From John Ellis, AIA, Professor of Architecture, Cosumnes River College

A Request for Architectural Mentors:

This is my annual request for firms to volunteer to mentor the students in CRC’s Arch 332/334 design class, Spring, 2012.  I know that many of you have volunteered in past years and have reported that they find the process rewarding on many levels: 1) It gives you a chance to support and influence the development of the next generation of architects;  2) It is invigorating to the office to be reconnected to their education roots and the enthusiasm of the students;  3) It gives the office an opportunity to assist the students in learning altruism and giving back;  4) It can be educational for the office staff. 

We are going to take on  2 projects:  1) for the period of Jan 18-Mar 5, the student team (probably 3 students) will be researching and proposing for a Sacramento suburban and urban neighborhood.  If you have a particular project neighborhood that you would like them to evaluate, they can choose that as their subject, otherwise they will make a choice of their own.  What I am trying to do is to get them to compare and look holistically at the issues of creating a modern livable neighborhood.  There will be two stages for this project: 1) a research stage for them to evaluate existing conditions, what are the issues, and what is a livable neighborhood; 2) to propose and develop responses to the defined issues;  2) for the period of Mar 5-May 5, the same student team will be entering the ”Leading Edge Student Design Competition”  www.leadingedgecompetition.org where they will be designing a zero-net energy, 4-6 unit  townhouse style residential building with an outdoor children’s play yard and an internet café/juice bar open to the public.  The project site is in Merced.  Our students have won or placed in this international competition several times in past years.

I will give lectures, guidance and we will have guest speakers to help the students proceed with the research necessary for both projects.  For each stage, the mentors will hear progress presentations at some interval and propose areas or issues for the students to study and help “nudge” their proposals in appropriate directions.  Some architectural offices have weekly progress presentations of their office projects and just add the student presentations to this process.  So let’s say that it takes the students 20 minutes to present their progress presentation, one or a committee of professionals can offer as much critique time as they feel is necessary.  So I’m guessing that it will take anywhere from 1 ½ hours to 2 hours every two to three weeks, starting probably the middle of February and ending the middle of May.  We usually have a public power point presentation of the student work at the end of the semester.  Last year we had the presentations at SMUD.  Some offices sometimes pull in their consultants but this is not necessary.  The students then will prepare the boards for submission by June 15, 2012. 

The primary purpose of this class is to introduce the student to the concept of “livable communities”.  We will investigate how the settlements that we create integrate our values of community and resource conscious design.  Additional topics include resource conscious design, control of heat and light (passive and active strategies), building orientation for natural and mechanical heat dissipation and maximum lighting effectiveness; solar energy; human thermal comfort; climate, site analysis, energy flow, heating, cooling ventilating and day lighting of architectural environments. 

 If you are interested in participating, please contact John Ellis at ellisjd@crc.losrios.edu

 Thanks to all of you that have donated you time and energy in the past.  The benefit of connecting academia and the profession is extremely important to all of us.