AIAVT Architects To Transform Vintage Airstream
Click on the image to open
The airstream purchased for the Archistream project.
Click on the image to open
Kristina Pomeroy, a third-year architecture student at Norwich University and participant in the design-build studio that built the AIA Vermont Archistream, breaks for a photo.
Click on the image to open
Montpelier residents Elinor Bacon and Niko Stonorov enjoy the Archistream’s built-in seating.
Click on the image to open
The Archistream interior was designed to house books, brochures, models, and other educational material.
Click on the image to open
AIAVT Archistream project leaders (from left to right: Diane Gayer, Josh Chafe, Diantha Korzun and Tom Bachman enjoy a chat with Aron Temkin, dean of Norwich University’s College of Professional Schools.
Click on the image to open
Professor of Architecture Eleanor D'Aponte and architecture student Kristina Pomeroy test out the Airstream “built-in bench.”
Click on the image to open
Niko Stonorov imagines designing great structures with the Archistream outdoor stools and interactive blocks.
Click on the image to open
The Norwich University Archistream design-build student team (rom left to right: Pedro Rodriguez, Caleb Menard, Jess Dahline, Nevin Leary, Jade Burkart, Michael Cavenaugh, Dan Wheeler, Anthony Menard, Adam Wiles-Rosell, Kristina Pomeroy) presents its final work to AIA Vermont, the client, and Norwich faculty.

A 21-foot 1969 Airstream Globetrotter will be transformed into a mobile outreach, education, and design center over the course of the next six months. This unique American Institute of Architects, Vermont Chapter (AIAVT) project is made possible through a $42,750 grant from the AIA National Innovation Fund to create an “Archistream.”

AIAVT is just one of eight Chapters of the national group awarded a grant from a 65-applicant pool. The grants were awarded as part of the AIA Repositioning Initiative to generate greater awareness of AIA, architecture, and the value architects bring to community planning, historic preservation, land conservancy, disaster mitigation and remediation, and other processes.

The idea for the mobile design and education center arose from a brainstorming session at AIAVT’s annual June retreat. In an interview with AIArchitect, Diane Gayer, AIA, Vermont Design Institute, Burlington, recalled, “The idea kind of leapt off the page. We thought…that we should not let it go [away].” She later added, “The trailer's signature curving aluminum outer shell serves as a key design inspiration. The image of the Airstream, so iconic, rallied our energies for the project.”

The Airstream purchased by AIAVT will undergo its transformation in the hands of 10 undergraduate architecture students at Norwich University as the core of a spring design-build studio. Tolya Stonorov, a principal at Stonorov Workshop, Montpelier and an assistant professor of architecture at Norwich, is teaching the studio. AIAVT will be the "client.”

The project will immerse students in the everyday professional realities of schedule, budget, and program, and…bring them into conversation with the AIAVT client team. “Having AIAVT as the client will be a unique…learning opportunity,” Stonorov told AIArchitect. “The students are lucky to have a client with expertise in…architecture and design.”

The project also offers the opportunity to shape a thoughtfully calibrated and crafted micro-interior for the vehicle. Stonorov noted that the school's model shop is equipped with advanced fabrication equipment such as 3D printers and a 4x8 CNC router, and that these technologies are enhanced by Vermont’s traditions of construction. “I see the trailer's new design as a joining of the high tech and the handcrafted,” she said to AIArchitect. She imagines that the students might work with felt, resin, and hardwoods to fashion a warm interior to contrast with the vehicle’s streamlined exterior.

After the trailer is transformed, AIA volunteers will take the vehicle on the road to various communities around the state and be used in a multitude of ways. Diantha Korzun, AIA, TruexCullins Architecture, Burlington, said, “The Archistream will enable AIAVT members to better connect with each other, colleagues in related professions, and with the greater public. Engaging the general public is especially important since architects can serve as leaders in creating livable and healthy communities in Vermont. We’d like the public to be more fully aware of the positive contributions architects can make; these may be through designing a local library that will last over 200 years, rethinking the master plan of a community as it grows, or rehabilitating a designated brownfield area. An architect can also be a leader in addressing the challenges of global climate change in communities.”

While the Archistream will showcase AIAVT-winning design projects and other AIAVT activities, the AIA team hopes to develop programs in collaboration with local organizations such as Preservation Trust of Vermont and the Vermont Arts Council, and to see it used to host seminars, showcase innovative design materials and technologies, and screen architecture-related videos. “The trailer will also be available to visit schools, town halls, and county fairs; really the options are infinite. Who knows—we might ignite a spark in one of the students that leads to the next Frank Lloyd Wright,” Korzun said.

According to sources at AIA National (link to orginal story http://www.aia.org/about/repositioning/AIAB099746?dvid=&recspec=AIAB099…), the “repositioning ambassadors” responsible for selecting the grant recipients said the Archistream concept squarely met their definition of innovative, and that its outreach value was not couched in the social media or digital campaigns people have come to expect these days, but rather in good, old fashioned face time—something they tagged as positively disruptive.

AIAVT members or other individuals interested in collaborating on programs that would use the Archistream are invited to contact AIAVT at [email protected].

 

Have something to say? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.