The

BIOTIC DIFFUSER

In Collaboration with John Hamilton,
Consists of:

Site Analysis,       

Drawings,       

Vignettes,       

Models,       

and Performance Studies.

This project won the Architecture at Zero 2023 Graduate Merit Award.

Siteless Typologies

The Biotic Diffuser, a teaching and innovation farm lab and student residence in the town of Allensworth, California, draws extensively from the local siteless typologies of Sears home, farm shed, and mobile home, while also expanding upon the ideas put forth by these objects to create sited typologies. The main road of Allensworth runs straight into the site – it is in this sense a collector. Emphasizing this notion by providing a space that faces Allensworth and is open to its residents creates a project that embraces the community, draws people in to stay a while, and diffuses them back out into Allensworth with strengthened bonds to neighbor, town, history, and future.

Drawings

The Biotic Diffuser intends to answer more than one question. It intends to embrace the site’s nature as a collector – of sunlight, rainwater, and people – and awaken its potential as a diffuser, incorporating utilitarian yet elegant daylighting strategies, water distribution cycles, and strengthening the sense of community by providing space to dwell. It seeks to rigorously engage persistent issues of the region and site in innovative and responsible ways – passive cooling, water reuse, phytoremediation, and energy efficiency. It does not seek to introduce resilience, as Allensworth is a town where resilience is one of the foundational principles and driving forces of its spirit of place, but to reinforce its resilience, providing a locomotive for economic production and cultural vibrancy. It also seeks to seamlessly incorporate design strategies that enhance placemaking and aesthetic delight.

Axon

Site Plan





Plan

This intervention honors and encourages the community, providing them with an example of a well-crafted, well-sited project that inspires them to improve upon, or at the very least, see the poetic qualities of the spaces they already inhabit. The project intends to ennoble the local typologies and produce an architecture that brings a dignified poetic dimension to the everyday that tells and adds to the story of Allensworth and its lasting resilience.

The structural system allows for flexibility of program, and its elemental, repetitive nature allows for the potential of future expansion. Its transparency and honesty as a system enables its daily users to understand, diagnose, repair, and replace components, connecting the users to their space and retaining a sense of agency common to rural communities.

Practicality and elementality are heavy focus points from the outset of the design process. Built elements are designed to accommodate expansion or reduction, and can operate well with a flexible range of programs. Material choices draw from the logic of local native plants: their hardiness and ability to survive with low amounts of water allow them to live abundantly in Southern California. CLT, steel, fiberglass, and polycarbonate are lightweight, low-maintenance materials that are efficient in construction, maintenance, and longevity. Steel joints are simple, with bolts used rather than welds whenever possible, to allow for simple replacement, addition, and dismantling. Floors and walls slide into the structural system, allowing for simpler end-of-life processes. Helical pile foundations touch the earth lightly and can be simply installed and removed.  

Teaching Section

Residential Section

Vignettes

The Biotic Diffuser features ample porch space, open to the public, allowing residents and TAC Farms students to commune. Community gardens, a market space, and a teaching kitchen all work to build a sense of unity and empowerment around food, shifting the current tendency to grow for others, without enjoying the produce, to sharing and enjoying that which is sown on Allensworth land.

Along with building cultural and community vibrancy, the project also acknowledges and assists the material needs of the Allenworth community as a whole, by providing drinking water through hydropanels and electricity through excess solar energy.

The design of the Biotic Diffuser seeks to produce exuberance within means, choosing select moments to sparkle. Though most of the project is unpainted to reduce cost, maintenance, and VOCs, these moments highlight colors drawn from Allensworth, celebrating the town and its character and history.
















The original Allensworth features restored Sears homes in bright colors, which are used as the palette for the sliding corrugated metal doors that function both as an encloser for each residential unit, and, when opened, as a spatial partition, producing communal spaces facing east in between each CLT pod.

The kitchen is conceived of not only as a catering kitchen but as another classroom; an educational space where both farm education students and community members can learn to bring produce from farm to table. The tile floor draws its colors and pattern from improvised roofs in Allensworth, celebrating the town’s resiliency and spirit.
















The Biotic Diffuser features ample porch space, open to the public, allowing residents and TAC Farms students to commune. Community gardens, a market space, and a teaching kitchen all work to build a sense of unity and empowerment around food, shifting the current tendency to grow for others without enjoying the produce, to sharing and enjoying that which is sown on Allensworth land.



John Hamilton and I worked hand-in-hand on this project – we joined our desks together with a custom-built chalkboard at the beginning of the semester. Deliverables were split up sometimes – he did most of the work on the models and sections, while I worked on the rendered images and plans – but this was due to sheer necessity. The ideation, development, decision-making, and rigor came to the table from both brains equally. All work is collaborative. The best collaborations become a frantic ongoing dance.