By Jugal Patel, Student Correspondent
This is Part 6 in the “Adapting to Rising Seas” series.
Mason Andrews thrives on new challenges on the academic frontier. A professor of architecture at Hampton University (HU), she spent two years working with engineers to build a solar powered home for a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) competition. Next, she spent a year working to design the nation’s first climate resilient neighborhood. Now she’s turning her architectural eye on the Hague area of Virginia to prepare the region for sea level rise.
From September 2014 to the summer of 2015, Andrews also mentored the students who developed creative, practical solutions to sea level rise for the Chesterfield Heights neighborhood in Norfolk, Va.
A collaborative effort was crucial for the never-attempted-before initiative, coordinated by Wetlands Watch, a statewide nonprofit organization that secured Virginia Sea Grant funding. HU students and faculty like Andrews were joined by Old Dominion University (ODU) civil and environmental students and faculty and professionals and consultants by the dozen.
In addition to planning how the neighborhood could adapt to rising waters, the project also gave professionals and students practical experience in tackling the emerging problem of sea level rise. For the students and professors, it was a rare opportunity to work across disciplines and universities as well.
Andrews, who had previously worked with ODU engineering professor Mujde Erten-Unal, was intrigued by the project.
When Wetlands Watch pitched the idea to her, Andrews had one thought, she says: “Call Mujde and tell her it’s time to saddle up again.”
Andrews and Erten-Unal first worked together in 2011 when their HU and ODU classes partnered to build that net zero energy, solar powered home for the US Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon, an international competition. Their team took home 14th place.
The competition was the first time Andrews and Erten-Unal broke with the conventional working relationship between engineers and architects. Typically, the two professions work sequentially; architects draw up designs first, then send them to engineers. Each profession approaches projects in different ways.
“The architectural process involves redirection. You go around and around and around. It’s an iterative process. You look at things multiple times,” Andrews says. “From the engineers’ perspective, who go in a straight line towards the answer to any question, it drives them completely berserk.”
For conventional projects, it makes sense for architects and engineers to work independently, especially because they have existing bases of knowledge to draw upon. Projects that confront newer issues such as sea level rise, however, require greater collaboration.
Because their training reinforces creativity for architects and practicality for engineers, the toughest part of working closer together is to accept the different approaches.
“That’s what engineering firms are looking for, projects like this where they can both understand each other’s language,” Erten-Unal says. “They have to work together.”
Each of the students on the Chesterfield Heights project also had to move beyond their training and learn to speak across the disciplines of engineering and architecture. Andrews found that once the students overcame those barriers, the results were impressive.
“For those who got it, it was a wonderful thing to watch,” Andrews said.
At the end of the 2014–15 semester, Andrews and Erten-Unal’s students presented their plans for incremental adaptation of Chesterfield Heights. Based on the success of this award-winning project, the two professors are setting up formal connections between their universities so that future students can have collaborative opportunities.
“This semester, ODU engineers and HU architects are working together again to design strategies for flooding due to sea level rise and storm events at the Hague area of Norfolk,” says Erten-Unal. “We want to continue this work with another senior design group, because we have senior design classes every semester.”
For others looking to take on similar initiatives in areas subject to flooding, Andrews says the work at Chesterfield Heights is an example of how adaptation projects can be structured and who needs to be involved.
“The most amazing part of the project was that nobody had ever done this before. We were really wandering around like a lost platoon for a while,” she says. “But we spent a lot of time talking to professionals that had a piece of the puzzle. We know how to start now, and that’s good.”
This story is part of an in-depth, six-part series, “Adapting to Rising Seas,” on the award-winning Chesterfield Heights resiliency design project. Stories explore different aspects of the project.
