Competition design by Schaeffer Somers with Ted Jones. Renderings by Ben DiNapoli and Schaeffer Somers.

The clients for this residential addition are two biomolecular scientists, who are married and share a laboratory at the university. The site is a clearing in the woods of rural Virginia. The original structure was built in the 1970s as part of a small community of experimental solar houses. The scope of work to renovate a kitchen expanded to solve circulation and functional issues throughout the house. The expansion of the ground floor plan creates the base for a small office and loft space above. The Japanese anime film, My Neighbor Totoro, provides inspiration and illustrates key elements of the project: an addition that reads as a pavilion against a larger roof form, a folded metal roof surface, a trellis lean-to structure, and projecting windows. Details based on previous work include sheet metal siding and insulated, projecting frames for metal-clad wood windows. A ceiling made of a pine, tongue-and-groove (T&G) siding that was originally explored in the Waldorf School and the River Bend House evolves into a floating, folding surface concealing LED cove lighting. The T&G material is also used as an exterior surface of the overhanging soffits and the ceiling of the covered porch formed by the balcony. The porch mediates the transition between parking court and garden, and provides a threshold to the recessed entry and interior gallery space beyond. The cedar trellis provides solar shading and visually connects the addition to the ground and the original structure. The folded theme is further explored in the detailing of the copper roof, vitrine, and cedar siding. Steel assemblies and parts were developed in close collaboration with a metal fabricator and were critical to the success of the guardrail, trellis, and bench designs. On the second floor, a small meditation alcove is inserted between roof trusses space framing an original bedroom adjacent to the new office. The bamboo flooring folds up the wall surface to become the applied horizontal and vertical finishes of the alcove. The sustainable design features of the project include a highly insulated structure, low emission interior finishes, rapidly renewable and local materials, and the reuse of architectural elements and materials (kitchen cabinets, soapstone, and concrete terrace fragments).

Re-Stitching the City through Transparent Food Practices

Student project team: Phillip Redpath and Joy Hu

Instructors: Lucia Phinney and Schaeffer Somers

The project evolved from the scrutiny of Baltimore’s intensive seams defined by distinct demographic contrasts between neighborhoods. Interest in food quality and accessibility led  to the development of a series of maps diagramming food sources and health indicators in the Druid Heights neighborhood. These explorations exposed the lack of food availability and revealed the resulting health concerns. To address these concerns, a program was developed that readapts the numerous vacant lots and buildings in the city for farming. This farm network centers on a central food hub that makes food practices transparent to Baltimore residents.

Five principles guided the project: social cohesion, transparency, modularity, education, and sustainable farming. These principles took form in an urban farm network, in which aquaponic farming units occupy abandoned row-houses throughout the city. These farming units feed into the central food hub, a conglomeration of restaurants, education kitchens, and market stalls. These provide a setting for social interaction among area residents, allowing for the exchange of skills between different demographic groups. The hub is a space in which the food process from cultivation to preparation is made transparent. This provides educational opportunities for residents to learn how their food gets to the table.

Modularity was a key principle in the architectural design. The restaurant and educational modules in the hub were adapted to different scales according to their distinct programmatic needs. A series of modular units forms all parts of the interior spaces as well: from tables and seating, to lighting and shelving. This landscape of modular units is unified under a canopy that covers the central hub. The canopy is intended to be a recognizable landmark that distinguishes our hub as central location for social interaction and food access in the city. 

About the studio:  Boundary Formations & Intensive Seams

A  collaboration of two instructors, Schaeffer Somers and Lucia Phinney, in the Spring of 2012 at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. The studio explored Baltimore through extensive research, analysis, and synthetic experimentation as the basis for imagining a transformative intervention in what is referred to as a “down-cycling” city. Survey methods included GIS-based mapping of population demographics, urban health indicators, and geographic data including landforms, soils, and hydrology. High contrast seams in population age, income, education, housing vacancy, neighborhood amenities, and open/green space were framed as “ecotones”, an ecological concept for the overlap of two biomes, where two communities meet and integrate. The urban ecotones identified and mapped by the students became the fertile ground for group projects focused on an intensive site for architecture and landscape as part of an extensive network that fosters and intensifies biological and human flows, resource exchange, equity, reciprocity, and accessibility.

