a stairwell inside of an interactive lobby, Barkman said. They also included an outdoor screening area and an interactive motion sensor wall that would light up.
Public engagement was also important, especially to “allow the public to see what was going on, since most people don’t get exposed,” Latham said.
“I was really excited and pleased for [Barkman and Latham] when they won, but I wasn’t surprised,” Noonan said. “I knew it was a special project. I really enjoyed working with them and they had a vision from the beginning.”
The experts in their respective fields “critique what [the students] have done, push and prod them along,” Noonan said. “[Barkman and Latham] worked really well together and came up with great ideas at the beginning and got pushed pretty hard through these open workshops that we would hold.”
Noonan added that Barkman and Latham’s hard work and receptiveness to help and critique “helped make their project rise to the top, but the credit is all theirs.”
There are currently no plans in place to implement the design, as it was merely conceptual for the purposes of the contest, Barkman said.
