The aim of this international  competition is to design a multiple use tower according to ISOVER Multi-Comfort-House definition and with passive house components on a site in lower Manhattan. Participants are students of architecture, design and construction engineering from universities in all countries with ISOVER, CertainTeed and Izocam presence.

Faculty and students from Germany visited Parsons the week of January 17th. The Parsons and Erfurt groups visited the site, toured a number of existing tall buildings in Manhattan and participated in design workshops, exploring possible partis for the buildings. The teams are involved in collaborating digitally on tower designs a collaboration which will continue to the end of stage one of the competition, March 21, 2011. Harold Fredenburgh and Kenneth Lewis (SOM) who taught a tall building studio in the fall, are leading the Parsons effort.

Students from Erfurt will also return in May for another series of workshops with Moji Baratloo working with her senior AD/ID studio – a study of the small town of Wassaic in upstate NY. The studio’s emphasis will be the recognition and understanding that architecture is part of a series of interconnected environments, physical and social networks, formal and material responses to a set of challenges.

BFA senior Architecture Design students Bless Yee, Johnny Lu, and Youn Lee with Erfurt students get a tour of the raw space of WTC.