93.9 The River Interviews Design-Build Students

93.9 The River Interviews Design-Build Students

Local station 93.9 The River recently interviewed BCT student Owen Grierson, M. Arch student Megan Futscher, and BCT Adjunct Faculty Kent Hicks about this year's iteration of the Design-Build program (a collaboration between the BCT program, the Department of Architecture, Five College Architectural Studies, and East Branch Studio). The house, which is currently under construction in Chesterfield on the East Branch Studio property, will soon transform into a pop-up stage at the upcoming Green River Festival in Greenfield, MA. Listen to the story as told by our students... https://soundcloud.com/939theriver-1/the-hyggehaus-at-the-green-river-festival Links: The HyggeHaus at The Green River Festival | 93.9 & 101.5 The River (wrsi.com) Hygge House Project Blog Green River Festival ...
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UMass Students Place 11th in National Competition and BCT Program Receives $100k Grant

UMass Students Place 11th in National Competition and BCT Program Receives $100k Grant

Students Participate in Residential Construction Competition As in years past, a group of UMass students traveled to the International Builders Show (IBS), a national conference, which was held this year in Orlando, FL. There they competed in the "Production Homes" category of the Residential Construction Management Competition, which allows our students to practice many aspects of their coursework, such as estimating and budgeting, scheduling and various other pre-construction topics. Under the faculty supervision of BCT's Dr. Ho-Sung Kim, this group had been busy preparing for this competition for the entirety of the fall semester. The UMass team landed the 11th place spot this year out of 27 competing schools. Its members were Akira Ontsuka, Matthew Klingman, Mohamid Zabir, Lauren Nothe,  Oliver Pullin, and Samuel Khokhlan. See the gallery below for some impressions from the event. BCT Program Receives $100,000 Grant From NHE's HELP Program The Homebuilding Education Leadership Program (HELP), launched in 2006, establishes closer relationships with institutions of higher education by awarding major...
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BCT Students Start Construction on the “Hygge House” Design-Build Project

BCT Students Start Construction on the “Hygge House” Design-Build Project

The Hygge House1 is a portable, 350 sq. ft, Net Zero, Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) designed and built by students in a collaborative effort between UMass Building & Construction Technology, UMass Architecture, Five College Architectural Studies, & East Branch Studio. The semester-long design-build course that encapsulates this project is led by L. Carl Fiocchi (BCT), Robert Williams (Architecture), Naomi Darling (Five Colleges) and Kent Hicks (East Branch Studio). It offers learning opportunities in high performance construction, construction practices, low load mechanical systems selection and installation, performance verification, and carbon accounting. The project as well as the course helps students understand the climate impacts of carbon in the built environment and explores ways to design and build better structures, as the inefficiency of buildings is responsible for approximately forty percent of global carbon emissions. After the Build is completed, students will have the opportunity for teaching about the building when the Hygge House is used as an Auxiliary Stage at the Green...
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Mockups Help Students Understand Building Technologies

Mockups Help Students Understand Building Technologies

June 25, 2018 Inside the John W. Olver Design Building–itself a teaching tool for builders and architects–the Building and Construction Technology program (BCT) has built eight movable, full-scale mockups of building assemblies to help students see how modern building components go together in the real world. At home in front of a class or wheeled into public view in the Olver atrium, the mockups display the complexity of roofs, walls, windows and floors, and the intricacies, sequences and attachment methods the multiple layers of these assemblies require. Current building technology, whether commercial or residential, has grown more complex under the demands of climate change and energy costs, and it is critical to understand how each component of a building’s “envelope” responds to the physics of heat, liquid water, water vapor and air. The mockups reveal each layer in cutaway with adjacent QR codes to supply more detailed information. The mockups were built by BCT lecturer L. Carl Fiocchi in collaboration with student Alexander Okscin,...
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