The exhibit, Intersections: Health + the Built Environment, featured student work that explored links between design of the built environment and public health. Projects were selected from a range of graduate and undergraduate courses and presented based on the work of a new member of the architecture faculty, Schaeffer Somers, who teaches undergraduate architectural design and an interdisciplinary design-thinking course, Health Impact + Design.

Exhibit dates: May-July 2012
Location: Campbell Hall, School of Architecture, University of Virginia

Project TItle: Artful Restoration: A Safe Haven for Baltimore’s Youth

Student Project Team: Danielle Eads and Evan Burch

Instructors: Lucia Phinney and Schaeffer Somers

After mapping vacancy, transportation and social cohesion across the seam of Eutaw Place, a project for a youth art center emerged. The high rate of single parents and the low rate of affordable, available childcare inspired a safe and accessible center for youth. This, in conjunction with the presence of high and low art across the seam, was the catalyst for a program predicated on art and education. The site is located on the western side of the seam, at an abandoned block edge, with art paths stemming from the central hub to gallery outposts, creating a stitched seam condition and strengthening the social cohesion of the neighborhoods. The inclusion of safe transportation was also a vital element in the success of the program. In phase one, children would be transported to the art center after school, on the weekends or during the summer, until the neighborhood began to rehabilitate itself, at which point the revitalized art paths would provide safe routes for the young children to travel on from school to the safe haven. The art center includes related non-profits, live-in artists, studio space for the children and community space. Galleries along the art paths include galleries on the ground level and MICA student housing on the upper floor. The students have a partnership with the art center, and curate the galleries during exhibits.

About the studio:  Boundary Formations & Intensive Seams

A  collaboration of two instructors, Schaeffer Somers and Lucia Phinney, in the Spring of 2012 at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. The studio explored Baltimore through extensive research, analysis, and synthetic experimentation as the basis for imagining a transformative intervention in what is referred to as a “down-cycling” city. Survey methods included GIS-based mapping of population demographics, urban health indicators, and geographic data including landforms, soils, and hydrology. High contrast seams in population age, income, education, housing vacancy, neighborhood amenities, and open/green space were framed as “ecotones”, an ecological concept for the overlap of two biomes, where two communities meet and integrate. The urban ecotones identified and mapped by the students became the fertile ground for group projects focused on an intensive site for architecture and landscape as part of an extensive network that fosters and intensifies biological and human flows, resource exchange, equity, reciprocity, and accessibility.

Case studies analysis through model making

Project Team: Emily Ashby, Joshua Cruz, Tammie Teng, Annie Tavetian

Instructors: Peter Waldman and Schaeffer Somers

Group Statement:

The studio themes of health and wellbeing in structural operations affected the group schematic design from the outset. The Westover Estate, in northwest Charlottesville off I-29, is the intended site for a Tibetan integrated medical facility and complex. The site visit offered an experience in which the healing qualities were tangible. Free from busy distractions, the land has an unadulterated natural purity and an inherent variety of sensory experiences. Each team member approached the site differently and mapped his or her experiences. Annie focused on the animals and insects living on the site, and the way they interacted with the environment. Josh paid attention to the paths and their walk-ability. Tammy looked at vegetation patterns and solar exposure. Emily thought about auditory, visual, and tactile experience. The group attempted to quantify the intuitive perceptions gathered about the site by mapping and diagramming with accurate topographic data. Each group member envisioned an array of site schemes, which included Tibetan themes and attempted to incorporate aspects of eastern and western tradition and healing methodology, community, and site specificity. The group synthesized these design strategies by overlaying our ideas with an underlying guideline extracted from the topographic slope, which the group felt affected most of the qualitative aspects of the site, including relative warmth, vegetation, views, sounds, etc. These lines made a network of paths, in which either side of the path offers a different condition and view. From this framework, the group began to accumulate site lines to emphasize relationships to existing structures, paths, and cardinal directions. With this network, the group began to locate program incrementally, determining the locations logically and making programmatic relationships. For example, the location of the meditation hall at the highest point was determined first, in the place of importance and visible from the entrance. Each individual chose an aspect of the program to further develop; Emily, a Tibetan Inn, Tammy, an East Meets West Library, Joshua, the Meditation Hall, and Annie, a medical center. Our projects are related to each other either physically through shared landscape and/or conceptually, with related themes and/or driving ideas.

