Steel in the News

Steel Design Student Competition Winners Announced
Posted by Tasha Weiss on August 2, 2012 at 2:50 PM.

Twenty-one architecture students from universities across the U.S. were honored in the 12th annual Steel Design Student Competition for the 2011-2012 academic year. Administered by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and sponsored by AISC, the program challenges architecture students, working individually or in teams, to explore a variety of design issues related to the use of steel in design and construction.

 

This year’s Category I competition, entitled Culinary Arts College, challenged students to design steel-framed facilities with at least one long-span steel structure. Required spaces included teaching kitchens, a pastry kitchen, classrooms and a demonstration laboratory.  

 

David Heck from California Polytechnic State University won first place for designing “The Paris Market Lab.” (Click on the image for an enlarged view.)

 

“Steel was a wonderful facilitator of what I had envisioned for this adaptive reuse project,” said Heck. “In some places, I wanted the steel to provide the project with bold gestures that would be able to stand alone, aesthetically, from the existing conditions. Other places, the steel intervention was more subtle, so as not to drawn attention from some of the existing conditions, but rather make them more vivid by the presence of the steel and glass addition. Steel was the only structural material versatile enough to do both.”

 

Jonathan Reich was his faculty sponsor and called the award “a wonderful reward for all of David’s talent, effort and sustained attention to his fine project.”

 

Category II was the open submission design option and permitted the greatest amount of flexibility. Top honors in this category went to Dan DeWeese from the University of Kansas for his “Kansas City Soccer Training Center,” which allowed him to focus a portion of his architectural education on his interest in sports training and rehabilitation. “The hexagon, derived from many images of the sport, is emphasized to develop this identity for both the project and the competition,” he commented. (Click on the image for an enlarged view.)

 

His faculty sponsor was Kent Spreckelmeyer, who said, “His concept of a steel structural and enclosure system derived from a hexagonal geometry was a central part of his design from the beginning, and was critical in organizing and explaining his solution.”

 

For more information about the competition and to view the complete list of winners and their steel designs, visit www.aisc.org/studentdesign.