The final building design project for ARCH 406 will see the convergence of all of the previous design exercises and site analysis of the semester on a prominent site adjacent the C&O Canal near Mile Marker Zero on the Potomac River. The pedagogic themes of the semester: sustainable building practices and communities, resilience for sea level rise, defining urban borders and thresholds, the identity of civic institutions, the sequence of civic and public spaces from exterior to interior community spaces, material selection and assembly, structural concept articulation, and program definition and representation are set in a semester long engagement with closely related sites adjacent the Potomac River. The overarching objective is to define a vibrant new destination on the C & O transect drawing on the design process of previous design challenges at a variety of scales, culminating in the final design project.