About the Studio: Structure + Health

This vertical, undergraduate research studio is an ongoing dialogue between two instructors, Peter Waldman, and a new colleague, Schaeffer Somers. The research agenda lies at the intersection of architecture, urban planning, and public health framing the built environment as a complex system, which has direct impacts on human health. Schaeffer’s seminar, Health Impact + Design, explores research questions at the intersection of the built environment and public health sciences, focusing on. Questions that have emerged from Schaeffer’s research in mobility, public space, and health impact assessment include:  

What are the measures of health, happiness, and well-being in a human population? How does a building shape the health of its inhabitants and the community at large? What are the parameters of a livable, equitable, and prosperous urban ecology?

Beginning with an intense workshop in Structural Operations, students integrate material, structure, and building code into parametric and physical models of stairs and pedestrian bridges as key programmatic elements in promoting physical activity as well as selected case study buildings ranging from XS to XL. The

studio introduces didactic topics including visual impairments mobility, neighborhood completeness, walkability, age friendly cities, and barrier free design to inform student proposals for semester-long projects. Logicz modeling is imported from public health sciences as a tool for diagramming causal relationships in evidenced-based design. Working in teams, students propose projects that incorporate the programmatic requirements of a range of clients from the health sciences community. The territory of the studio is the gradient from University Avenue to the auto-centric commercial highway, US 29, which is a typical structure of the contemporary mid-sized American city. The projects are networked through transportation and mobility systems, and other urban ecologies.  Drawing upon a lifetime of teaching culminating in the course, Lessons of the Lawn, Peter challenges the students to go beyond evidence and logic with the following prompt.

Can the sensibilities of Surveyors, Nomads or Lunatics (those who contemplate the myriad phases of the Moon) also articulate the characteristics of this extensive site and distinct programs yielding well-being in a newly explored Common Ground? There is a cast of characters, key informants and community partners who will contribute their expertise from the City of Charlottesville, UVA Dept. of Family Medicine, Dept. of Ophthalmology, Dept. of General Medicine, and Arura Medicine of Tibet. Each stakeholder and institution may represent distinct orientations with thresholds juxtaposed to enter, and then four windows to look out and finally four more to look within as sunset yields to darkness. Some may excavate deep basements, while others map the skies by day and by night. Each institution may exist as a world onto itself, but also map, envision, perhaps approximate (as an asymptote) a meditative pause between the visceral ground and the ethereal sky. These institutions of health and well-being are as distinct as Water, Fire, Earth and Air, but they all may claim the peace of the ethereal as well-being with the World. As the Academical Village and Monticello are both life-long projects, this “real project” aspires to making several centers, fragmentary frames, and spatial leaks, if not moments to trespass. We will imagine an Other vision of “A City on a Hill”, a recurrent dream in world culture of an Other paradise, an Other new beginning.” 

Student: Danielle Eads

Instructors: Peter Waldman and Schaeffer Somers

Project Statement:

This program for an East meets West Center for Medicine on the site of an early 20th century estate reinhabits an old Sears Roebuck barn, with a plan to rejuvenate the abandoned barn complex and create a new Tibetan village for the practice of alternative medicine. An initial study of structural operations at Augustin und Frank’s physics building in Berlin translates into the light, tenuous design interventions within and around the barn. Herb garden scaffolding wraps the southern and eastern edges for shading, also providing the ingredients for natural remedies created in the on-site lab. A catwalk in the sky extends out of the western facade to Blue Ridge Mountains. This reinhabited barn is a stimulus for the rejuvenation of the entire barn village and a step in the direction of the melding of East meets West medicine. The integrity of the original braced rafter gable construction is reserved but altered to insert new transparent volumes for a laboratory, exams rooms and floating tea rooms.

