Yale Bulletin
and Calendar

May 17-31, 1999Volume 27, Number 32




























From design to construction, program
gives architecture students a lesson
in home-making

Continuing a long-standing Yale tradition, graduate students at the School of Architecture have put down their pencils and drafting paper and taken up hammer and nails to build a house.

It's all part of the First-Year Building Project, a program wherein beginning architecture students compete to create a winning design for a commissioned building and then create the structure with their own hands.

As in recent years, the students in the first-year class were asked to create a one-family home for a New Haven neighborhood; this year's project is located at 212 Winthrop Ave., corner of Judson Avenue, near the Hospital of St. Raphael. Once completed, the home will be sold at cost to a low-income family through Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS).

The student-designed house has three bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths, and an open floor plan on the ground floor. The exterior has a pitched gable roof, and the front door faces the corner, creating two substantial side yards. The overall square footage is less than 1,500 -- far smaller than the usual architect-designed house.

"This functions as a spacious house although it's small," says Henry Dynia, rehabilitation specialist and construction manager for NHS. "It will accommodate a growing family."

According to Paul Brouard, faculty project director who has taken students through this process for 28 years, "The house is sited in an unusual and effective way, facing the corner and straddling the site, with a private backyard for the family. Inside, the living room, dining room and kitchen flow into one another in an effective progression."

NHS is a local nonprofit agency that works to stabilize transitional neighborhoods. The Yale project is the only new construction that NHS does, and it "has become a high point in our yearly cycle," Dynia says. "We enjoy the contact with so many talented people -- both on the faculty and students." NHS has been the client for the School of Architecture's first-year building project for the past four years.

At the beginning of spring semester, first-year students in the Master of Architecture degree program were given specifications for the annual competition. Initially, each of the students submitted an original design. For the final competition, the class was grouped into four design teams. Faculty members voted and representatives of the client, NHS, had the final say.

The winning team included Siobhan Burke, Scott Campbell, Cristina Chang, Claude Eshaghian, Peter Kohn, Hannah Kook, Seth Romig, Tim Sullivan, Joan Young, and Laura Zaytoun. Martha Foss is this year's senior teaching assistant for the project.

Labor will be donated by the entire first-year architecture class, which will build the structure from foundation to roof, under Brouard's guidance. The hands-on approach has been part of the School of Architecture's program since 1966, when students were assigned community building projects in Appalachia. In the 1970s, urban Connecticut became the beneficiary of the program. Projects have included a community center, bandshell, library extension, and several one-family houses.

-- By Gila Reinstein


T H I SW E E K ' SS T O R I E S

Commencement, 1999 Style
Facility to enhance strength in environmental sciences
Guide again taps Yale as a 'must-see' attraction
'Under My (Green) Thumb': Rolling Stones sideman talks about life as a tree farmer
Summertime at Yale
Endowed Professorships
City-Wide Open Studios celebrates work of Yale and area artists
A Conversation About Welfare and the Media
Eleven honored for strengthening town-gown ties
Special award, Jovin Fund commemorate student's good works
From design to construction, program gives architecture students . . .
Graduate students cited for excellence in teaching
1999 Commencement Information
Beinecke exhibition celebrates the art of collecting books
New line of Yale ties and scarves combine architectural elements with heraldic shields
Studio classes again to highlight annual festival of arts and ideas
Project X Update
Leffell to speak about surgery for skin cancer
Kaplan honored for his work with children
Guide shows motorists where to park downtown


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