Project: Accession
Date: Fall 2008
Credit: Aaron Taylor Harvey, Michael Ageno
Course: Advanced Studio: Sustainable Tower CBD
Accession is an environmentally responsive tower that attempts to make vertical the socially productive conditions of urbanity. The south facade of the building is tilted back 20 degrees to maximize solar exposure on the photovoltaic skin, but this tilt also services a programmatic function as cuts through the facade create vertical neighborhoods and streets that can receive maximized daylight and ventilate naturally. Accession invites interior exploration and discovery as the exterior neighborhood slots connect back to a central atrium that extends the length of the building and acts as a connective boulevard linking the disparate parts.
Accession means the process of acquiring or improving by addition; the tower fully utilizes all immediately available resources and significantly offsets dependence on power from the grid by using the Bay as a heat exchange for the HVAC system , the sun to provide 35% of the buildings power, and peizo-electric transducers on the local off-ramp to power all the buildings pumps and compressors. Unfortunately, a zero energy tower is still an impossibility, but Accession cuts resource consumption in half and provides a dynamic new model for vertical urbanism.