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Plenum

2020_6wks
Cultural Center for the Enviroment
The Menil Campus_Houston, TX
Air conditioning is a requirement, and while design professionals might fight it, obscure it, hide it, bury it, it persists as one of the fundamental components of any building. The public, especially in the Southern US, decided long ago that air conditioning was a divine gift and no negative, not even climate change could convince them to let it go. Liz Gálvez’s ARCH 503 Core Design studio, Drawing Air, asked each student to research an instance where architecture draws air; then develop from that research, an architectural proposal for a cultural center for the environment on the Menil Campus in Houston. This project ponders the architectural possibilities of the condensing unit machine and the thermodynamic laws that allow it to condition air.

The condensing loop rather than directly cool the air, removes the heat from the air by a series of thermal energy transfers; each of these reduces heat in one side of the loop and increases it in the other. These thermal imbalances are exploited by a series of programmatic coil plenums. The plenums are positioned based on the light, temperature, and humidity required to accommodate each diverse thermal program, which includes saunas, archives, and theaters. The thermal energy that would be unutilized in any other building, contributes here to unique gathering spaces of vast thermal difference, saunas, beaches, hot pools, and cold slopes which become a suitable stage for a different, more comfortable conversation around the natural and built environment.
Left: The typical air conditioning loop. Right: Diverting the connections allows utilization of wasted thermal energy to develop unique thermal spaces. Left: The air handler is deconstructed into component parts and arrayed. Right: The plenum is three dimensional and a complete thermal surface. “This hidden space [the plenum] has been declared off-limits to architecture -and to the imagination of the users of buildings- since the middle of the 20th century” (Rem Koolhaas, 304, Elements of Architecture) The spine fin coil was extracted from the condensing unit, it is used to spread out air for better thermal transfer. It is utilized as the surface of the plenums. Concept Drawing. Machines and pragmatic plenums. A diagram of the cooler and warmer sides of the condensing loop. From the Menil Drawing Institute. Level -3 Level -1.5 Level 0 Level 2 Section AA Section AA Thermal Overlay. Larger vectors denote higher average kinetic energy of the particles or temperature. Section BB Section BB Thermal Overlay. The verticality of the scheme allows for convection to circulate air. Section CC Construction Detail. Plenums are not structural elements, by nature, the programmatic plenums are inserted into a steel frame structure, The frame and plenums exist together, structuring themselves from the other. From the lobby looking onto the machine hall. Exhibition Space From the hot pool looking onto the cold slope and café.