About the Studio: Structure + Health

This vertical, undergraduate research studio is an ongoing dialogue between two instructors, Peter Waldman, and a new colleague, Schaeffer Somers. The research agenda lies at the intersection of architecture, urban planning, and public health framing the built environment as a complex system, which has direct impacts on human health. Schaeffer’s seminar, Health Impact + Design, explores research questions at the intersection of the built environment and public health sciences, focusing on. Questions that have emerged from Schaeffer’s research in mobility, public space, and health impact assessment include:  

What are the measures of health, happiness, and well-being in a human population? How does a building shape the health of its inhabitants and the community at large? What are the parameters of a livable, equitable, and prosperous urban ecology?

Beginning with an intense workshop in Structural Operations, students integrate material, structure, and building code into parametric and physical models of stairs and pedestrian bridges as key programmatic elements in promoting physical activity as well as selected case study buildings ranging from XS to XL. The

studio introduces didactic topics including visual impairments mobility, neighborhood completeness, walkability, age friendly cities, and barrier free design to inform student proposals for semester-long projects. Logicz modeling is imported from public health sciences as a tool for diagramming causal relationships in evidenced-based design. Working in teams, students propose projects that incorporate the programmatic requirements of a range of clients from the health sciences community. The territory of the studio is the gradient from University Avenue to the auto-centric commercial highway, US 29, which is a typical structure of the contemporary mid-sized American city. The projects are networked through transportation and mobility systems, and other urban ecologies.  Drawing upon a lifetime of teaching culminating in the course, Lessons of the Lawn, Peter challenges the students to go beyond evidence and logic with the following prompt.

Can the sensibilities of Surveyors, Nomads or Lunatics (those who contemplate the myriad phases of the Moon) also articulate the characteristics of this extensive site and distinct programs yielding well-being in a newly explored Common Ground? There is a cast of characters, key informants and community partners who will contribute their expertise from the City of Charlottesville, UVA Dept. of Family Medicine, Dept. of Ophthalmology, Dept. of General Medicine, and Arura Medicine of Tibet. Each stakeholder and institution may represent distinct orientations with thresholds juxtaposed to enter, and then four windows to look out and finally four more to look within as sunset yields to darkness. Some may excavate deep basements, while others map the skies by day and by night. Each institution may exist as a world onto itself, but also map, envision, perhaps approximate (as an asymptote) a meditative pause between the visceral ground and the ethereal sky. These institutions of health and well-being are as distinct as Water, Fire, Earth and Air, but they all may claim the peace of the ethereal as well-being with the World. As the Academical Village and Monticello are both life-long projects, this “real project” aspires to making several centers, fragmentary frames, and spatial leaks, if not moments to trespass. We will imagine an Other vision of “A City on a Hill”, a recurrent dream in world culture of an Other paradise, an Other new beginning.” 

Exhibition of infrared photography by Schaeffer Somers, Steedman Fellow, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Washington University, St. Louis, March 2004.

The project is located at the end of a cul-de-sac in Charlottesville on a uniquely beautiful site that overlooks a double bend in the Rivanna River. The modest budget presented a challenge in meeting the client’s vision for expanding the living space of the small brick ranch house built in the 1950s and to incorporate as many sustainable design elements as possible. The addition and renovation work concentrated on the entry and main floor living space, which dramatically opens up to the landscape views beyond. The design features of the project include daylighting, a super insulated structure, interior finishes, reuse of architectural elements including radiators and kitchen cabinets, solar hot water, and a hydronic heating system for improved thermal and energy performance.