A Senior Design team from the Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering (CAEE) Department recently represented Drexel University at the ASCE Charles Pankow Foundation Architectural Engineering Student Competition, held in conjunction with the Architectural Engineering Institute (AEI) National Conference hosted by The Pennsylvania State University Department of Architectural Engineering on April 3rd and 4th. The Drexel team, represented by CAEE students C. Anthony Bifano, Kayleigh Houde, and Stephen Wayland, won the competition’s Innovation award for their Integrated Design of an Elementary School in Reading, PA.
The team designed a new elementary school building that is 91,000 square feet with an 18,000 square foot natatorium space located in the building’s lower level. This project comes with the following design challenges: poor site soil conditions, inclusion of a green roof, obtaining LEED certification, and designing for a high degree of flexibility for the future of education. The final design addressed all of these challenges and satisfied the client’s requirements. Team members also included the following features: precast hollow core flooring elements, a tensile fabric roof system, a dual functionality PV/ thermal solar system, greywater capture and reuse, and a unique sewer source condenser mechanical system to provide heating and cooling to the building. More information regarding this competition and the students’ performance can be found here.
“I am extremely pleased with the team’s accomplishment,” notes Dr. Robert Brehm, PE, the team’s advisor and Associate Teaching Professor for the CAEE Department. “Their hard work and innovative design has once again resulted in a strong performance for Drexel in this competition.”
Next year’s competition will be held at Drexel as part of the AEI student conference. CAEE junior Nathan Barry, along with fellow officers of Drexel’s AEI student organization, will be involved in hosting this competition under the guidance of Drexel’s Architectural Engineering Director Professor James Mitchell.