Museum Project

Professor: Aaron Betsky

Prompt: Parts of Professor Bill Green's collection are on display around Cowgill. The aim of this project is to design a home for this collection. It will include exhibition areas at its core, as well as educational facilities, visitor services, offices, and a climate-controlled, secure storage area. In addition to answering to these accommodations, students also need to design an apartment for Professor Green and his wife, Joyce, to live.

The site for this project will be the underutilized “strip mall” shopping area on South Main Street, specifically an area that is now occupied by Virginia Tech Surplus. Students may expand beyond that exiting envelope, but can only use recycled, upcycled, or otherwise repurposed building materials. The project must thus also address the question of what the nature of such building types is and might be in the future, and how we can build without using any new natural resources.

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