This is a vertical studio combining students in their second and third year of the march program with students in the maad program, and those in the final semesters of the undergraduate architecture program. The studio focuses on the integration and development of building systems with the spatial, theoretical, and contextual ideas of architecture, inviting innovation within its practice. Work focuses around a rigorous semester-long team project that includes development of environmental systems, structural systems, and details for a design project.Section description:Created almost 90 years ago, treasure islands 400 acres were dredged from the bay for the 1939 golden gate international exhibition, and briefly served as the site of the first trans-pacific commercial flights. At the time it was the largest artificial island in the world. After the exhibition the island became a naval training center and shipped over 4.5 million sailors during world war ii. Decommissioned in 1997, the island became a focus for redevelopment, and last year its first new buildings began leasing. The plans aims are to realize the full potential of the underutilized island as a high-density sustainable development. The current master plans juxtaposition of fortified urban blocks and subsiding public waterfront parks further serves as a metaphor for the competing narratives of permanence and impermanence that define the site. As a persisting figure in the san francisco bay, treasure island reveals a palimpsest of contrasts between the actual fluctuations of the sites temporality and its institutionalized representations of stability.Because of the islands core artificiality, it is sinking just as fast as sea level is rising. To withstand this, re-engineering has been needed with artificial barriers and a mounding up of the new urban portions of the island planned for development. In contrast to these fortified, privately owned urban blocks, embodying a representation of permanence tied to investment, 300 acres planned to be a park for public benefit under the tidelands trust act are likely to become marsh, subsumed by the rising bay.The new master plan represents an overlay of contemporary economic ambitions. However, unlike the previous temporary uses, the plan offers a sustainable strategy for permanent inhabitation and future development with a unique feature for an arts program funded by one percent of development profits. The anticipated product of the arts master plan incorporates a wide range of opportunities, from outdoor installations to wayfinding activities, landscape installations and sculptures, and artists in residence programs.In this studio you will pursue the design of an inter-generational community integrating this artist-in residence program. The objective of the building complex is to serve the needs of an evolving community of residents of diverse ages establishing a home on treasure island. The location of the building site will be identified through studying the existing conditions of the island and the development plan. The project tectonics will take its cues from the versatility and materiality of wood. Wood, like life, is resilient yet fragile; it can last for generations if treated with care or deteriorate rapidly when neglected. It is a reminder of times passage, echoing the transient nature of life. Wood offers warmth and comfort while being adaptable and sustainable, suggesting that the spaces we inhabit, like our lives, must be able to evolve. The buildings intimate, domestic spaces will exist alongside larger communal and studio environments, allowing for a diverse range of activities that promote well-being, connection, and creativity. Here, the design responds to the need for permanence while honoring the potential for change, reflecting a community that understands its impermanence while embracing the possibility of renewal and shared stewardship.The project reconciles the needs of a stable, functioning building with accommodations for interior and exterior spaces able to adapt to artists work. There will be spaces more flexible, adaptable, modifiable, and easier and faster to change for the artists benefit, such as workspaces. There will also be spaces and infrastructure that are less flexible and slower to change, but are essential for the building's function and the sustained presence of its users, such as bathrooms, kitchens, vertical circulation, and structural partitions. The combination of multiple ages as an inter-generational live-work space also requires the building to have its infrastructural spaces conform to accessibility and universal design criteria meeting a variety of needs.By embracing treasure islands history as a stage for global ideologies, the studio aims to design specific models for living which celebrate artistic expression as a tool for reimagining community and identity. By situating a new community in this contested space, the design confronts the commodification of land and culture while proposing an alternative model rooted in collaboration and co-operative ownership.

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