Integrated Design
Advisor: Greg Tew

The Virginia Tech student body floods the built environment with energy and vibrancy. The way architecture accommodates young adult disposition speaks to its spatial, formal, and social transformability. The neighborhoods surrounding campus are fueled by this population, and prove to be an active arena and powerful tool in reconfiguring urbanism in Blacksburg Virginia.

Center Street apartments, dominated by student residents, has become a legacy of life and commotion. The site presents an opportunity to rezone and redevelop a neighborhood for post-car real estate. The existing automobile dominated pattern would be transformed into denser, walkable blocks of mixed-used housing. In an effort to challenge traditional ways of thinking, the architecture augments a modern community and indulges in progressive aesthetics.

As students comprise multipurpose, shifting communities, total specialization and definitive imagery may become dubious and unsatisfactory. Instead, the environment forms a system that molds to operations and unlocks a fluidity of expression. The role of the building here is to interact with its inhabitants through a spatial transformation. In a nearly endless variety of dualities, the facade becomes a reflection of the unfolding activities of its residents.