CIV 513S Collaborative Design Studio

This course is an elective course for fourth-year Civil Engineering Students and Civil Engineering graduate students.

In this course, students from civil engineering collaborate with students from the U of T Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design on a building design project. Teams consist of two students, one from each discipline. In addition to learning about building design, one of the primary objectives of this course is for students from both disciplines to gain insight into the collaborative process of interaction between architects and engineers.

There were no formal lectures in this course. Instead, teams met in one of the architecture studios for a five-hour working session, once a week. Course staff circulated and questioned students about their work during this period.

More information on the administration of the course is available in the course handout.

Project

In 2005 , the project was to develop the space in the courtyard of the U of T's Galbraith Building (35 St. George Street). Given that the U of T is an inner city campus, this type of "found space" is one of the few ways for the university to create new classrooms, laboratories, and office space.

More information on the project requirements are available in the project handout.

The class started out with a small design-build project to give students an immediate opportunity to become familiar with the collaborative process. Each team designed and built a tower to a specification that limited the type and amount of materials (baltic birch plywood). Glue and fasteners other than those fabricated from the available plywood were not allowed. The towers were load-tested to failure in the Structures Laboratory of the U of T Department of Civil Engineering. Photos of the towers before, during, and after testing are available online. 

I taught this course once, in the 2004-05 academic year. I taught it jointly with Architecture professor Terence van Elslander.