David Hill

Our goal is to create an open-source shareware program equivalent or superior in power and flexibility to commercially-available acoustic modeling software, to be used for modeling the acoustic properties of historic spaces. This software will be based on the currently available open-source program i-Simpa (http://i-simpa.ifsttar.fr/), which utilizes ray-tracing for acoustic propagation modeling. We will add capabilities for auralization and play-back which are essential for us to understand how sound behaves in virtual models of historic spaces. When used in conjunction with recordings of sound made under anechoic conditions, we will be able to experience recreated performances of historic events as they unfold, in real time, in highly accurate virtual models of the spaces in which they originally happened. We will integrate all codes resulted from this project and publish them to the open domain as a free software package, using a GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) from the Free Software Foundation. We will also construct a wiki site to release and distribute the software. User group discussion will be allowed on the website. The code will be updated constantly throughout the lifetime of the project. Updated documentation/manual will be made available for downloading. GIT, a free revision-control software, will be used for source code management and user participation will be facilitated through a website constructed for reporting bugs, tracking the reported bugs and their fixes, and searching the bug database.

North Carolina State University School of Architecture (SOA) and Department of Civil, Construction, & Environmental Engineering (CCEE) is seeking multi-year funding from the PCI Foundation to introduce architecture and civil engineering students to precast concrete systems and solutions. This proposal identifies existing courses in which precast concrete is minimally taught or mentioned, and proposes a new architecture studio course integrated with civil engineering and digital fabrication courses. All three courses will be dedicated to precast concrete applications. They will begin in Spring 2017, continue for 4 years, and will be an incubator to significantly expand the instruction and knowledge of precast and prestressed concrete at NCSU.

The overarching goal of the project is to assist in the development of design strategies that support the long-term function, health, and vitality of communities located in historically flood-prone North Carolina communities. The proposed project will contribute to the ongoing Hurricane Matthew Disaster Recovery and Resilience Initiative (HMDRRI) work by developing design and planning recommendations for neighborhood and housing (re)construction activities associated with post-Matthew recovery efforts. The project team will consider hazard-related issues facing this region, including the potential impacts of flooding, development patterns, and population trends. The project will be guided by architectural and landscape architectural approaches to development, conservation, and management practices and uses.

Ecologically sensitive coastal environments along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard are vulnerable to challenges from long-term sea level variations and the more acute forces of powerful Atlantic storms. When coupled with poor urban development practices, storms produce devastating effects in coastal communities including property damage and loss of life. In North Carolina, Over 22 hurricanes have made direct landfall in since 1950, and some have reached category 3 or above on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale. Four recent hurricanes (Floyd, Fran, Isabel, and Irene) have caused over $20 billion in damage statewide, and more than 75 deaths. Damages resulting from storms will continue to rise unless new design strategies can produce more resilient landscapes, buildings, and communities. While researchers in academic institutions have conducted significant studies on coastal issues, the approach is often fragmented into discrete scientific and professional disciplines. This compartmentalization separates the scientific community from designers and often ignores the most critical stakeholders, the coastal residents. North Carolina State University professors and students in multiple departments—Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Civil Engineering, Forest Biomaterials, and Marine Earth and Atmospheric Sciences—are transforming this approach by building an interdisciplinary research team to address critical issues in natural and anthropogenic development along the NC coastline. The team has developed partnerships with the University of North Carolina Coastal Studies Institute (CSI) and the Dare County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) to identify critical storm-related issues that residents of the Outer Banks face, and to plan pilot projects that will demonstrate resilient and adaptable strategies for community design and construction. The researchers and local stakeholders are asking: How can municipalities in hurricane-prone regions proactively develop damaged and underutilized sites into resilient, multi-use public facilities that are capable of quickly transforming into centers of community recovery during post-disaster response? We initiated the concept of Pro-Active Recovery Community Structures (PARCs) to describe a design approach that creates public amenities and housing for day-to-day use that can rapidly transform into post-disaster staging and recovery sites. A proactive approach to site design and development has the ability to bring about recovery more rapidly. This proposal seeks funding to expand the team’s scientific research and community design work in the area of coastal resiliency and adaptation. Many of our research and design activities will be conducted in a coordinated graduate level seminar and design studio in the summer and fall 2014. The project will seek community input in order to develop multiple design scenarios and metrics that measure PARCs’ effectiveness in creating adaptive, multifaceted public facilities that are able to maintain their role as restorative environments before, during, and after disasters strike. While the initial research and design will focus on vulnerable Outer Banks locations, the lessons will be transferable to coastal communities worldwide. The research team will build a webpage in order to track our progress, and to publicize the project and illustrate effective strategies. Additionally, students and researchers will prepare print publications, conference lectures and papers, and a final report in the spring 2015 to disseminate results.

