
Loisos + Ubbelohde just received the highest award at the 2012 Architecture at Zero competition for their proposal, ‘Silver Streak’. The contest, sponsored by PG&E and AIA San Francisco, was conceived as a response to the lofty zero net energy targets set out by the California Public Utility Commission. As the recipient of one of two honor awards, their design for the University of California, Merced campus features an administration building that acts as both a threshold to campus and an energy field in the large plane of the agricultural valley. More images and architects’ description after the break.
By encouraging innovative design solutions to site-specific design challenges, the competition aimed to broaden thinking about the technical and aesthetic possibilities of zero net energy projects. The design welcomes the visitor with an open and informal presence through curvilinear pavilions on the ground floor. The snaking form above inflects to the larger open spaces of the campus, leading the eye along a diagonal axis from the symbolic oak entrance, past the athletic fields, the academic quad, and beyond to the Sierras.
