Splash Biography

Buildings come in all shapes and sizes. From the tallest skyscrapers to your very own home, each is a complicated work of both art and engineering that takes an enormous team of specialists to design, construct, and operate. If you've ever wondered how skyscrapers can be so tall, how a building can possibly use ZERO energy, or how to even design your dream home, this is the class for you. This class will cover the basic principles of architecture, structure, construction, and sustainability in buildings and what a career in these areas is like. Since a 50 minute class is no substitute for a full course though, in the week before Splash Fall 2020, students will be emailed primer handouts on these topics that cover the basics of what will be discussed so students can come prepared for class and are encouraged to research and form their own questions for the instructor beforehand. Handouts will also list where to find more information and offer ideas for home activities if students want to be more engaged with the topic. The class will conclude with a Q&A to answer any questions students have, either from the handouts, the lecture, or about buildings and engineering in general.

In a world where the effects of climate change are becoming more apparent by the day, humanity is quickly realizing that something must be done to address them. However, many important questions remain largely ignored in the global conversation. How big is the problem? What can we do about it? And how much must we do to solve it? This course will attempt to answer those questions. This course will take a quantitative look at climate change and teach students to evaluate strategies for climate change mitigation. It will be broken into 3 parts. Climate Science: Derive and evaluate the effect of greenhouse gasses on the climate. Mitigation Technologies: Understand energy systems from production all the way to end use and calculate the impacts that changing technologies may have. Adaptation and Geoengineering: Assess the merits of various engineering approaches to counteract the effects of climate change. Inspired by the acclaimed UC Berkeley course created by Professor William Nazaroff, this course will aim to give students the tools they need to study, understand, and engineer solutions for a changing climate in a changing world.

Buildings come in all shapes and sizes. From the tallest tower on earth to your very own home, each is a complicated work of both art and engineering that takes an enormous team of specialists to design, construct, and operate. If you've ever wondered how skyscrapers can be so tall, how a building can possibly use ZERO energy, or how to even design your dream home, this is the class for you. This class will cover the basic principles of architecture, structure, construction, and sustainability but the majority of the time will be dedicated to hands-on challenge labs that allow students to collaborate, build scale models, and apply the concepts to real design problems.

Buildings come in all shapes and sizes. From the tallest tower on earth to your very own home, each is a complicated work of both art and engineering that takes an enormous team of specialists to design, construct, and operate. If you've ever wondered how skyscrapers can be so tall, how a building can possibly use ZERO energy, or how to even design your dream home, this is the class for you. Topics will include the basic principles of architecture, structure, construction, sustainability, and more, all leading up to a collaborative design challenge in the second half of class.