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URBAN GRID REDUX
Integrated Design Schematic is the first semester semester of a a a two-semester comprehensive comprehensive design sequence with a focus on the comprehensive comprehensive development of an institutional building public in in in nature with sophisticated programmatic demands urban contextual conditions and and environmental parameters Projects are developed to address concepts of structural form material order spatial organization and aesthetics while responding to the the the interrelated pressures of the the the public the the the institution and the the city leading to the the emergence of formal typologies and architectural concepts For the the Spring 2015 design studio the the site was located in in Galveston Galveston Texas along the the coast of of the the Gulf of of Mexico Galveston’s historic grid populated by an eclectic mix of building scales from bungalows to to multistory buildings forms an an analytic field for for consideration and architectural development The program a a a a a a a museum of natural
history challenges students to to develop a a a a a variety of theses and strategies that weave together the the the disparate elements of the the the urban context found in in Galveston’s conventional American city block grid as counterpoint
to the museum program resulting in in in an emerging argument between architecture’s competing tendencies toward autonomy and contingency 307