AIA/AAH Student Design Charrette
A team from the School was selected to participate in this year’s annual Student Design Charrette held November 7-11, 2008, hosted by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Academy of Architecture for Health (AAH) in Washington DC. Led by Adjunct Professor Robert Claiborne, M1 students Ali Torabi, Jeff Ma, Valerie Buzaglo and Hamza Alhbian (via skype) had only 48 hours to design a Disaster Response Hospital for civil or military use. Their elegant solution, featuring a sophisticated search-and- rescue vehicle, imagined three independent scenarios, anticipating a terrorist attack, a natural disaster, and a humanitarian catastrophe. “It is our belief that every disaster is essentially a personal one and that the key to disaster relief lies in creative approaches to individual rescue relief,†stated the team in its brief.