The Gulf Coast Community Design Studio's second spring studio is underway.  Students from MSU and the University of Minnesota are working in Biloxi, while a group of students from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT work in parallel from Cambridge. Both groups will be posting their work here.

WETLANDS / PUBLIC SPACE / ELEVATED HOUSE

The parallel studios will work in the flood zone gradient between the most naturally preserved wetland connected to the Gulf, to the intermediate space programmed for public use, to the elevated house standing in the most artificially trimmed yard.  The full-time curriculum has three connected components, a planning studio, a design/build studio, and a seminar.

PLANNING STUDIO: Flood Zone Gradient
The premise of FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program is that destroyed buildings on high-risk sites should be not be rebuilt.  Instead the land should become open space.  However, without a comprehensive planning process, mitigated properties would become a haphazard set of vacant lots and would not create community benefits, neither socially nor ecologically. The Planning Studio will create a carefully considered mosaic of three well-defined land uses: preserved wetlands connected to the Gulf which would be large enough and have enough continuity to be ecologically complete; programmed public space such as walking trails, playgrounds, and meeting places that would create a connected landscape that would be well-used and well-loved by the community; and complete neighborhoods of elevated buildings taking full advantage of the nearby open space.

DESIGN/BUILD STUDIO: Affoardable Elevated House
Elevated houses have particular structural, environmental, social, and functional design challenges resulting from living twelve feet off the ground with hurricane force winds in a flood zone.  The Gulf Coast Community Design Studio has produced dozens of houses that are either built, in construction, or in design.  Each house completed is one more family that can get out of a FEMA trailer and resettle their lives.  The Design/Build Studio will work on the design and construction of a strong, affordable, elevated house.  The house will be built by the students working along with other volunteers and paid workers.

SEMINAR:  Ethics and architecture
The reflexive discussion and research seminar can be shaped by individual students.