Students push boundaries of design in spring 2014 studio

Texas A&M [environmental design] (http://dept.arch.tamu.edu/undergraduate/) students pushed beyond the boundaries of traditional design, digitally formulating objects aimed at reconceptualizing building forms in a spring 2014 studio led by Gabriel Esquivel, Texas A&M associate professor of architecture.

“These are concepts of building exteriors or interiors created without following design norms that have been handed down for centuries,” said Drew Busmire, who earned a Bachelor of Environmental Design degree in spring 2014 and is now interning at [Studio Roland Snooks] (http://www.rolandsnooks.com) in Melbourne, Australia.

“These objects won’t be built in the foreseeable future, but we can start to implement some of these ideas in today’s projects,” said Busmire.

New design approaches like those explored in the studio can be seen, he said, in the futuristic-looking [Sci-Arc Graduation Pavilion] (http://www.evolo.us/architecture/update-on-league-of-shadows-sci-arc-graduation-pavilion-hosted-the-ceremony/) , designed by architect Marcelo Spina, who was a [featured speaker] (http://vimeo.com/90994665) in the Spring 2014 Department of Architecture Lecture Series.

The pavilion earned a 2014 A+ Award from Architizer magazine, which recognized designs that “used cutting-edge technologies and feats of engineering.”

Pushing the boundaries of architecture created an intellectually stimulating experience in the studio, said Busmire. “We conceived new ideas, moved forward with them and we also studied architects’ new ideas,” he said.

The students’ efforts were assisted by Bruno Juricic, an architect, curator and Ph.D. student at the University of California-Los Angeles.