Jessica Piper

Advisor: Mercedes Garcia-Holguera

The Fulcrum Community Centre uses local laminated wood and mycelium as structural elements and engages with the local site and community in a regenerative, responsive manner
The Fulcrum Community Centre uses local laminated wood and mycelium as structural elements and engages with the local site and community in a regenerative, responsive manner.
Initial mapping of Winnipeg’s current and projected future ecological footprint compared to global anthro-equitable and eco-equitable ideals. How can we ensure an equitable and sustainable future?
Initial mapping of Winnipeg’s current and projected future ecological footprint compared to global anthro-equitable and eco-equitable ideals. How can we ensure an equitable and sustainable future?
Initial explorations into biomimetic design principles in a prairie ecosystem based on Janine Benyus’ Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. How can design begin to engage with ecosystem thinking?
Initial explorations into biomimetic design principles in a prairie ecosystem based on Janine Benyus’ Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. How can design begin to engage with ecosystem thinking?
Systemic interactions within the focus region of the CP Railyards site demonstrating the cyclic nature of the design and programmatic interdependencies. How can we design to better incorporate the systemic complexities that comprise our site and our cities?
Systemic interactions within the focus region of the CP Railyards site demonstrating the cyclic nature of the design and programmatic interdependencies. How can we design to better incorporate the systemic complexities that comprise our site and our cities?
The observation platform is designed as a seasonal structure, intended to degrade and decompose over the course of a year. This proposal fundamentally rethinks the temporal nature of architecture. How long do our buildings and structures need to last?
The observation platform is designed as a seasonal structure, intended to degrade and decompose over the course of a year. This proposal fundamentally rethinks the temporal nature of architecture. How long do our buildings and structures need to last?
The timber and rammed earth greenhouses facilitate increased food security and growing space for community residences, year-round. How can we ensure food system resilience and security moving into the 21st century?
The timber and rammed earth greenhouses facilitate increased food security and growing space for community residences, year-round. How can we ensure food system resilience and security moving into the 21st century?
The Fulcrum Community centre is designed using passive strategies for heating and cooling in order to ensure an energy and materially efficient building. How can we, not only as architects but also as citizens, ensure that the structures and cities we are building contribute more to future generations than they take?
The Fulcrum Community centre is designed using passive strategies for heating and cooling in order to ensure an energy and materially efficient building. How can we, not only as architects but also as citizens, ensure that the structures and cities we are building contribute more to future generations than they take?

Biological Architectures: Regenerative Urban Design in Winter Climates

Sustainability in architecture is an essential design strategy in response to global concerns with anthropogenic climate change and other human impacts on the earth. Buildings, from design to construction, and eventual demolition, are one of the largest global consumers of energy and resources and producers of greenhouse gases and other waste products.  The many existing, well-considered strategies and methodologies that attempt to address pervasive, unsustainable building are increasingly insufficient in their response to growing environmental crises. This thesis explores the potential application of systemic, dynamic design processes in attempt to transition towards a more resilient and sustainable urban model in winter climates.

As we face the ongoing climate crisis, it is imperative that we transition away from finance-driven development that currently characterizes ‘green design’ towards a paradigm that values social equity and environmentally sound approaches over short-term financial gain. This necessitates a pivot away from traditional, linear design and building strategies that consider buildings as discrete independent entities, into a comprehensive, systemic and resilient approach to design. Social sustainability is especially important to develop in this context: sustainable design principles simply cannot be effective if they are only accessible to the wealthiest, most privileged sectors of society. Ultimately, a successful paradigmatic transition will require a broad-scale, multi-faceted approach, including (1) economic and legislative incentives; (2) social, cultural and political pressure, especially from grassroots organizations and local changemakers; (3) an applied, systemic understanding of architectural and urban design; and (4) technological development and innovation.

As an exploration of one possible trajectory of this paradigmatic transition, this thesis primarily engages with biomaterials, biomimetic design strategies and biocentric principles within a regenerative design framework. It proposes a restorative reclamation of the CP Railyards in central Winnipeg, and addresses design at the urban, community and architectural scales.  At the urban scale, the proposal creates a large ‘biocentric build zone’ at the core of the CP Railyards with additional mid-rise, mixed-use zoning to support it.  Connection corridors permeate throughout the site, remediating the lack of access that currently characterizes the site. The thesis focuses into a small region of the CP Railyards for further development, which is designed to foster a local circular economy. There are several architectural focal points in this region, including a community centre, picnic shelter and observation platform that engage with structural mycelium as a key element.

Architects and architecture must acknowledge their historic and ongoing failures to meaningfully address social inequity and environmental sustainability. The cascading feedback loops of anthropogenic climate change necessitate a swift and emphatic transition towards a new paradigm of comprehensive systemic thinking in design. Through applied principles of biocentrism and regenerative design, and the use of renewable biomaterials, biological architectures are one of many possible trajectories towards an aspirational, equitable future.