Recent natural disasters and trends in sea level rise highlight the need for holistic methods of analyzing and planning for the ways catastrophe affects the well being of coastal communities along the North Carolina Outer Banks. Academic institutions have conducted significant research on coastal issues, but the approach is fragmented into discrete disciplinary foci. This compartmentalization separates the scientific community from designers and often ignores the most critical stakeholders, the coastal residents. Professors in departments across the NC State campus—Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Civil Engineering, and Marine Earth and Atmospheric Sciences—have formed an interdisciplinary research team to address critical issues in natural and anthropogenic development along the NC coastline, and members of this team will be leading Coastal Dynamics, a graduate seminar and design studio, beginning in Summer Session I.

My goal is to develop a virtual research environment for study of the performance of sermons at Paul's Cross in the churchyard of St. Paul's Cathedral, England's most important public pulpit in the early modern period, where official religious policies were defended and religious controversies of the Reformation were debated. This innovative use of digital technology will be highly multidisciplinary, combining software for architectural modeling and acoustic simulation with historic visual and textual records as well as recent archaeological evidence. We will be able to hear recordings of Paul's Cross sermons performed in its original pronunciation from various locations within the historic space and in the context of a background of extraneous noises and the hubbub of human activity, recreating the challenges both preachers and worshipers confronted in such large public gatherings. The result will be a flexible research tool providing direct visual and aural experience of these sermons, giving researchers in fields as diverse as literature, history, and architecture the chance to construct and test models for how they were performed and experienced.

While global interest in sustainable buildings has driven engineering innovations in building-related technology, considerably less attention has been paid to the effectiveness of the prevailing building design process. Computer simulations of building performance to assess the impact of design choices on energy, water, and material consumption as well as emissions are only loosely coupled to the architectural design process. Further, building simulation models only provide point estimates of performance, relying on users to make manual changes to inputs and rerun the model. The result is a design process driven by informed trial-and-error rather than quantitative building-specific performance data, which makes design for sustainability difficult. We hypothesize that the availability of targeted building performance data through the full breadth of the architectural design process will lead to innovative designs that improve the use of energy, water, and materials during both building construction and operation. The goal of this research is to evaluate a human-computer joint cognitive design process, allowing architects to couple building information models (BIM) with building performance analysis to create a progressive decision-making framework for building design. To meet this goal, we will test an approach to find good configurations of building options to meet performance objectives specified at any stage of the design process. This search will explore an array of alternatives that underscore the multiplicity of design possibilities available to match the design objectives.

George Matsumoto taught and practiced architecture in North Carolina from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, and he helped establish at North Carolina State a design school of such heightened creative fervor that it quickly gained an international reputation" (Robert Burns in Matsumoto 1997). Matsumoto's architecture during this time" including built work and theoretical projects was widely published and acclaimed, added luster to the school's growing stature and marked Matsumoto as one of the post-war generation's brightest design talents (Robert Burns in Matsumoto 1997). Matsumoto won numerous American Institute of Architecture and Progressive Architecture awards, most notably for his own house in Raleigh, North Carolina. Scholars have demonstrated increased interest in mid-century architects in recent years, with research devoted to practitioners who redefined the concepts and structures of suburban domestic life. Numerous books have evaluated influential design programs such as the California Case Study Houses that were sponsored by John Entenza and Arts and Architecture Magazine (Smith 2002). The program included participation by celebrated designers such as Charles and Ray Eames, Richard Neutra, and Pierre Koenig (McCoy 1977). More current publications have shifted the focus to the innovative efforts of lesser-known architects like Raphael Soriano (Wagener 2002) and A. Quincy Jones (Buckner 2002). These monographs have produced a more complete, nuanced account of post-war residential design developments by recognizing the contributions of a broad range of prolific architects who were grappling with new societal norms, burgeoning suburban populations, and technological advances in the materials and construction industries.

Abstract: This research proposal recognizes the need for sustainable and rapidly-deployable post-disaster housing, and proposes pilot work that will investigate the potential of using light weight, super-insulated monocoque resin panels in component-based disaster relief housing units. By fabricating and analyzing test panels (mock-ups), I will be able to measure and determine panel compositions that optimize thermal transmittance (insulation R-value), weight distribution, and structural integrity (strength of panels under applied loads). This type of research is critical to developing component-based housing that limits the energy and natural resources required to deliver, fabricate, and inhabit post-disaster dwelling units. The thermal insulation properties and weight of panels directly affect energy consumption values (Turner 1981, Strother 1990, Johnson 2003, Brock 2005). Insulation that provides low heat transfer values ensures that less energy is consumed in heating and cooling the housing unit; therefore fewer pollutants are released to the environment. Weight of component panels affects the amount of energy needed to deliver and construct the units. Lighter panels result in significantly less energy (fossil fuels and human exertion) consumed in the delivery and construction process.