Architecture team’s winning design honors Orlando shooting victims

Monday, March 27, 2017

A team from the UNC Charlotte School of Architecture has won the 2017 American Institute of Architects (AIA) Small Project Practitioners (SPP) Small Project Design Competition.

Architecture professors Marc Manack and Rachel Dickey, Director of Fabrication Labs Alex Cabral, Teaching Fellow McKenzie Canaday and students Jon Warner and Elizabeth Shue comprised the winning team. Their entry will be constructed and showcased at the AIA Conference on Architecture 2017 in Orlando, Florida, April 27-29.

The 2017 competition challenged participants to design a temporary structure for a space 10 feet by 10 feet by 8 feet that could be easily and inexpensively built. The theme for the competition was “reflection,” and projects had to evoke a strong sense of place by encouraging human interaction.

Acknowledging the location of the AIA national convention, the winning submission “EFFERVESCE” responds to the Pulse nightclub shooting of June 2016. “EFFERVESCE” is a plastic lattice wall that will stand in the middle of the installation site. Within the wall’s structure are 49 “vessels,” one for each life lost in the shooting. Each of these modules will contain a simple mechanism with plunger, siphon and bubble wand, allowing visitors to release bubbles into the air, creating a moment of joy in remembrance of the Pulse shooting victims. The names of the 49 will be subtly inscribed into the structure.

“Rather than a monument, this memorial is an encounter and an event – a place of interaction and contemplation amid the commotion of the convention environment,” the team wrote in the design proposal.

The elements of “EFFERVESCE” will be manufactured in the School of Architecture fabrication labs prior to the convention, then assembled on site April 26. A session on April 28 will allow the team to present its design concept. Following the convention, the team will donate “EFFERVESCE” to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center of Central Florida.

Sponsored by AIA National, the SPP Small Project Design Competition is open to architects, associate architects and architecture students.